you are aware .. its rabbit food ... eh ...

do you have many of those vermin around???? .. if not.. you might.. with this plan ...

anyway ... i dont quite understand your plan ... it sounds.. like you want to put it on.. real thick.. like a mulch .... which you cant get anymore .. or some such ...

ken

It would seem like a shame to use something (especially something like alfalfa pellets that would be in no danger of going to waste otherwise) for fertilizer that has such great feed value that you could get meat and manure/fertilizer from it instead of just fertilizer.

Alfalfa is excellent fertilizer and the cost is less than you think. With urea within 2 weeks whatever your trees didn't absorb will be gone. The alfalfa will be feeding your trees till July. No loss of fertilizer. It is all used. As it is slowly broken down and utilized. I love it for all my plants. I don't use it for trees, i use tree-tone, but I use it for all my other plants. Not every year, I used it last year. this year I have mirco-life organic, and plant-tone, holly-tone for the brambles and blueberries. But I don't see why not use it for trees? It's super safe too. Plants in general do a lot better with a constant feed than a quick burst soluables give.
You can still give it urea too,, if you feel you need more nitrogen, but alfalfa is actually very high in nitrogen for an organic.

No waste Floyd with the pellets, the OM will also mineralize adding more nutrients to the soil. I plan to be getting lots of apples, no manure or meat. Not yet sure just how thick the app will be yet, likely an inch or less based on my calculations for desired N, P and K in lb/A.

Drew, the urea won't go anywhere from my soil except into the trees unless I apply it stupidly, onto the soil surface on a hot, windy day and no subsequent rainfall.

To get the equivalent of 12.3 lb/A N, 9 lb K2O and 3.1 lb P2O5 on my 4800 square ft Apple plot, one 50 lb bag is required costing $15.80. I can live with that. I really hope the tree guys can deliver me a pickup load or 2 of tree chips.

The K may be a little low and need to be supplemented with some KCl as the trees are all bearing full bore now, no doubt using lots of K.

Michael, I didn't mean that you wouldn't get fertilizer value from the pellets; what I meant was that alfalfa could make good fertilizer and meat at the same time.

I've used alfalfa cubes for years, started in the late '60's with not cubes but the loose stuff that fell from bales that a feed store let me shovel into my truck for free. I wasn't using it to grow fruit but the particular herb I was growing thrived under the stuff, as long as I didn't pile it against the stems. Worked for all my other vegetables as well.

It has long been the cheapest source of organic N when packaged as cubes for animal feed- excepting your urine, of course. My organic customers are advised to use it for younger trees that you are trying to grow wood for.

It is also loaded with K which helps baring age trees, but what Drew considers a virtue can be a vice when you are trying to quiet down bearing age fruit trees. The N is released mostly as the soil warms in summer- which tends to serve the leaves and wood instead of the fruit.

Tree care companies are often looking for easy dump sites for their chips. You might also try some local arborists instead of hoping to notice a truck.

Hman: are you aware of any generic recs in lb/A for N, P2O5 and K2O for bearing apple trees? Just point me to some if you would, I can read :). It appears the alfalfa pellets I have access to don't quite fit the N : K ratio for bearing trees so supplementing with some K would be in order, correct?
The pellet analysis works out to 4:3, N:K.

Cornell used to make their commercial fruit recs available on-line for free, but stopped a couple years ago claiming budget constraints.

For maintenance they recommend 40-60 pounds K and 20-40 pounds N per acre at petal fall and then an equal amount of K only again shortly after harvest.

I've never bothered trying to match that and just apply half N to one part K. I apply a pound or two actual N per 1,000 sq ft.

The dynamics change when you use mulch or organic fertilizer that functions as mulch (like alfalfa) because it makes the K more available to the trees.

I wouldn't worry too much about precision. Tune down the N when vegetative growth needs to be reduced.

Peaches need more N than apples and you need about equal parts N and K for them.

ammonium nitrate or ammonium sulfate (ams) applied to the surface should have a slower release and it wont disappear into the wind. If I remember right.

