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What kind of fertilizer to use on Week 5 seedlings?

15 years ago

Greetings....I am trying to determine what kind of fertilizer to give my 38 pepper plants who are currently in week five. They will be going into the garden in four weeks. They are all doing well but I feel like they could use a shot of something. I have bird poop here (2-1-1). I also read good things about fish emulsion at this stage (5-1-1 (Alaskan) and 4-1-1 available locally). I figured I would give them one fertilizer treatment now and then a small scoop of Tomato Tone each when I transplant them. I was wondering what (if any) kind of fertilizer people use at the 1/2 way point between sprouting and transplant. All my plants are in ProMix BX. Thanks for any input!

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Comments (4)

organicpepper_grower
15 years ago
I use worm castings and anything else low in nitrogen
fiedlermeister
15 years ago
I keep it simple 15-30-15 diluted to about 1/3 strength.

john
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gardendawgie
15 years ago
I have had by far the best luck with fish emulsion and also some seaweed does not hurt. But I go light on this. Just a little in the water. Much less than recommended.

another trick is to make some compost tea with alfalfa pellets. This is the same thing as expensive superthrive. I am not positive but I believe Superthrive is simply very expensive composted alfalfa tea.

I also use only rain water on small plants and all potted plants. I find this critical.

The problem with dry powder chemical ferts is they are salts and the salt builds up in the soil. This can be dangerous if you have hard water or use it too often.

You can buy powdered seaweed or kelp cheap as a fertilizer or horse feed. I think Fedco Seeds sells it real cheap below a dollar a pound. Learn to make your organic ferts for a penny on the dollar of what they sell you in the stores. For example you can purchase kelp or seaweed powder for $6 an ounce or for less than a dollar a pound. An ounce makes 30 gallons so they sell a lot of people. haha. see Burpee catalog. You can also buy the powder for $4 a pound in food grade in single pounds from Starwest Botanical in California. item # 201680-51

Here is a link that might be useful: powder low cost
megachili
Original Author
15 years ago
thanks for the input, folks.

I ran a little test on some serranos and tomatoes: one group with worm poop, one group with Alaskan fish emulsion, one group with nothing. The group with the fish emulsion seemed to perk up nicely in a day. I didn't really see much (if any) difference between the worm poop and untreated groups. So I went ahead and put fish emulsion on everthing else. I almost immediately got some noticeable new leaf growth and greener greenery on the peppers, and a few of the tomatoes really firmed up and took off. Interesting. We also have a droopy ficus tree that responded within a 1/2 day to the fish emulsion with greener leaves and a slightly more robust overall look.

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