Jeri made me laugh, that was funny! Humor is badly need in this forum. Dry air is made of 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, and the rest of argon and carbon dioxide. That explains why poor drainage wet clay soil can turn roses yellow ... the roots can't breathe. My Eglantyne rose was yellowish, until I fixed the drainage. MiracleGro potting soil comes with enough nitrogen for 3 months. I had one geranium in MiracleGro and was annoyed that the leaves are so dark green with few flowers (I don't fertilize that pot). There's one pot that I ran out of MiracleGro and put 1/2 garden dirt in ... I actually like that geranium better: it was shorter, more blooms, and lighter green leaves ....easier on the eyes. A friend asked me about phosphorus, so I'll post the info. here: The NPK value of oak leaves is 0.8 /0.35/ 0.15 Maple leaves is similar to that, so it's twice higher in nitrogen than phosphorus. Once decomposed, the value of phosphorus rises. Most decomposed organic matter is high in phophorus, such as sewage sludge at NPK of 2/ 1.9 / 0.3. Animal tankage (manure without the fat and gelatin) with NPK of 8 / 20 / 0. Other high sources of phosporus are rock phosphate and bone meal with NPK of 4 / 21 / 0.2. Drawback of rock phosphate and bone meal: they can only be utilized at pH at or below 7, according to University of Colorado Extension. Since I'm lazy in pruning I would rather sacrifice top growth for more root and flowering, or less nitrogen and more phosphorus. Leaves and stem store plenty of nitrogen, and unless the plant is completely yellow, there's no need for nitrogen. Even then, fixing the drainage and fluff up the soil with organic matter helped my roses to green up without the need for chemical nitrogen (also highest in salt). Adding air to the soil by making it fluffy is the cheapest way to give nitrogen to roots, considering that dry air is made of 78.09% nitrogen. Composting scraps from kitchen is another cheap source of nutrients, considering Cantaloupe rinds has NPK value of 0 / 9.77 /12.0 ... high in phosphorus and potassium. Potato skin has NPK value of 0 / 5.18 / 27.5 ... also high P and K. Nothing beats banana peels in potassium, with NPK value of 0 / 3.25 / 41.76. Potassium is need to counteract the salt in manure, and to fight diseases. This post was edited by Strawberryhill on Wed, Feb 20, 13 at 11:48

I have had a chance to move some rather large camellias in the past. In fact I moved over a hundred back some years ago. You may be moving them a little early in the year but on the upper Pacific Coast, the weather might be in your favor. First, root prune the camellias at about 36 inches from the trunk. If you can get wider, go as wide away from the trunk as possible. The Camellia has shallow roots and you will get most of them within the top foot of top soil. I would use an 18" sharp shooter. Go all around each plant about 18" deep. Second, prepare the place where you are going to plant the Camellias. I would till up an area about 6 ft. in diameter per plant. After you till the soil to at least 18" to 24"deep, I would add about 3 or 4 cu. ft. of a combination of ground up pine bark and sand. I would till this into the spot and also add some natural fertilizer. If you have cotton seed meal available, I would use that. I would put in about 10 lbs of cotton seed meal into the mixture of pine bark and sand. This will give you a real fluffy mound. It should be about 6 ft. wide. Let it sit for as long as you can before moving the large plants. When you move the plants, the later in the year the better, I would move off the top foot of soil from your prepared bed, sit the large rootball on top of the soil and cover it with the soil mixture that you removed. You will note that you are planting the Camellia on the top of the ground. Do not dig it out so that you are planting the plant in a hole. You want to have it sitck out of the ground at least 8 to 10 inches. Prune the top of the plant back to about 18: from the trunk of the plant. Keep it watered good but do not drown it. Let it settle on its own. Within 3 or 4 months it will settle about six inches and will continue to settle a little more over the next year. Keep at least two inches of the soil mixture over the exposed roots. I would also use some root tone in the hole to stimulate new root growth. I wrote an article for the Camellia Journel several years ago about moving established Camellias. If you would contact Tom Johnson, the chief gardner at the American Camellia Society through their web site, he could probably get you some articles on moving large Camellias. Ann Walton is the Executive Director of the A.C.S. and she may be able to point you to someone in the Washington area who has some experience as well. Bob

