Posted on 05/07/2010 6:30:17 AM PDT by Red_Devil 232
Good morning gardeners! If you are a gardener or you are just starting out and are in need of advice or just encouragement please feel free to join in and enjoy the friendly discussion. There are many Freepers from all over the Good Ol’ USA that are willing and eager to help.
I thought a little primer on fertilizers might come in handy this time of year especially to those of you just starting out.
What do the numbers mean?
Every bag or container of commercial fertilizer has a three number code that tells you the percentage that that particular fertilizer has of the "Big Three" nutrients used by plants.
The big three nutrients are, in the order listed on the container:
A bag of fertilizer labeled as 13-13-13 will have equal percentages of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium for a total of 39%; the rest is filler.
Ideally a soil test is needed to determine how much of these nutriments your soil needs.
Also the type of vegetables or plants you are growing may require different percentages of these nutriments to grow or produce successfully. Know your plants needs.
And remember small amounts will go a long way. Don't over fertilize. Too much at one time or too often can overwhelm plant systems and cause problems.
I have seen some 10-10-10 around (bulk 40lb bags) but could not find any this year in the big box stores or the local nurseries.
I have Tomato Tone too — just waiting for it to get warm enough to put those babies into the ground. The bag is downstairs, but, as I remember, the first number in the formula isn’t very high so I figure that it isn’t good enough for my corn which is a big nitrogen sapper.
Yep! You will need more than the 3 in Nitrogen for your corn.
That sounds wonderful.
(if you leave out the okra)
;-)
When plants are young, I use the liquid 8-8-8 (lighter mix) and manure tea or compost tea or a light kelp or fish fertilizer solution. Basically, whatever packaging broke that day at the store, LOL!
As they get older, I move up to a 10-10-10 or a 20-20-20. I like Miracle Grow just fine, and I also like the entire line of Espoma plant foods, formulated for specific things:
http://www.espoma.com/p_consumer/fact_sheets.html
I LOVE Espoma HollyTone for my evergreens. It ROCKS. My FIL gives me ‘Charlie Brown’ trees at the end of his selling season; I’ve used HollyTone on them, and they are beautiful trees now. Except one. Harold. He’ll always be a weird-o, but we love him, anyway. :)
(Of course, you can’t BEAT liquid Algoflash for tomatoes, peppers and eggplant.) :)
I’ve never had any problems burning my plants. I don’t think you gain anything by over-fertilizing, though. If anything, you’ll get pretty looking plants, but less blooms and fruiting/veggie production action.
Use a 10-30-20 on your hanging baskets and ‘showy’ pots of flowers. You WANT that higher bloom boosting middle number for those. BUT in July, switch back to 20-20-20 (Miracle Grow) because otherwise your foliage can look just horrible!
We use a smorgasbord of “things” but to start the season off we always spread dried sacked steer manure down, then we apply 12 12 12 especially if we are adding fresh compost and spade that in and let it sit for at least a week. Today I applied GreenLite Super Bloom 12 55 6 mixed in a 2 gallon watering can to my established strawberry bed. Then I applied Miracid mixed in the same watering can to my BlueBerries soaking the soil. (thanks Diana for the tip). Next I spread some of the triple 12 with 15% sulphur to that bed and covered it with peat moss. My young bride says if Bully Boy manure was good enough for my Mother it’s good enough for her.
We have a good inventory of different fertilizers both organic and scorch the earth commercial varieties such as the 4 month Osmocote 14 14 14 that goes in all her planters plus she uses Super Bloom on them at least twice during the season...
I can’t ingest Okra even the pickled variety...
This Compost
by Walt Whitman
1
Something startles me where I thought I was safest;
I withdraw from the still woods I loved;
I will not go now on the pastures to walk;
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea;
I will not touch my flesh to the earth, as to other flesh, to renew me.
O how can it be that the ground does not sicken?
How can you be alive, you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health, you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you?
Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead?
Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations;
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day—or perhaps I am deceiv’d;
I will run a furrow with my plough—I will press my spade through the sod, and turn it
up
underneath;
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.
2
Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person—Yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noislessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings, while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs,
The new-born of animals appear—the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the
mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves,
Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk—the lilacs bloom in the door-yards;
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead.
What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea, which is so amorous after
me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever.
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard, and of the orange-orchard—that melons, grapes,
peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.
