Garden progress.

[sleuth]

I have updated pictures of our new raised bed gardens at our FB page. You don't need an account to view at this link.

I am interested in your feedback and critiques.

Additionally, we brought in all that soil from a local farm down in the river bottoms in Milford, Ohio. The dirt seems to be very fine and rich, yet I am thinking I should be seeing more rapid growth when I look at some of my neighbor's gardens who have really bad soil. I don't know if they are using fertilizers, but I'd like to get recommendations for good safe-to-consume fertilizers. My compost heap is too young to be of much use right now.

I can get manure but my hectic schedule doesn't really give me time to go shovel someone's pile into my truck. Need something I can pick up and go which won't break the bank.

 

[Joel_BC]

Hi. Your pics of your raised beds look pretty good. Still, I understand your desire to improve them.

Probably, as you say, the soil you brought in is basically pretty good. If it's got a good balance to the mineral portion (i.e., it's fairly "loamy"), then often the soil can benefit from amendments to increase the level of organic matter and plant nutirents that tend to get depeleted rapidly.

Here's some things that we do in our gardens. We've used composted horse and cattle manure, and straw mulch to enhance the basically sand & silt mineral soil that we have here. (We use cover crops in late fall and over winter, which are easier and more natural to use, maybe, in plot-type gardens, rather than enclosed raised beds.) You say you've got compost in the works. That's good, we also build and use compost (from kitchen & cornstalk waste). Often I dig or scratch-in some gypsum into the soil, as a source of calcium that does not alkalinize the soil.

Nitrogen is usually one of the elements most needed by garden soils. Compost and composted manures, though sometimes high in worm content, tend to be pretty low in nitrogen by time you apply them. Bagged alfalfa meal, in our experience, is fairly high in nitrogen. So we use it, as it also contains a lot of other useful natural elements. Again, you can add it to your soil and dig or scratch it under the surface.

Some people add other specifically N-heavy "fertilizers", such as feather meal. I know some of the people who follow "biological agriculture" (a la Acres USA) feel it's okay to use an N source like artificial (manufactured) urea - since they say it's the identical molecule that's produced by animal kidneys, and is digested in the soil by natural soil bacteria (just as natural urea is). You can buy that at ag supply stores.

The things I describe are what we do routinely, and we have success. You may want to get some samples of your soil tested... some people believe that's the best way to go.

 

[sleuth]

Thanks for the tips Joel. One thing I am trying to figure out is if there is a "one and done" solution or at least an "apply at this time regularly" solution for the entire garden. I want to keep it simple. I work 40-50 hours a week at my real job and have another 10-15 hours a week of commuting on top of that. Couple that with being a husband and dad of 3 and my time on working my hobby farm is relegated to weekends and maybe 1 weeknight a week if I'm lucky.

I've been reading about all the vegetables in my garden and fertilization methods, etc. on Mother Earth News and to be honest, it seems like every vegetable thrives best in slightly different levels of pH in the soil, and there are least a dozen or so different "organic" methods of fertilization, all at different times of the season, and different times of the plant's development, and of course only a handful are cheap. It would take a full-time job to give my garden that level of attention.

I'm trying to keep it simple. Are there 1 or 2 methods of inexpensive fertilization that I can do once, twice, maybe 3 times a year, or at most once a month or so, that will work for all or nearly all of the vegetables in my garden?

This is only my 2nd year doing this so I'm hoping someone will jump up and say, "It's really quite easy and simple!"

 

[Denim Deb]

Quite truthfully, I don't worry all that much about fertilization. I put a combination of manures in the garden in the fall, cover it w/leaves, straw, etc and let it go. And, I get a good harvest. I'm all for the K.I.S.S. method myself. I mulch around the plants-which cuts down on the weeding and watering. There have been times I haven't had enough mulch for the whole garden and I can see a difference.

 

[Joel_BC]

Quite truthfully, I don't worry all that much about fertilization. I put a combination of manures in the garden in the fall, cover it w/leaves, straw, etc and let it go. And, I get a good harvest. I'm all for the K.I.S.S. method myself. I mulch around the plants-which cuts down on the weeding and watering. There have been times I haven't had enough mulch for the whole garden and I can see a difference.

Good advice. I was thinking something similar when I saw your second post, Sleuth. Amending in the fall works out well - for all the stable nutrients and constituents.

So your phosphorous and potassium and calcium and micronutrients can go in in the fall, if you want. Nitrogen is the least stable plant nutrient needed by crops, from what I understand. Hence, ag books on best practices generally recommend adding nitrogen in the spring around planting time. Of course, too much will burn plants, though "organic" sources are much easier to manage in this respect than pure artificial ag chemicals. But plants do need enough N to be there in spring, to get off to a strong start.

 

[moolie]

If you are looking for a "magic bullet", it's going to be tough to find one--gardening takes work and constant care.

That said, I don't do much extra to my gardens and most veggies do well each year. My soil is heavy alkaline clay, so my raised beds are filled with compost that I buy by the yard at the start of each growing season because my small heap will never be enough to take care of my gardens.

I also dig in purchased composted sheep manure and "sea soil" (made from composted seaweed and shredded evergreen tree bark) on each garden at the start of the growing season (if I still lived on the coast I would be collecting and composting my own seaweed off the beaches for my gardens).

Some veggies like a little more tlc, so I buy organic tomato fertilizer spikes and shove those into the soil around my tomato and pepper plants.

Companion planting is huge for me, I find that it is as important (or more so) to keep plants that don't like each other away from each other as it is to keep plants that like each other together.

And I water deeply and not too often, but watch the soil moisture when it is extra hot in case things are drying out. Mulch, or intensive planting, really helps here--and I really like my soaker hoses because they stay in place and I just turn on the water.

 

[baymule]

Your garden looks real nice. There is no one size fits all, we all have our methods and what works for you might not work for me. It is great to pool our ideas, so you can pick out what might apply. I have gardened for the past 8 years, often working long hours like you are. Sometimes it got a little weedy due to time issues. I finally mulched with paper feed sacks and newspapers to keep the weeds down. That worked for me.

I always put a spoon of epsom salts in the hole when planting tomatoes. Also, if your plants need iron, the easiest way to apply is to soak fine steel wool in water for several days and use the rusty water to apply to the plants. They cannot absorb it without sulphur and it only takes tiny amount of sulphur. You can probably google it for a better explanation than what I have given.