AMS will be easy to get at any fertilizer dealer and its bagged already. Ammonium nitrate will be a little harder to find.

I've done that. I didn't have trouble with vermin. I went out of my way to scratch it into the earth and wet it down.

I prefer cotton seed meal. Its acidic which need, and I thought it packed more of a jolt. It smells like an oil refinery though, and I wonder if I wouldn't be better off with a little ammonium sulfate.

Thanks Hman, at what growth phase should peaches get their N?

Jag, think im going to stay away from ammonium nitrate, don't need the BATF asking me any questions, I like AMS anyway, works well and gives me a bit of S for my calcareous soil.

Turns out a 50 lb sack of alfalfa pellets costs $16.00, no problem.

Alfalfa they say is great . As you know we are not short on trace minerals since the glaciers came through this area but I would still like to get some azomite this year http://www.azomite.com/. There are a couple of resellers in the Kansas City area and I like this one http://troquefarms.net/. I also use biochar here and have seen some significant improvements from it. The best part being biochar is free and good you just have to make it. The easy way to make biochar is to throw a sealed 55 gallon barrel of wood chips in the next bonfire you make from tree trimming and what's in the barrel after the burn is biochar.

I've never used alfalfa pellets by the way but I sure have used a lot of green manure aka clover or alfalfa etc.. legumes I tilled in to improve the soil. 5 acres of a hay field I grew red clover on and tilled it in. After many years of hay production it's still great property from that cow manure and green manure I used on that field.

Thanks Clark, I've thought about screening out the charred stuff from the ashes generated by our wood stove but that seems like it might generate a bit of char, a big mess and be a very messy job. Maybe I can figure a way to do it. I've got Berseem clover going as a cover crop on part of the veggie ground planted for the first time last September, can't wait to see how it worked with it's oat nurse crop.

When any fruit tree most needs N depends on whether you are feeding the fruit or the rest of the tree, but peaches rely on vigorous growth of new wood to remain productive more than any other fruit- or at least it is most important to keep peaches growing quite vigorously.

Alfalfa should work fine for peaches but if they come into the season lackluster, throw them some urea.

For the last couple of seasons I've needed to do this for peaches at a couple of sites that I would have assumed got enough N from organic sources. Reaction varies from site to site.

Thanks Hman, that makes sense. All of my trees, Apple and peach are making at least 2' of shoot growth every year. I find that amazing because they haven't received any N, P or K in the last 8 years, good old 4' deep silt loam I guess. Guess I'll focus on the K for the just starting last year heavily bearing apples.

I'm a strong believer in only using N where more growth is needed. The K I add unless there are really good reserves in the soil based on testing or if I'm mulching with a good source of it.

The wood you used previously may still be releasing K- I don't know how long it takes for rotting wood to release its K. I haven't read up on that for years- most sites I manage I mulch with some kind of wood mulch at least when trees are young.

In my own orchard I lime with wood ashes so K deficiency is no problem.

What about lawn clippings...especially those that are mulched. Everyone has those to dispose of and I doubt there would be a ton of difference in N content when compared to alfalfa especially on a fertilized and lush green lawn.

The C:N ratio (C=carbon, N=nitrogen) is 19:1 for unfertilized grass clippings and 12:1 for alfalfa.

I agree with cousinfloyd...seems like a waste to use a crop product to intentionally rot into fertilizer. Unless you are already composting your lawn clippings then fertilizing with alfalfa seems iffy to me. I'd rather have the alfalfa after a rabbit ate it first (somebody else's rabbit lol).