Hello Korney, Lets go from the top. I know that compost has a low N-P-K. I don't use complst as a fertilizer. I use it as a soil conditioner, a Ph buffer, and to add organic matter to my garden beds. Compost adds lots of bacteria and fungi to the soil which is what I want to make my soil loose and fluffy. A huge portion of any good soil is microbial matter. It is precisely why I listed all the "stuff" (in addition to N-P-K) you get with a good organic fertilizer. You see, fertilizer does not, not in the history of mankind, make loamy soil - organic matter does. That is the reason I add compost to my beds. When I side dress my plants during mid season it does not take weeks or months for the fertilzer to start working. I typically see results within days. As long as you work the fertilizer lightyly into the soil and water it well the fertilizer begins to break down immediately and starts to feed the plants. I have never experienced what you are talking about. If you need to have results in minutes or hours then your plants are in a sorry state. Perhaps you could elaborate just a little more when you say that all the bacteria cannot coexist in a high phosphorous fertilizer. Perhaps you are saying that because MG is so high in phosphorous that one cannot combine their fertilizer blend with microbial life. Well, if that is the case then you need to switch to a different brand of fertilizer. Gee, lets see - what brand of chemical fertilizer can we go to that will also provide microbial life and feed my plants with all the N-P-K they need? Wow, none of them do. But every organic fertilizer can do that. Let me see, MG or E.B. Stone, let me see now. OK, I got it, I'll take E.B. Stone. But of course if I am living in MA I might have to use a different brand, but it is all good. I still get it all with the organic stuff. I think you just popped your argument in the foot because organic fertilzers do both. As far as cost difference goes well, I was simply alluding to the concept of "added value". Typically when two products are at parity and they cost the same we usually go with the product that has the most features. Looking at all the additional benefits organic fertilizers provide and since they cost about the same I would conclude that organic fertilizers provide more bang for the buck. It is hard for me to conclude that you could come to any other conclusion either. Just compare what you get with organic fertilizers vs MG. I was only using E.B. Stone as an example. I don't know if E.B. Stone is available in other parts of the country any more than if In-N-Out Berger is available where you live. That was not the point. I was simply comparing one brand of organic fertilizer with MG. Of course you can go to any nursery and compare ANY organic fertizer and see what is available. My contention was simply that "organic" fertilizers are better for soil, and hence the plants, than MG. You can pick any organic fertizer brand you wish, it doesn't matter to me. You said, "But even if it were available, you'd have to compare NPK because the further so-called advantages (mycco, bacteria, etc) wouldn't really be evident this year." Wouldn't be available "this year"?????? Your biology is just a little fuzzy here. I really don't know where to start with this one. Then all the people who put compost in their garden in February and March will not see any microbial benefit for a year. Is that what you are actually saying? Or are you saying that the bacteria that has been suspended and put into the fertizer box will remain dormant for a year before becoming active again? Either way you are not making a lot of sense. there are many species of bacteria that can be put to sleep, and there are many species that can't because they do not have a dormancy state. I imagine the kinds of bacteria you find in organic fertizers are the ones that have a dormancy. I would be pretty upset if I found out that dead bacteria were being put into the box - wouldn't you? I think everyone would. Lets just say that the bacteia in a box of organic fertilizer does not remain dormant for a year. I'll dismiss that one out of hand. Actually, I am lookig to feed the EXISTING microbial life in my soil, not using fertilzer to add huge amounts of organic matter - where did you get that idea. MG does nothing for the microbial life - mine does. Mine not only gives the plant it N-P-K but also feeds the existing microbial life the are currently in the soil. MG cannot do that becausse it does not have anything in it except for N-P-K and a few trace minerals. You really think that is a fair fight. It is kind of like putting a pit bull in with a miniature poodle. When I mentioned I paid $6.99 for a 4lb box of my fertilizer I was not talking about aggregate cost includig already purchased supplies of other fertilizers. I was simply refering to the cost of my 4lb box and MG. Since my fertiizer comes with so much added value I was simply making the point that organic fertilizers are a better value. But no matter how much MG she has on hand (and uses)she will never get any of the bacteria and other things like humic acid.Bacillius, Glomus, and so on. So, for the money MG is not even in the ballpark. It is hard to compare a Roles Royce with a Taurus. I am not saying anything derogatory about anyone who drives a Taurus - I drive a Taurus. You said, "you get 4 to 5 times as much NPK". This whole discussion was centered around the ADDITIONAL things you get with an organic