send my g/f out with a mini cultivator
she loves doing it for some reason, so its been easy on me. she does it about once a week, and then fertilizes a little bit as needed.
But, I did nearly all the hard work up front turning that shit and getting the retaining wall 'masoned'. She wasn't strong enough to dig in that tough earth.
we're 100% organic, no pesticides, no nothing not organic. All seeds are heirloom open pollinated non gmo from places like baker creek and mike the gardener.
soil was mixed with a little manure, peat moss, and some fish/lobster natural decay fertilizer. We have a compost pile that will be mixed in for next season. tons of worms live there now. lots of castings. will be epic soil for next year!
early in the season, we use garden tone, which is higher in nitrogen to promote plant growth and 'greens'
we use plant tone for later season (just started a week ago now) for more phosphorus and focus on producing fruits now that the plants are big and healthy.
we even filter tap water when it doesn't rain through a sawyer bucket filter to strip out toxins in the city-claimed potable tap water. i'ts pretty scary. As it's flushable, it clogs up after about 10-15 gallons (we run a 5gal bucket as the source and drip it into an 80 gal rain barellel). 2-3 bucket ful of 'clean' tap water, and the filter barely flows and needs to be backwashed.
it comes out disgustingly brown. it's a .1micron filter.
https://www.sawyersafetravel2.com/product_info.php?cPath=1_33&products_id=69
the biggest problem I have is bugs. They eat everything. the leaves. my cheery tree is basically sticks right now. :/ lots of beetles and other things.
hoping to get some chickens for next year and they will help eat bugs.