Wow, amazing that I thought I could save myself some time and trouble by coming here to get a simple question answered. What is a good brand of liquid fertilizer. For all the people who think they can diagnose my plants over the computer, I haven't been gardening all my lfe, only the last 7 years, from seed. I can tell which plants need some fertilzer, or if that hurts the sensibilities, has to have a little help picking up their natural food from some pretty bad starting soil. I would have just popped in for the first time and asked my question without providing any background, but I thought that was rude. For the ones who need all the details, here it is. This year was the first time I added organic fertilizers at all, and I didn't know how much to add, so I ran a test. A certain amount in a few beds, twice as much in the vegetable garden. The garden is doing great, I don't need to add anything. The beds obviously didn't get enough, some things are doing ok, others need a little help. 2 complete beds were scheduled to be torn out this year to put in a drive to the new barn, but that got held up, and since I started neck and back treatments, I don't intend to go out and enrich soil, it's going to get a liquid. But maybe I should just sit back and wait for them to completely yellow and die while I contemplate why they're not makin all their own food. They are in soil. I did appreciate the link to the clay soil article, very helpful. I am very busy like most people, especially now while I am tryng to rehab. I don't have the time or the inclination to justify myself, so I shall part here and head on out to Worm's Way. There the guy was helpful and listened to what I was actaully asking. I guess I sounded at least smart enough not to come home with a bottle and douse everything in my yard just for good measure.

Any of those hose end fertilizers give a very dilute dose. To be anywhere near effective, you would need to spray at least every other day. You can get Wal*Mart's generic water soluble, K-Gro from K-Mart or other generic brands from any big box store will work about as well for a lot less. Just check the NPK content. As long as that's close to the Spray and Grow or Miracle Gro NPK content you'll get similar results. All of these act quickly and don't stay in the soil long. The nitrogen evaporates as urea gas and leaches out quickly. I think you'll find you'll spend considerably more than if you purchased an organic or slow release chemical type you have to scratch in, it'll last longer in the soil, and give you better results.

I use DynaGro plus Epsom salt. I used Superthrive for years - and do not use it now - and I do not see very much difference on how they grow and bloom. What I see is the difference between summer - when I use airconditioner condensate for watering - and winter when I use city water. Looks like a combination of DynaGro and distilled water makes plants grow like crazy - and slow down on a regular water. It would be interesting if you take 3 starters- same variety, same size - and use one for control - and other ones for Spray-n-grow and Superthrive add-ons. Thing is - we do diferent things - I for example use a bit of worm castings to add to my soil - so I am already adding stimulants. My guess that both Spray-n-grow (I am not familiar with it) and Superthrive use kelp extract as a growth stimulant.. I cannot say that Superthrive increase suckering in my experience. Some plants are suckering more than others by genetics, and everything suckers as a result of stress. You break the stability of the conditions - let the plants go bone dry - and in a month you will have suckers popping everywhere. If you take on yourself to do the test - we all are waiting anxiously for the results. Irina

Pam, To request a Willhite catalog, just go to the homepage. At the right is an image of their catalog cover. It has a little girl holding a slice of watermelon. Above that is a banner that says something like Request A Free Copy of Our Catalog. If you click on that banner, it takes you to the catalog request page. What kind of melons do you want to grow? Big ones or little icebox sized ones? Let me know, and I'll suggest some varieties. As with pretty much everything else in gardening, there are some melons that the commercial growers don't grow because the rind is thin, making them poor candidates for shipping. Sometimes market growers will grow them if they are not having to transport them too far to their local Farmer's Markets. Home gardeners can grow those. I used to grow big melons, but with a small family, I tend to grow just the little small melons nowadays. My personal opinion is that a fresh-from-the-garden melon always tastes sweeter to me than store-bought melons. It isn't necessarily that the melons at the store are bad, it is just that the melons from home are better. I also like to have melons available in a variety of colors, so when growing our own, I'll usually grow melons that have yellow, orange, pink and/or red flesh. I like having the variety of different colors. I have a certain degree of concern about your high hurricane risk there. The worst thing in the world for watermelons (next to the coyotes who like to steal them!) is excessively heavy rainfall. It can make them crack and split and rot before they are ripe enough to eat. So, if it is more or less inevitable that you're going to get hit by torrential rainfall at some point during melon-growing season, you need to evaluate that risk and decide if you want to take the chance and devote space to melons. Even when torrential rainfall doesn't make melons crack and split, it can just kill their flavor by watering it down. Since my torrential rainfall is pretty much limited to any month prior to July (usually it falls in April and May, and only rarely in June), I normally don't have heavy rainfall at the time of year that it would harm the melons. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Willhite Seed Home Page