Thick Question: Feeding & Fertilisers!

SteveClarkson_2

Hello all,

(for ramble-skipping - please jump to my "Questions" heading!)

Rambling
I'm a new gardener, having got my first house a few years ago, I was very excited to get my first crop of runner beans when I first got the garden sorted.
Last year, I branched out into potatoes and peas (all very successful I'm proud to say!).

This year - I'm going mad... absolutely bonkers. I'm looking at 12 different varieties of vegetables (for anyone who cares: broccoli, sprouts, cauliflower, runner beans, peas, rhubarb, beetroot, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers (x2 varieties)). Phew!

SO - the reason for this is a book my mum got me for christmas, all about vegetable gardening - it's really good... but does still assume you know something about gardening. Which I don't.

I've never fed or fertilised anything - and it's confusing me.
My book says that growing all these things in containers on a patio (don't have a big garden) is fine, but that compost loses all it's goodness after a month or so, so feeding is important for good crops.
End of rambling...

Questions
I've been having a look on my seed-suppliers website, and they do lots of fertilisers, but do I need one specifically for vegetables? Will the normal plant ones kill me when I eat a radioactive carrot?

I have a wormery, which produces (pardon my language) Worm Pee - which I believe is good for plants when watered down - can I use this instead of expensive fertiliser?

Please don't assume I know anything... I work in IT, and all these living plant thingy's scare the hell out of me... but I LOVE to see them grow!


THANK YOU!

A._Badger

SteveClarkson wrote: »

Hello all,

(for ramble-skipping - please jump to my "Questions" heading!)

Rambling
I'm a new gardener, having got my first house a few years ago, I was very excited to get my first crop of runner beans when I first got the garden sorted.
Last year, I branched out into potatoes and peas (all very successful I'm proud to say!).

This year - I'm going mad... absolutely bonkers. I'm looking at 12 different varieties of vegetables (for anyone who cares: broccoli, sprouts, cauliflower, runner beans, peas, rhubarb, beetroot, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers (x2 varieties)). Phew!

SO - the reason for this is a book my mum got me for christmas, all about vegetable gardening - it's really good... but does still assume you know something about gardening. Which I don't.

I've never fed or fertilised anything - and it's confusing me.
My book says that growing all these things in containers on a patio (don't have a big garden) is fine, but that compost loses all it's goodness after a month or so, so feeding is important for good crops.
End of rambling...

Questions
I've been having a look on my seed-suppliers website, and they do lots of fertilisers, but do I need one specifically for vegetables? Will the normal plant ones kill me when I eat a radioactive carrot?

I have a wormery, which produces (pardon my language) Worm Pee - which I believe is good for plants when watered down - can I use this instead of expensive fertiliser?

Please don't assume I know anything... I work in IT, and all these living plant thingy's scare the hell out of me... but I LOVE to see them grow!


THANK YOU!

A book could be written on this subject - and many have been. If you want to get into the really nerdy side of gardening, and don't have any fixations about the distinctions between 'organic' and 'chemical' fertlisers (they are all made of chemicals) you could drive yourself barmy wondering which of the dozens of individual types to use for each crop. That way lies madness - ask any exhibition grower!

Fortunately, most of what you need to know is far simpler than whether it is worth dosing your prize onions with XZY in the second week of May.

Leaving aside water and that other evil chemical, CO2, what plants really crave are three components - Nitrogen (N) which makes leaves and stems, Phosphate (P) which builds roots and Potassium (aka Potash - K) which develops flowers and fruits and also hardens stems.

These are known (surprise!) as N, P and K.

There are also many micronutrients which plants need - like copper, boron, magnesium, manganese... I could go on.

For the most part, well tended soil will be OK for the mircos (this isn't, however, an absolute rule - you can get deficiencies, not least if you get the acid/alkaline balance wrong, but let's worry about that some other time).

Generally speaking, crops growing in open soil, need a good, healthy supply of the three basics - NPK. They also need a lot of humus, which you can supply in the form of compost or well rotted manure. Don't assume packets are enough. They aren't. You need to add one or other (or both) types of bulky matter to your soil in addition what comes out of a packet.

However good stuff compost is, it is relatively light in NPK and so, particularly for heavy-feeding crops like vegetables and fruit, you need to add these.

You could (and many do) get clever here and make sure your brassicas (cabbages, cauliflowers and the like) get special high nitrogen feeds, such as ammonium sulphate or dried blood, and that your potatoes get a good, high potash feed, like sulphate of potash, but, providing your soil is in good heart (because you have added plenty of compost) you will do perfectly well using a general purpose fertiliser (called 'balanced' although they rarely are) such as Growmore, blood, fish and bone, or peletted chicken manure.

Whatever the hippies like to claim, they all work well. Choose 'organic' or 'chemical' depending on your prejudices. I happen to like BFB (it's longer lasting) but so do the local foxes, so Growmore is more common in Badger acres.

Once you move away from growing in real the soil, however, it gets more complicated. Potting composts are soon depleted and so you will need to replenish not just the basic three elements - NPK - but also the micronutrients. This is best done with a liquid feed. There are various home-brews people swear by (sheep droppings stewed in a bag, comfrey liquid, the run-off from wormeries) but you could, just as well, us a powder-based fertiliser, such as dear old Phostrogen, Chempak No 4, or one of the cheap clones sold by the likes of Wilkinsons.

