What is your favorite organic general fertiziler for veggies. Thanks.

Compost, first. Then kelp and composted manure.

Compost and organic matter in the soil. Build a good, healthy soil well endowed with organic matter and "fertilizers" will not be needed.

I apply rabbit manure directly to most of my stuff. If you want to spread something.. get some coffee grounds from Starbucks or wherever you can find them.

Homemade compost first.

I like using high nitrogen/protein fertilizers like fish and blood products on foliage plants with no flowers nor fruit.

I like using grain fertilizers made from seeds (i.e. corn, soybean, oats, etc.) on flowering and fruiting plants. My favorites are usually cheap pelletized animal feeds.

I also like using dry molasses in all my compost teas and mixing in my soil beds and compost piles, for extra potassium and extra beneficial microbial growth in my topsoil.

Happy Gardening!

A healthy soil is the key to good, healthy vegetable growth. Try visiting soilfoodweb.com and learning about the different ways you can achieve this.

One of the most efficient ways to achieve this, in my opinion, is using Compost Teas, as CaptainCompostAL describes. There are many different recipes and additives to consider when creating a compost tea, and they can be used in a large variety of ways. One thing you might want to look into is Alaska Humisoil - this has always worked well for me.

Hey Captain- good to see you around. How are things?

Hey CaptainCompostal

where do you find dry molasses. how do you add to your compost. Does it make it heat up more?
Garden

I can't say if it's the "best" or not, but I just use my own homemade compost, which consists primarily of well-composted horse manure, supplemented with lawn & weed clippings & vegetable kitchen scraps.

Compost and or composted manure from a herbivor of your choice.

Compost more and more, and a few yards of horse manure in the fall, plus lots of spoiled hay as mulch all year, but it takes time to get that healthy soil food web. So mean while I help some of the beds along with a dose of 5-5-5 organic fertilizer marketed by Gardener's Supply Company.

Well.. I have to stand up for my favorite pets.."Pellitized manure"? I call it rabbit manure.. Although I agree with all these folks about compost..

What kind of "Umph" are you looking for in your plants?

I may be wrong. but I would think Compost would give one the closest to "12-12-12" fertilizer.. While my rabbit manure would be more of a nitrogen booster for things like Basil, chard, cukes, squash, and applied only once or twice a season to Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant.. depending on seasonal conditions like rainfall, or drought...


The cukes I fertilized with rabbit cage debris (which is a mixture of newspapers I put in the bottom of the cages that the rabbits ripped up.., a pine animal bedding and rabbit manure... the cukes are quite farther along than the ones I started earlier but only applied coffee grounds to.. In Organic Gardening magazine articles that I have collected over the years... Rabbit Manure is one thing that can be applied directly as fertilizer with minimal problems... GO BUNNIES!!!

Even domestic rabbit manures can have disease pathogens and no manure should ever be put into a garden where food crops are being grown. If manure is to be added to food crop soil it should always be added 6 months before, because of that potential for disease pathogens, and no manure should be added for at least a year if root crops are to be grown in that soil.

Are you talking about fresh manure, or composted manure, also? Fresh manure isn't a great thing to add to already growing plants anyway. Are the pathogens more likely from home raised animals or commercial feedlot animals which are being fed antibiotics and develop more resistant pathogens?

For a liquid fertilizer, I use Fish fertilizer from Neptunes Harvest. I also occasional mix in with this sea solids from seaagri.com. This provides trace elements.

For a dry fertilizer, I mix together alfalfa meal, rock phosphate, and either greensand or kelp. The recipe comes from Steve Solomons book.

Although compost is the basis of organic gardening, I believe in what Steve Solomon writes in his book concerning fertilizers. Depending on what goes into the compost, it may or may not have every element that vegetables need. It will not hurt your soil if you use fertilizers judiciously. Been doing it for over 2 20 years and have wonderful soil and healthy vegetables