fertilizer that you do not get with MG. My whole point was that we spend way too much time on N-P-K. Like I said N-P-K is all MG has to offer so they push N-P-K. You do realize that I too can buy an organic fertilizer with high N-P-K? Are you saying that all a fertilizer has to do to be a great fertilizer is have high N-P-K? Are you saing that MG will do as good a job (or better) at providing the energy the micorbial matter in the soil needs? You do know that the energy that all living things need come from breaking carbon bonds? As far as I can tell there is exactly zero carbon energy in MG. Absolutely zero. Look into it, you will see what I mean. I don't think high N-P-K and a few trace minerals is the definition of a good fertilizer? To finish this part of the discussion, does a gardener really want a high nitrogen fertilizer at this stage of the growing season? Nitrogen promotes plant growth, not flower development or fruit set or root development. Why would you want a high nitrogen content in your fertilizer at this time of the season? Now if our plants are still growing then yes we need nitrogen. Here in SoCal my tomato plants are alreay 5' tall and just loaded with flowers and I have counted over 45 set tomatoes on two plants. I cut back on nitrogen a long time ago because I don't want plants that are 10' tall that have no flowers and no fruit. I am using epsom salt (at 2T/gallon of water) to help promote lots of blossoms and fruit set. I am foliar feeding with fish emulsion and seaweed. I am making my own aerated compost tea. But I am not adding lots of nitrogen. But to each his own. Lets have a short chemistry lesson right here. It might be helpful. For most of the country clay soils are negatively charged. Petrolium based fertilizers are also negetively charged. By definition that means they repell each other. That means in places that get a fair amount of rain the chemical fertilizers are more quickly washed out of the soil. Fertilizers that are made from manure's, kelp, guano, bone/blood meals, fish emulsion, etc are positively charged. That means organic fertilizers are acutally attracted to and bond to the soil's particlaes. This is a good thing. Plants naturally produce a hydrogen ion that breaks this bond and allows the plant to take up the nutrients it needs - when it needs it. This neans that more fertilizer stays in the soil and available to the plant for a much longer period of time. This is why the MG puts gardeners on such a frequent fertilizing schedule. Their fertilizers simply do not stay in the soil for very long. It is feast or famine with MG - but not with organic fertilizers. This is true for any brand of organic fertilizers, not just E.B. Stone. Maybe cleo could do half of her garden next year with MG and half with an organic fertizer and then see how it goes. Korney, if you like MG and you get great results from it - more power to ya. It is all ok. People make the choices they make based on the information they have at the time the decision is made. If people want to think that fertilizer is fertilizer is fertilizer it's all good. I find it interesting how we use compost for its microbial benefits, we foliar feed with fish emulsion and seaweed for their bacterial benefits, we use epsom salt to help the blossoms and fruit set, etc, etc, etc, (these are all organic applications). When people typically have problems in their garden (excluding pests and diseases) it is usually because of two things: Improper watering (usually too often) and 2. problems with fertilizing. This is why this discussion was, and is, so importnat. There is so much more to gardening and growing good veggies than N-P-K. You gotta think microbes, microbes, microbes. - I am going to bed. Happy gardening all. Tom

We grow what we like to eat, first and foremost, so that we are motivated to eat it later on regardless of how it is preserved. My first preference always is to eat fresh, in season, but the reality is that if you only eat fresh, in-season food, then you may find yourself eating so much food during its relatively brief fresh season (like asparagus, for example) that you get sick of it, but then later on you find yourself craving it out of season. I love aspragus but even I don't want to eat it every day during the couple of months it is producing,so we eat it fresh several days a week and freeze the rest. I try to freeze in the manner that is most productive for cooking later on---for example, cutting the produce into bite sized pieces before freezing it and freezing it in batches that are the right size for a meal. That makes cooking it quick and easy in the off-season. With raw materials that can go into meals, like chopped frozen onions, I freeze in 1/2 or 1 cup amounts that can be used with the recipes from which I prepare meals. Like Dorothy, our garden is a food-preserver's garden, which is quite different from a fresh-eating only garden, because you do get vast amounts (as planned) of produce in-season and you have to deal with it in a timely manner. Every day begins with harvesting in the early morning hours and I plan that day's meals