A final word about packets. By law, the proportions of N,P and K must be shown on the box and they are given in a ratio. So, for example, one saying it has '10:10:27' tells you it is higher in K (Potash) and has equal parts of the first two - N and P.

For growing in containers. assume you will need the micronutrients as well so, by all means, use 'worm pee' if you think it is likely to contain everything your plants need. Or buy a Phostrogen clone from Wilkinsons or Tesco, making sure, in addition to N,P and K, it has the micros, too.

And no, finally, there is no difference between fertilisers for flowers and vegetables. If you think about it - how could there be?

In short, you can do the lot with two products. I'd buy a packet of liquid feed like Phostrogen and a box of either Growmore or blood, fish and bone. More than that and you are adding complexity for the fun of it.

I'm bound to have forgotten lots so please ask if I've made it look more complex than it really is.

foxgloves

Hi, yes, you do find that container grown veg needs feeding or as the plants get big, they exhaust the supplies of food already in the compost. We tend to use our worm liquid on shallots, onion, garlic & runner beans, then everything else gets diluted tomato feed as soon as it's started to fruit (tomatoes, chillies, aubergines, cucumbers, peppers, etc) Also, when we dig over the veg beds at the start of the year, we rake in some of those organic chicken manure pellets. You buy them in a big bucket & just chuck a handful or two on and rake them in. The other thing we are never without is a bottle of Magicrop seaweed extract (if you can get the big square container, I think it works out cheaper). This is a general tonic for plants particularly if they are looking a bit on the peeky side & I've brought dodgy looking dwarf beans (even one that was held together with sellotape!!) back from the dead with this. You can water it on dilute, or spray a solution straight onto the leaves. I also use it if I've transplanted vegetable seedlings & they are looking like they're struggling, so that's good stuff to have too & I recommend it. For very hungry plants grown in containers, such as squashes & courgettes, we grow them planted on top of the compost bins so that they get their roots down and find plenty of nutrients in there. Hope this helps. Our garden no longer under 10cms of snow so managed to get out there yesterday & do some clearing, can't wait to get going now!

Jack's_mummy

Almost everything gets a weekly dose of tomato food in my garden!

choille

I make a comfrey brew & add that in the growing season.

If you wee in a bucket, you can dilute that 1:20 also.

You get good green pellet fertilizer that you scatter on. Growmore do big buckets of them.

Lotus-eater

A._Badger wrote: »

A book <snip>I've made it look more complex than it really is.

I understood all that and I still had to read it twice

As a hippy, I would say that's a good post.

SteveClarkson_2

Thanks everyone - especially A. Badger! Very helpful!

I sent a quick e-mail off to the people I buy my seeds from today, and they replied just saying that tomato fertiliser is good, as it contains lots of potash... thanks to Badger's explaination, I now know what on Earth they're on about!

I forgot to mention, as well as copious amounts of worm pee - I also have VERY copious amounts of chicken poop - I have always been led to believe this is far too potent for use as fertiliser, so end up binning it every week :eek:

If there is some way I can use the huge amount of excrement they deposit all over my garden, that would be SPLENDID! Do I have to do anything to it? Mix it in with anything? Or just mix it in with the compost? What sort of quantities?


Thanks again!

A._Badger

That wasn't a bad reply from your seed suppliers. For most gardeners, what they are after is flowering and fruiting - both of which benefit from potash. That said, it won't do a lot for your cabbages, lettuces and other predominantly leafy crops - so it pays to know a bit more about individual nutrient requirements than the 'tomato feed for everything' rubric suggests.

Chicken manure, meanwhile, is very fierce and if you apply it soon after it has been deposited, it will burn your plants. Put it on the compost heap, instead, where it will aid rapid decomposition and greatly enhance the value of the mixture.

For heaven's sake don't throw it away - it's worth almost as much as the eggs!

It doesn't taste as nice though, I admit.

Lotus-eater

The only plant I am aware you can use neat chicken manure on is comfrey.

For everything else, add it to your compost heap and leave it there for a year, or longer.

foxgloves

Nettles also make a good stinky tea when left to stew in water, tho' I don't know if the nutrient value is as rich as comfrey. When I last visited Garden Organic at Ryton, there were various suggestions demonstrating how to use comfrey. One looked a good practical idea (tho' haven't got round to trying it yet). They had fixed a piece of plastic drainpipe to a shed wall and fixed a simple tap attachment (like on a water butt) at the bottom of it. They were cutting their comfrey and stuffing it into the pipe from the top end, then holding it down with an empty plastic pop bottle full of water (this acted as a pusher as well as a bung). The comfrey was just topped up regularly & as it rotted, they were collecting the concentrated gunk from the tap at the bottom & diluting it before use. It really did look like a good low-tech gadget & we've always intended to try & make one ourselves. Just need someone to be throwing away a piece of drainpipe now as I think I've become too stingy since getting on top ot the household finances actually to buy one!

Megansmum

A Badgers answer was a great help to me too, can i just add a quick question please?

I have blueberry plants - what should i add to that to improve the ericaceaus compost? Anything/nothing???

Thanks