I finally, finally, finally went out and bought fertilizer for the soil. All season I have been planting my starts and seeds with a helping of our homemade vermiculture compost, but I haven't been adding anything to the soil but that. And, what do you know, I've had a lot of crappy and disappointing plants. I bought everything to make Complete Organic Fertilizer as made popular by Steve Solomon. He wrote the bible on Maritime Northwest vegetable gardening, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades. Every gardener in these parts knows him and has read his book.
I mixed up a big batch of the COF, 4 parts seed meal, 1 part lime, 1 part kelp meal and 1 part bone meal and put it in an old coffee can. Then I kept my leftovers of each ingredient in separate tins so I can amend on a per plant basis as well.
For example, my beets got about an inch or two high and then kind of stopped growing. I couldn't figure out what was going on; beets are supposed to be easy to grow. Well, as it turns out beets crave potassium and don't do well with a lot of nitrogen. I planted the beets in the bed where we did a clover and fava bean cover crop last winter, which adds heaps of nitrogen to the soil, something that most plants love. So, I side dressed the beets that were there with some COF and gave some to the new seeds I planted for winter beets. I'm also going to add a little extra kelp meal for those guys, as kelp is high in potassium, and hope that it helps even out the high nitrogen in the soil.
There is so much to learn and I'm getting there little by little. I'll report back with (hopefully good) news of the resurgence of beets after their potassium fix.
I mixed up a big batch of the COF, 4 parts seed meal, 1 part lime, 1 part kelp meal and 1 part bone meal and put it in an old coffee can. Then I kept my leftovers of each ingredient in separate tins so I can amend on a per plant basis as well.
For example, my beets got about an inch or two high and then kind of stopped growing. I couldn't figure out what was going on; beets are supposed to be easy to grow. Well, as it turns out beets crave potassium and don't do well with a lot of nitrogen. I planted the beets in the bed where we did a clover and fava bean cover crop last winter, which adds heaps of nitrogen to the soil, something that most plants love. So, I side dressed the beets that were there with some COF and gave some to the new seeds I planted for winter beets. I'm also going to add a little extra kelp meal for those guys, as kelp is high in potassium, and hope that it helps even out the high nitrogen in the soil.
There is so much to learn and I'm getting there little by little. I'll report back with (hopefully good) news of the resurgence of beets after their potassium fix.
I need to learn more about fertilizer too. I used compost and worm castings indiscriminately, I never bothered to target certain types of fertilizer for certain purposes. I'll be interested to read more about how it goes for you.
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