around what we have, setting aside that amount of produce for fresh eating. The rest gets preseved via canning, freezing, dehydrating or fermenting, or is root cellared (potatoes, onions, etc.). When I plant cabbage, for example, in late winter, I know we are not going to want to eat cabbage daily for a couple of months, so I am careful not to plant too much. The excess harvest always becomes sauerkraut or sometimes freezer slaw or it gets used in a chow chow or relish recipe. This year I fermented four batches, three of cabbage sauerkraut, and the fourth a hot sauerkraut that included hot peppers and carrots. All are through fermenting and canned now and that's a good thing because it is hard to keep our west-facing kitchen cool enough for proper fermentation in July and August. We do use our preserved food, but that is a very deliberate choice. I wouldn't spend all the time growing and preserving it if we weren't going to use it. I value the time and money invested in the garden too much to waste the harvest. You do have to make a very deliberate decision to plan meals around the food you grow and to take the time to cook them. It is a lot more work to prepare home-cooked meals from scratch versus using convenience foods (like Hamburger Helper or whatever) and fast food, but I try to make the bulk of our meals healthy ones from our garden. First of all, they taste better. Secondly, we know how this food was raised. Third, huge amounts of fossil fuels weren't used to transport the food from our garden to our house and that matters to me. I don't know how long we as a world can keep transporting food an average of 1500 miles from the place where it is grown to the grocery stores where it is sold. To me, growing and eating our own produce is part of our effort to live a more sustainable lifestyle that is not based on burning excessive fossil fuels. There are gazillions of ways to use fresh food. You can, for example, make sorbet out of almost anything you raise in terms of fruit, or you can make chips---I like kale chips and okra chips. Frozen food can be used in many ways. It is all about how you choose to use your time. I have tons of vegetable cookbooks with creative ways for using produce, so that we don't get stuck in a rut and eat the same old produce cooked the same old way every time. Some of my favorite veggie cookbooks are very old ones from Southern Living magazine, published decades ago when cooking meals from scratch was still considered an important art, not a waste of time. My time goes into the garden, harvesting the produce, cooking with it, and preserving it. That is the choice I make. I get somewhat amused at gardeners (and I bet we all know people like this) who grow all kinds of food, and take photos of their harvest and post those photos almost daily, but who rarely eat the food they grow. I feel like the 'social media generation' (who often are quite a bit younger than I am) love gardening for a different reason than I do---some of them seem to love it for the joy of growing the food and of photographing it and putting it on their FB pages, but they may not yet have mastered actually using very much of it. I have high hopes that their love of growing it eventually will lead to them actually using it for more than photos. Some young adults who grew up on convenience food and fast food have to make a very concerted effort to learn how to prepare and use the produce they raise because, perhaps, they didn't grow up in a home where meals regularly were prepared from scratch. I feel very lucky because my dad always grew produce and cooked from scratch (and he canned as well), while my mom abhorred the work involved in doing that, so when she cooked, it was often using convenience foods. This led to an amusing conversation with my brother in the early 2000s when he remarked that our mom didn't make very special meals on weekends, but that the weekend meals were great. I looked at him, wondering what planet he was from, and informed him that was because our dad did the bulk of the weekend cooking. I couldn't believe my brother grew up in the same household and never made the connection between the weekday vs. weekend meals and who was doing the cooking. It make me laugh out loud and ask him if he wasn't paying attention to who was in the kitchen in our childhood! He seemed completely baffled as our other siblings and I assure him that it was indeed Dad who was largely producing those great weekend meals. As an adult, I made a deliberate choice to pursue gardening, cooking and canning like my dad did and to largely avoid convenience food cooking. Have grown up eating both kinds of meals, I knew what I preferred and that was what I wanted for our family too. When I am in the garden, as much as I enjoy being out there, I never lose sight of the fact that my garden is a working garden. I'm not out there to play around, take photos, visit with friends, conduct garden tours, or to sit in a nice chair, sipping a glass of iced tea, and chilling and relaxing. That is not my reality. Particularly, I am out in the garden to work hard quickly (to both beat