need a good fertilizer for peppers and root veggies! help!
Amy Wickett
5 years ago
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tsugajunkie z5 SE WI ♱
5 years agodaninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoRelated Discussions
organic fertilizers in a soiless mix, not good?? Help
Comments (27)Hello all, (newbie gardener here) Wanted to say THANK YOU for this thread. Although some of it went right over my head, what I did get from this discussion was perhaps a reason why my plants may not be happy in containers. Since we had an organic garden as kids, I started my gardening career trying to use mostly those methods. In past years, I've planted in a mix of about 50/50 soilless+compost. For plants that I thought would like a lighter mix, I threw in a little perlite or vermiculite (whichever I had on hand). This has been for my tiny collection of house and patio plants. Though I have tried patio containers of tomatoes and peppers planted in compost+peat+perlite. I fed with Terra Cycle liquid worm "juice". Indoors, the result has been that all goes well for about half the year. But late in the season, the soil looks dead and is very compacted. In my houseplants, I refresh it each Spring. But needless to say, the plants don't look at all happy through Winter. I'd like to improve that!!! We just moved from zone 8 to zone 6A. This year I want to try EB's on my deck. But which veggies should this beginner try? Was thinking of some small, determinate tomatoes, sweet peppers, and mulling over pole beans and maybe squash or cukes. I'm also anxious to try growing fingerling potatoes in a container of straw+compost mix b/c I hear it's easy. So what soil mix would you suggest for the houseplants. And what soil mix for the outdoor EB's? I have spent days reading here and at the EB forums and was wondering if I should use the moisture retaining crystals. I'm guessing the answer is NO from what was said above. I was frankly nervous about using chemical fertilizers. I still don't understand why slow-release fertilizer is not a good idea for the EBs. Some gardeners posted that feeding with weak compost tea, worm "juice" or fish emulsion was fine in the EBs. But most say stick with the strip of fertilizer on top. In a soilless mix, can someone suggest a brand of fertilizer to use or an NPK ratio that might work well on this year's veggie crop for this newbie? Thanks in advance for your time....See Morefertilizing your veggies
Comments (13)The distinction between fertilizing methods for in-ground/large raised beds vs. container/sterile conditions was a real a-ha moment for me in gardening. I follow the steps others have said above - compost, compost tea, seaweed & fish, cheap or free organic amendments - but here in SoCal I'm growing 11+ months out of the year in some beds, so I only have the periods where I'm switching crops to add sub-soil amendments or improve my tilth and it needs to be a substantial input, I've learned. I germinate my seedlings in flats and then like to transplant them into 24" of fluffy, highly-enriched soil that is about 1/3 native mineral soil, 1/2 fully composted organic matter (from a variety of plant types) and 1/10 sand and solid fertilizer amendments (bone, blood meal, worm castings, ...). In the last year, I've got in down to about a 10 day switchover, as I like to let the disturbed soil "settle" a bit before I put tender transplant roots into them, here's what that looked like this weekend: Here's how it looked last July, with the soils less improved than now and the lens distance hiding the creeping blight slowing my cherry tomatoes' growth & heath. So I'm expecting great things this year (always a great way to have nature humble me in some new, painful way)....See MoreHigh vs. Low Fertilizer Veggies
Comments (11)Jim, I grow my parsnips in a remote site that has had no outside input of nitrogen in six years. By most any standard, it is a sandy soil of low native fertility. The parsnip roots are often huge - even ridiculous. Beet roots grow large there also. So it would seem that only quite low levels of N are needed for those. I grew some large onions there in the first couple years after adding truck-loads of compost, but since then they've been pretty consistently smallish. But leaf-mustard, which one might expect to need high levels of N to thrive, grows large and lusty there. So I question whether all the leaf-crops need lots of fertilizer. Heading cabbage, broccoli and so on, yes, but a lot of the leafy plants are much less demanding. My potato yields get worse every year. The best crops were in the first two years, even before the compost introduction. They did not do well in the rich compost - no surprise, tons of scab. They don't produce well anywhere in that garden now. I've read that potatoes are a good crop for new land, and my experience seems to bear that out. I'm going to find some new locations one way or another....See MoreHelp with fertilizing schedule for veggie garden
Comments (2)Frequent applications of fertilizers is a hold over from the "conventional", or synthetic fertilizer, gardening concept where those fertilizers are highly water soluble and flow out of the soil and into the ground water as pollution and are not available to the plants growing there. If you get your soil inot a good healthy condition, well endowed with organic matter so the nutrient levels are not so readily availlable the Soil Food Web will convert the nutrients in that organic matter into the foods your plants need when they need it, as they need without the need to reapply "fertilizers" every so often. That is the objective of an organic gardener/farmer. When first starting, and before you get your soil into that good healthy condition you may need to apply a balanced, organic fertilizer which can be difficult to find, but whatever is used the label directions should be followed, closely....See Moredaninthedirt (USDA 9a, HZ9, CentTX, Sunset z30, Cfa)
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agomarymd7
5 years agoedweather USDA 9a, HZ 9, Sunset 28
5 years agogardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
5 years agostevie
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agogardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agostevie
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoedweather USDA 9a, HZ 9, Sunset 28
5 years agoSeysonn_ 8a-NC/HZ-7
5 years agolast modified: 5 years ago
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gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)