Appleseed,
I knew a guy once who buried a 1000# hay bale side ways to improve the soil. He would also add bone meal, magnesium, nitrogen etc at the same time. He was 75 years old at the time and used several methods of gardening in his life. He passed away in his late 80's. Every time I walk by that spot there is a walnut tree about 30' that now produced 3x the crop. At the time I said what a waste I can get you some cow manure and he said I want the good stuff not what's left after the cow takes what it wants. He read lots of gardening books and followed advice from authors such as Louis braumfield , the Robisons "how to make a living on 5 acres", Ruth Stout etc. Braumfield mentioned dark green circles in the fields being large burn piles from when the forests were cleared in this country. Interesting those circles were from more than a hundred years earlier which leads me to believe the concept of biochar is simple and valid. Ruth Stout believed in continual grass mulching with lawn clippings and old hay etc which was the only fertilizer she used. When I was a little boy I learned my gardening methods from him and my parents / grand parents and many other old timers. Some of them poored soy beans in a hole and after several months of smelling hundreds of pounds of stinking soy beans I saw the soil improvements. Tilling in clover or alfalfa we grow is really no different. I know exactly what you mean when you say that a about alfalfa pellets because it does seem wrong but all assets are valuable. I use wood chips, leaves, cow manure etc. Because I don't want any of them to wind up in the land fill and they are valuable resources. Dropping Alfalfa pellets in a hole is a good idea on an organic farm without other materials readily available. The cost is low and the benefit is high. It seems wrong but so did dumping all kitchen scraps in a hole the first time I saw that. Lawn clippings etc is the way to go if you get it from an organic lawn but an organic farmer likely does not want to take the chance on getting chemicals with the clippings used to make the yard beautiful.

Actually, lawn clippings are not always easily available and messy to deal with if they are allowed to pile up and become soaked and fermented before you have access to them, but I agree that they are excellent when you want a soil sweetening, highly enriching organic fertilizer-mulch.

I never gather lawn clippings from my turf- what a waste of energy. I even keep the gate open on my "mulching" mower so it doesn't waste a lot of power pulverizing lawn clippings- takes half the gas and much less time to mow my lawn that way- doubles the cutting power of the mower. The clippings disappear in a few days and only feed my lawn- never smother it.

Alfalfa is not the most ecological approach to fertilizing plants but it's pretty direct so not as wasteful as other possibilities. For folks with not a lot of extra time to go on scavenging missions it is a good material to use, but the cubes for horses are better than pellets, IMO. They are less condensed and cheaper.

Another aspect to consider is what is the source of alfalfa cubes/ pellets? Undoubtedly the alfalfa was sprayed and maybe gmo as well. Makes since for organic growers to grow the clover/ alfalfa as well. The power companies and tree trimmers will deliver the wood chips to your house for free to get rid of them.

Just a little corrective: hair doesn't have brains, but rabbits do (albeit small ones) :-)

Here is a link that might be useful: Harebrained

Clark, I'm well aware of the power company tree trimmers here, the trick is catching them. They have dumped loads at the city's tree burn dump before for me that I'd go get with a front end loader. The last time they dumped, some moron burned the whole pile before I could get to It !!! Not worried about GMO alfalfa.

H-man, why do you prefer the cubes?

Actually, lawn clippings are not always easily available and messy to deal with if they are allowed to pile up and become soaked and fermented before you have access to them, but I agree that they are excellent when you want a soil sweetening, highly enriching organic fertilizer-mulch.

Actually...in comparison with virtually anything else...yes they are pretty easy to come by. Ridiculously easy to be more accurate. In fact...I'd bet just about everyone on this site has access to lawn clippings. If you pile up and allow alfalfa to become soaked and fermented it too would become messy to deal with.

So your point is what?

Oh Appleseed, my point is that every fertilizer and scavenged horticultural helper has its potential and for a lot of people grass clippings can fill the bill but there are also reasons some folks might prefer alfalfa cubes.

Around here grass clippings from other peoples piles are often foul smelling and smothering and accumulating them from your own lawn can seem a waste of time and could be considered stealing from Peter to feed Paul. Most soil doesn't supply enough N to create a lawn thick enough to truly anchor soil. Cornell recommends conservatively fertilizing lawns (with urea, of course) to reduce erosion- removing lawn clippings is equivalent to removing N and organic matter from your lawn's soil.

My point was to further the discussion about your good suggestion of grass clippings which I have scavenged for for many decades because they can, in fact, be very useful, but also a foul smelling mess that smothers soil.

I'm sorry if my response sounded combative, but my head was full of memories of soppy fermenting lawn clippings. I don't often scavenge for clippings these days.