Organic fertilizer/better results in container gardening?

19 years ago

Our business is primarily property maintenance and container/annuals/perennial gardening as well as other installs. I recently was approached by someone trying to get me to use organic fertilizer. Until now we've been using blossom booster or similar for our annuals. For most of the summer our customers' flowers are the best around but they fade. I'm looking for better results and would like to go organic but am NOT willing to sacrifice our accounts. Has anyone switched from blue-feeding to organic? We also started using a foliar spray to enhance growth, however the impatiens grew too much! Thanks for your help.

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (7)

mich_in_zonal_denial
19 years ago
I think you will be very pleased with the results from Maxsea fertilizer(s)
Maxsea is not totally 100% organic. Some of the nitrogen is derived from the typical Amn. Nit. form but it is loaded with many of the micro nutirents as well as sea weed.

I learnt about this fertilizer years ago when one of the most highly regarded ( due to their super healthy stock ) whole+retail nurseries in our area was using it as their prime fertilizer.
It's not cheap, but it sure is effective and I think you will see a marketable decrease in accumulative salt build up in you pots and your plants may not be pushed into early decline .
Ron_B
19 years ago
What nutrient combination to use should be based on what potting medium is being used, what the irrigation water is like. If both operations are using similar media and have other similarities in growing conditions, then the same product might be appropriate.
Related Discussions
Organic fertilizers for containers
Q
Comments (5)
Before you decide that compost is a suitable component of your container soil(s), please read the thread I'll link to at the end of this message. Soil organisms are needed to make the nutrients in organic fertilizers available for plant uptake. The problem with using them as the sole source of nutrients in containers is that the organisms needed to break the fertilizers into usable components often have difficulty surviving in a container environment. You're on the right track, though. Fish meal and bone meal are excellent sources of P, but the bone meal delivers it very slowly. If you're set on organic supplements only, the soil choice & watering frequency will dictate appropriate intervals between fertilizer applications. The more open and aerated the soil, the more frequently you'll need to water & fertilize. Seaweed emulsions are quite good at delivering the minors and there are many products that do a good job of supplying the major nutrients. I use both chemical and organic fertilizers and micro-nutrient supplements. I use a powdered form of micro-nutrients (Schultz Micromax) in spring or at potting time and a seaweed emulsion occasionally in late summer. I grow in very fast-draining soils, so I can fertilize with an application of both a chemical and organic supplement at full suggested strength for both, simultaneously every two weeks when the plant is actively growing. Burning has never been a problem. For a slower draining soil, a three week interval or staggered applications might be more appropriate. There is some good info at this site: http://www.ars.org/About_Roses/soil-amend.htm but remember it is talking about plants grown in garden soil, so please make allowances for the fact that container growing is quite different than a garden. Here is a link that might be useful: C'mon! Lets go look at some container soil info. ;o)
...See More
Container Garden Experiment Results (Yield per container
Q
Comments (7)
I did use Miracle Grow fertilizer at first, but then I switched over to Tomato Tone and I liked it a lot better. For one thing, the Tomato Tone seemed to lead to a massive growth spurt. Also, (I'm not sure if this was due to the Tomato Tone or not) but when I started using Tomato Tone the problems with Blossom End Rot pretty much went away. I was losing peppers and tomatoes left and right before that. As far as the dirt, I used the Sta Green primarily because it was relatively light (we live in an upstairs apartment so it all has to go out on the porch) and seemed to have a good consistency. I liked the results, so I will probably use it again this year.
...See More
Organic fertilizers for containers?
Q
Comments (13)
I always want to agree with gardengal but I seldom do. This time I DO! I had a Meyer lemon in a pot for years and finally pulled it out this past fall. When we got the tree it was blooming and had been cared for with synthetic palm tree fertilizer (I knew the former owner). I pretty much ignored it until 2002 when I went organic with everything. At first I only used corn meal on it. When I finally applied alfalfa, the tree grew 6 inches in every direction within 30 days. I think the tree/soil combination had a lot of pent up energy that was released with the alfalfa. I gave it a heaping handful of either corn or alfalfa every month that I remembered. That was probably about 6 times a year. We always got hundreds of blooms and about 6-12 fruit. Growing a citrus in a pot is hard because they like more of a consistent moisture level than I was able to keep up with. My schedule takes me away from home for weeks at a time, so it had to go into the ground. I also had 15 African violets that I kept organically. I got them for $0.50 each from Wal-Mart long after the season. They were outside in winter being watered daily. Needless to say they were in awful shape. Three died almost before I got them home but the other 12 recovered nicely. Two of them bloomed but again, my job changed and I was not able to pay attention to them. But I was able to do things to them that the African violet mafia would cringe at. Well, they would have simply passed up anything from Wal-Mart to begin with, but it made a great experiment for organics. My conclusion after that experiment was that by fertilizing with milk, the violets became bullet proof. They never got a fungal disease, leaves did not drop from stress, leaves did not discolor from water spots, or any of the other common violet problems.
...See More
What is the best retail organic fertilizer for vege garden?
Q
Comments (33)
The formula listed by neil16 is the recipe for Complete Organic Fertilizer from Steve Solomon's book titled Gardening When it Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times. His logic is to supply all of the nitrogen needs and to replace the nutrients that are removed as a result of harvesting the crops. I used the recipe last year with good results and soybean oil meal was my nitrogen source. My local farm supply sells 50# bags for about $16.00. The analysis is about 7-1-1 or 7-2-2 depending on the sources that I've found. This material gives me the biggest bang for my buck in terms of a nitrogen source. One drawback is that the nitrogen must be broken down by microbes for plant availability and that requires warm soil temperatures. In cold weather an animal source of nitrogen like blood meal or a fish product is necessary. Be aware that purchasing kelp, bone meal and rock phosphate in small quantities is quite expensive. I buy 50# bags from an organic supplier in my region for a much better price per pound. I would consider using a complete fertilizer in a newly constructed bed like the one described above since there may be some deficiencies in nutrition for the plants. In a rich, well nourished soil there might only be the need for added nitrogen. Alfalfa meal or pellets are reputed to really rev up the soil organisms although the nitrogen content is less by weight than the seed meals. You can figure out the nitrogen content in animal feed by dividing the crude protein analysis by 6 or multiplying the crude protein by 17%. Years ago I was quite surprised to hear an agronomy professor at Virginia Tech tell how quickly organic forms of nitrogen are made available to plants when they are incorporated into the soil. The animal products are available immediately. I side-dress heavy feeders by moving the mulch and applying my seed meal at the surface. I then re-cover the fertilizer and apply moisture when I can.
...See More
Organic_johnny
19 years ago
As with most organic conversions, you're going to want to start at the beginning, with composts in the potting mix. Aside from providing nutrients on its own, compost also contains the microorganisms necessary to free up the "boxed" organic fertilizers you might add later. The problem with making the transition is that you'll really not want to mix "blue waters" in, as they contain salts which can upset the soil flora.

