First I'd like to say "Hi!" to everyone! I'm not new to Ning, but I am new to this site.

My fiance and I just bought a house in the SF Bay Area last December. We love gardening, and would eventually like to have a homestead, but we definitely need to work up to that. When we were looking to buy a house we only had two criteria. The house was to be small (we have no need for anything larger than a two bedroom right now) and that it must be a large piece of property. This was a huge feat to overcome in this area because almost all homes here are McMansions on postage sized lots. Fortunately our realtor listened to us and we found the perfect place. A small 2/1 house (with a bonus water tower that the previous owners converted into an apartment) on a 1/4 acre. We are in the city limits still, so this find was exceptional. The other bonus? We have a well. Completely unheard of for this area. Apparently our property used to be part of a fruit orchard and our well is what watered the trees. Here's the backyard when we moved in:

The fruit trees were all in really bad shape and the majority of them had to be removed. See the one small tree off to the right in the first picture? That's a lemon tree and the only tree we kept and have since nursed it back to health and vigor. We did however plant 20 trees since we moved in and I have 6 more being delivered in January to add. So I don't feel guilty at all removing the old trees.

We're getting married in October, and the plans are that it will be in our backyard. We've been VERY busy getting the backyard done. So this is where our yard is now (don't mind the clotheslines or the hose):

In January we raced to get in vegetable beds. I used one of those home soil test kits to determine what we needed to do to the soil. According to the tests our soils were slightly acidic but completely deficient in all macro-nutrients. Ok, I'll buy it, since it has been nothing but weeds for who knows how long (the house was empty almost 2 years prior to us moving in). So we amended the soil as recommended. Now, we're totally organic and by following the recommendations we should have been good. And our garden did start out fairly strong. But after not too long, plants started to fail. Our squash completely failed. So I did another soils test. Again it said the same things. So we amended again. This time we didn't get any response from the plants. Maybe it's the lack of heat this year? Then I noticed a light coating of white deposits on the soil along our drip irrigation lines. I knew this was bad. I then decided to send in soil samples to a professional lab. It was bad.

Salt. Saline Soil. We have salt water intrusion in our well. We're the only well pulling off that aquifer. We thought we were good. But we are near the SF Bay. We are in a major drought. And the well could be too deep (salt water is heavier than fresh water and sometimes wells that are too deep end up bringing up the salt water instead of the fresh water).

But here's the kicker, according to the lab we have an excessive amount of phosporus and potassium. I'm still waiting for the nitrogen though. The potassium is so excessive it is affecting the absorption of other nutrients. The lab also showed that our soil is alkaline. Hmmmm, but the soils kit said we were completely deficient in the macro nutrients and had acidic soil - twice! So I tried the home test kit one more time to see if maybe this had all changed since the last time I tested then amended. Nope, it read the exact same as it had all the previous times I had tested the soil.

Then I remembered that my mom has been having gardening problems even though she uses one of these tests every year and then amends appropriately. I now feel like I can't trust these tests, which is a bummer because they are inexpensive. But at least with the lab tests they tell you the levels of macro and micro nutrients and give you specific recommendations.