A good thing to do with outdoor plants, in my opinion, is to side dress instead of giving actual nutes in there water.
Reason being, is when it rains, it can decrease watering, and they can become under fed if it rains to much. Also, what ever nutrition you already have in the soil, can throw off your nutes, possibly giving you problems like you had. If you have some good living soil, it will neutralize the ph of most organic fertilizers that you would side dress with, and unless your water is WAY off on PH, you won't have to worry about ph to much. Bottled Nutes CAN up your ph like Nakedgardener pointed out.
Earth worm castings are a great thing to side dress with, non burning, metabolize slowly, and have lot's of beneficial microbes in them. Compost can be good, just have to be careful of what is in it. If it has lots of Nitrogen, from Manure, for instance, you should only use it early on.
Just a little bit of bat or sea bird guano can be really great for yields once you get close to flowering.
It is possible to greatly decrease your troubles and effort, if you grow them in some good quality soil, and then just keep giving them little side dressings of compost and stuff, to replenish the soil as the microbes break it all down, and feed it to your plants.
That's one way of doing it at least, every ones system if different though. I've been gardening that way since I was a kid, so pretty partial to it!