I've been doing organic containers for a couple years, and they seem to work at least as well as the alternative. It's also cost effective if you're doing enough containers, as a yard of compost makes an awful lot of compost tea, which is IMO the best organic fertilizer.

Link below is for certified potting mixes, recipes start on page 15.

Here is a link that might be useful: organic potting mixes
User
19 years ago
Amiga -
If you are getting good results, don't change.

One "advantage" of most organics is that they are weaker, and therefore harder ot over-fertilize.

" I recently was approached by someone trying to get me to use organic fertilizer. " OK ... will he provide you with enough of the stuff, FREE, so you can run some side-by-side tests on a willing customer's plants?
sally2_gw
19 years ago
Ditto what Organic Johnny said. In addition, worm castings are an excellent organic fertilizer for container plants. They are especially good for house plants, since they don't have an odor.

Sally
organicbuddy710
18 years ago
Speaking of worm castings...have you checked out TerraCycle Plant Food? It's essentially liquified worm castings in a spray bottle. It's actually packaged in bottles collected from schools and recycling centers. Been using it for quite some time after getting it from Home Depot (or Whole Foods, I can't remember). Nifty!

Here is a link that might be useful: TerraCycle
pickwick
18 years ago
for container grown plants, I would look for fertilizer nutrient ratios, media selection, EC rating/pH based on flow through analysis; water analysis including alkalinity, crops under consideration,stage of development,container size;rootzone temperatures,spacing, and the growing environment...
I am not interested in lush growth but toning based upon balanced nutrition at a given stage of plant development so that perhaps I might position myself to limit pesticide use... there is a concept of luxury consumption
of a given nutrient causing competition and interference with the uptake of other nutrients. this can be found on the ncsu floriculture website and other university sites; page 21 of the USDA Handbook 674 (vol 4.) (Dr. Thomas Landis) and so forth

Organic fertilizer/better results in container gardening?

Comments (7)

mich_in_zonal_denial

Ron_B

Related Discussions

Organic_johnny

User

sally2_gw

organicbuddy710

pickwick

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US