the heat and avoid the snakes), bring in the harvest and spend the rest of the day using it and preserving it. It is a job, truly, and not a hobby or a past-time, but it is a job I love and a job I enjoy doing overall, though there are occasional days that I hate it because I find myself working from sunrise until well after dark and that gets tiring. So, yes, we use what we grow, but it is because we choose to do that, and because we have developed the self-discipline to use what we grow and to not waste it. If we aren't using it, I yank it out and replace it with something we will use. Right now, with all our tomato preservation needs met/exceeded for this year, I am yanking out tomato plants right and left and replacing them with new crops for fall. It is a somewhat thankless task to be doing this on a hot July day, but I do it because I want to have a great harvest in late summer, autumn and winter. It also leaves some of my tomato-growing friends (who don't preserve their harvest) appalled that I remove plants still capable of producing, but I always keep enough tomato plants for fresh eating, and anything beyond that is a waste of space because I'm through preserving tomatoes for this year. Because we live in a rural area where families are very tied to the land and many gardens are multi-generational, where the grandparents, parents and grandkids (and sometimes great-grandparents and great-grandkids) all eat from the garden and help preserve the food from it, I had lots of encouragement and support from some of those multigeneration garden families in our neighborhood when I first started growing/preserving our food here. Mostly, though, they just served as an inspiration for me---I wanted to grow enough food to put up huge harvests like they did. As time went on and our garden produced all we could use and preserve, I noticed that these same multigenerational family gardens all hit the same point that mine did---the production level reached a point where nobody wanted to can another tomato. It became amusing as one friend or another would call and ask if we wanted or needed any more tomatoes (or okra or whatever) because they were through with their canning for the year and their plants still were producing. Many of them, like me, were growing 100-200 tomato plants in spring to meet their fresh eating and preservation needs. It made me realize we all were just alike---growing more than we can eat even though we preserve a great deal of it. To live this sort of edible gardening lifestyle is a deliberate choice. If you like gardening, but don't like using or preserving the produce, then why not just switch over to more ornamental gardening and less edible gardening? Our garden is multipurpose, providing not only fresh and preserved fruits, veggies and herbs, but also flowers for cut flower bouquets and pumpkins, gourds, amaranth and other ornamental decorative items for fall porch displays or table displays. If I don't fill up a lot of our growing space with flowers and only use it all for edibles, I'd never sleep because I'd be too busy preserving food. There's always room to grow some ornamental/decorative items or to grow compost crops to feed the compost pile or to grow cover crops to hold the soil When you are preserving food, why not use it later on? It is so wasteful to grow it and preserve it but then not to use it. I am happy every single time that we walk through a grocery store and aren't buying food that I have a home---whether that food is fresh and sitting on the kitchen counter or in the fridge, or if it is frozen, dehydrated, fermented, canned, etc. I love breezing through the produce section and only buying, let's say, lettuce, bananas, apples and grapes in summer or cranberries in fall or whatever. I love skipping the frozen food section (except to buy waffles and ice cream) because our own home-grown food fills the freezer. There's a part of me that gets very tired of the summer workload, but not tired enough to stop doing it. Every time there is news of yet another food-induced illness involving salonella, e. coli, etc. on produce, I am grateful we raise our own and don't have to risk bringing home some disease on grocery-store produce. I don't even like buying lettuce in summer, but Tim must have his salad, so we buy it and then we just have to hope we aren't buying contaminated produce. I'm happier fall through spring when we have our own lettuce and salad greens. Many people go to the grocery store and buy food and plan their meals around that purchased food and there's nothing wrong with that, but we are exactly the opposite when we go to the store. We already have planned our meals based around the food we have, whether fresh or preserved, and we just buy whatever we might need to make those meals complete. That's our preference, always. When we eat something like a purchased pizza, I still always joke with my family that "I grew this on the pizza tree out back" and we laugh. I do can pizza sauce and we do make homemade pizzas too, but there is room in everyone's life for a little fast food or convenience food as well. Dawn