Chicken Manure or fish meal are high in nitrogen but will also be pricey.

Just lawn fertilizer is mostly high nitrogen fertilizer. Sure you need organic? Urea is great, but it's powerful -- something like 40-0-0, and it releases everything at once. BOOM! Not the best if you have plants already growing. Urea is also not "organic", in that it is artificially produced (though it can be naturally produced).

Are those plants in the ground right now? If so, how do they look? Did you mix any fertilizer into the soil when planting? Too much nitrogen at once could be a bad thing and possibly invite aphids to the new growth. I am not sure that the garlic would need a lot of nitrogen either.

If your plants look okay, I would definitely start slow, say with your alfalfa tea or perhaps some dilute fish emulsion watered in.

The 21-0-0 recommendation was to do something about nitrogen *now*. As Dave says, organic fertilizers supply nitrogen gradually. They won't fix it now. They're an investment in future nitrogen. Fresh or quickly dried manures are basically saturated in urea, so they'll add nitrogen fast, and possibly burn plants in the process. I still think the cheapest and safest way to fix nitrogen content in soil on a short time scale is with slow release lawn fertilizer. Ammonium nitrate is a chemical that actually forms naturally in compost by nitrifying bacteria, but you'd rather have a lot more of it. So salting the soil with ammonium nitrate lawn fertilizer produced artificially with the Haber process will help.

The plants are in the ground now-many wintered over, like kale, cabbages, spinach. They look good-the kale looked small to me. i used fish emulsion a few times over the past 6 weeks and applied blood meal once-1/4 cup side dressed on each kale and cabbage that wintered over. When I planted new ones I worked in 1/4 cup blood meal into the hole before planting. I think i will try The teas and fish emulsion every few weeks for The heavy feeders. The kale took a growth spurt after the blood meal which was followed by a nice rain. I will try some of the other things suggested too. I am a bit afraid of the urea. No, i am not stuck on organic, I just prefer it. But if there are non organic options I'm open minded:-) thanks for all the suggestions.

If organic isn't required then I agree with Dan - a garden wide application of plain old lawn fertilizer is your best bet. If you are comfortable with using blood meal then using urea is even safer. Blood meal easily burns.

Keep in mind your over-wintered brassicas are going to bolt anyway so nutrient management for them isn't a high priority.

Dave

Most soil tests do not test for N as it is way too variable based on a number of environmental factors. When were the samples taken and the test done?

tj

I am curious why is urea safer than blood meal? Since plants are in ground can I just side dress everything with appropriate lawn fertilizer? Should I skip the Soil where root crops will go-radish, parsnips, rutabaga, onion. I was puzzled why they would recommend 21-0-0 since they don't test N. Is there anything I could look for on plants to indicate N is needed-yellowing, pale colors, anything?

They recommended 21-0-0 when they don't test nitrogen? But maybe they saw some chemical overabundance that ties up nitrogen? I'd be careful. You might call the people who did the test and ask. As noted, nitrogen is really variable, and a bed that has been well amended with organic material over the years really shouldn't need any.

I'm not sure about risks in urea versus blood meal, though Dave is the expert. Urea very quickly gives up it's nitrogen. When a dog pees on your lawn, that's what kills the grass. I know that blood meal contains a lot of nitrogen, as a protein. Does it give it up quickly? I guess I've heard you can get burn from blood meal as well.

If you decide that you really need nitrogen, and want to use lawn fertilizer, just look for "slow release". That will start releasing immediately, but it will keep doing so for many months. It's about $.30/lb. About a third that of blood meal. The risk of nitrogen burn is low.

The recommendation undoubtedly gave an amount of 21-0-0 and either stated or had a footnote indicating the area for the recommendation; likely it was 100 sq. ft Urea is typically 44-0-0 so use half the rate as recommended. Blood meal is typically 13-1-1 so use twice the recommended rate. It's that easy.

Likely on the soil test form you were given a choice of crops, you choice was likely "General vegetables" and the nitrogen recommendation was based very vaguely on that information. If you added anything containing nitrogen since early spring you'll need to account for it in general terms. It also would not hurt to sidedress additional increasing increments of nitrogen as the crop growth progresses. Greens will be greener, cabbage heads will be larger.

If you are not religously organic, You might want to consider a standard of the early 20 century, Chilean nitrate ( Nitrate of Soda). It is 16-0-0 as opposed to 12-0-0 of blood meal. Water soluble and fast acting. Pricey these days tho.