3
Now I am terrified at the Earth! it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of
diseas’d
corpses,
It distils such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks, its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.
Compost has it’s place but isn’t this a little over the top?
Tubey! I’m going to add garden-related poetry posts to our Garden Threads from here on out. :)
I’m going to DRAG you into civilized society if it KILLS me, LOL!
There once was a gardener named Diana
Whose carrots tasted like a banana...
Thank you for the detailed information. I’ve copied and pasted it to my compendium of good advice from this site.
LOL! My birth name is, ‘Diana Banana from Copacabana.’ My Dad wanted to name me, ‘Rose’ after my Great Grandma. Our surname is ‘Bush.’ Mom put her foot down on that one. ;)
I’m so excited! I got my big jung’s order in this week. Including my algoflash. Do I just mix it up and spray it on the plants themselves? Seriously? I want to make sure I don’t do it wrong LOL.
I set out 100 pepper plants this morning. 150 more to go! *cringe*.
My blackberry bramble is coming along nicely. Added 5 more plants to it.
And my asparagus seeds are sprouting! I’ve got about 60 seedlings so far, yay! Hopefully they won’t die.
I use Algoflash as a liquid mixed with water and feed directly to the plant roots. I’ve never used it as a foliar spray, but if the bottle says you can do it, you can do it.
Sounds like you’ve got a nice little operation going there for ya! I can’t WAIT to get back to my farm fulltime. (I know. I sound like a broken record, LOL!)
I’m going on some ‘spy missions’ today to see how other greenhouses are doing and how busy they are in this horrible stretch of cold, wet weather we’ve had this past week...I may have to buy a few things just to look legit, LOL!
BUY things. Gosh, I’m sure that’ll just be torture.
OK, I was afraid I was misreading the instructions on the algoflash. I’m kind of duuuurrrrr slow that way.
I’m awaiting the day the kids are old enough to HELP me in the garden. My 2yr old LOVES to help pick strawberries. She even picks just the red ones. She just tramples all the plants to get at them LOL. It’s like hunting Easter eggs for her. She shrieks ‘stwabewwy!’ when she spots one.
I haven’t been garden shopping but once so far this year. No time. Everything I’ve planted so far has been mailorder. Most of that started from seed. No way I could have afforded to plant 200+ tomatoes and 200+ peppers if I’d paid garden shop prices for them.
I will say the tomato plants from Jung-seed are doing splendidly so far. Ditto the ‘yummy’ and ‘zavory’ peppers. I’ve already got my mouth set waiting for those to get ready.
I’m glad to hear you’re having good germination. I had a cranky customer yesterday who tried those exact same two varieties and claims he didn’t get ANY germination from either variety. (He’s been growing for THIRTY YEARS. Yeah? Me, too...and I screw up once in a while too, LOL!)
Okaaaaay...so I refunded his money, but something in the back of my mind tells me that he has two flats of those peppers athome coming along perfectly. *Rolleyes*
Eh. It’s only a few bucks. And if someone feels they can ‘get one over on the man’ via some free peppers, so be it. *SHRUG*
Whoa. None of them? Hmmm.
I planted 12 of each and got 11. Which, for ME is *excellent*. I have had lousy luck with peppers before now. Which would be how I ended up with SO many peppers this year. I’ve been using the jiffy pellets before. I’ve done some reading and it seems there are a lot of people that have issues with those particular ones and pepper germination. So this year I used some of the 288 cell flats with seived regular old potting soil. Hubby made me a seive with a piece of screen wire and some 2X4’s. Now I’ve got pepper seedlings running out my ears. AND I managed NOT to run over any of those. Unlike my tomato seedlings... *sigh*
Got 100% germination with all Jung’s tomatoes.
Issues with Burpee though. Golden Mama from them was only 60% for me. Same flat, same mixture, same water, same lights. Right next to the Jungs tomatos in fact. One row over in the flat. So I’m thinking it might be old seeds from Burpee. Or something. I had good luck with You guys, Baker Creek, Totally Tomatoes (also you guys) and T&M.
I use Algoflash as a foliar spray in addition to direct feeding...you just use a weaker solution, and do NOT apply it in direct sunlight (best in evenings). The instructions are on the bottle, I believe. (I am out at the moment...)
I went with Baker Creek, Totally Tomatoes, Seed Savers, and my saved seed...no problems at all.
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