The Great Fertilizer Debate! Does anything really beat....

[TomatoDon]

Ray...on my recent road trip I met a guy in south Mississippi, a true eccentric, that had some interesting ideas on organic gardening. His whole yard was a garden. He told me about a company, NITRON, over in Arkansas that had some interesting products. The web site might be of interest to others here.

http://www.nitron.com/

DS

[rnewste]

Don,

The 'Tainers are doing great this year.



I hope you were able to buy the "Old" tomato-tone (4-7-10) as it is outperforming the "New" Tomato-tone in my personal trials. If you can't get the Old stuff, the New formulation will work well, but you need to increase the dose by 50%, to equal the Old potency.

Ray

[TomatoDon]

Ray, the T-Tone I got this week-end says 3-4-6. I got some last year also that might be the other formula. This I have here says it's a 4 pound bag, and there is an 08 date. Is that the old or the new you refer to?

Ray, you always have such nice looking plants...a real first class operation. I'm curious...if you have a soil thermometer, can you check to see what the soil temp is in ground next to the 'tainers, and then the soil temp at the same depth in the 'tainers? I've been curious about that. And I want to go back through some old posts you did about the irrigation system you perfected last year.

Thanks Ray!

DS

[rnewste]

Don,

Yep, you have the "New" Tomato-tone. A good product - - but in my trials, not as effective as the Old Tomato-tone on a cost per pound basis.

I'll make off with Dear Wife's digital oven thermometer tomorrow, and run the temp tests as you request.

Ray

[TomatoDon]

Be careful Ray. That might make her temperature rise also.

DS
(I have some more T-Tone at the Cabin, I'll check to see what that formula is.)

[rnewste]

Don,

What I have (strangely) found to work really well is mixing a 5 pound bag of the Old Tomato-tone, with a 4 pound bag of the new Tomato-tone. I am seeing the "benefits" of both formulations when combined in this manner. Go figure!!

Ray

[dice]

I like using alfalfa, too. I mix it into the compost or horse
manure in holes under seedlings, put it on top of the soil
under a layer of manure or compost (and leaves), add
a handful when making compost tea, mix it into mulch,
add it to the compost pile, just spread it over a bed and
turn it under, and so on.

[mdvpc]

Dice-I picked up a bag of alfalfa pellets-it horse feed. Am using it for the first time. What are you using?

[velikipop]

Having tried various suggestions for fertilizer over the last few years with mixed success, this year I have tried the no till method mentioned by Dice. Last fall I covered my tomato patch with leaves, straw and manure. In the spring this was lightly turned mixing it with the top two inches of soil. At planting time each seedling received a handful of mycorrihizae in the hole.
Once the plants were established I spread some chicken manure pellets around the plants. So far this years plants look great, lots of fruit, very little disease and no BER yet. For the rest of the garden I still use a homemade organic fertilizer of cottonseed meal, alfalfa, kelp meal, bone meal and lime. The plants as well as the eartworms love it.

Alex

[dice]

I have used both bales and bags of alfalfa pellets from
a feed store. The bale seemed like a good deal for
the money on sheer bulk, and the long stems in it are
not a problem when spreading it over the top of a no-till
bed or composting it. I have shredded a bale before
using it, too, before turning it under, although I prefer
to avoid doing that. (If I just spread out a bale over a bed,
rain seems to wash the fine green leafy matter down
through the stems well enough that things growing there
green up quickly.)

The pellets are more convenient to work with if adding
them to container mix, mixing them into compost or
manure in a hole under seedlings, making plant tea
with them, and so on. (That is likely why just spreading
a bale out on top of a bed and letting rain wash through
it works: if you have enough rain that it stays wet for a
few days, it is effectively washing alfalfa tea down into
the soil.)

[habitat_gardener]

I've been experimenting with alfalfa pellets this year, mostly with the extra plants I either planted late into less-sunny or more-crowded areas of the garden, and with tomatoes in bottomless containers.

We don't have feed stores around here, but if you're in an urban/suburban area, you might be able to find bags of alfalfa pellets in pet stores that sell supplies for rabbits or horses.

Otherwise, I feed my tomato plants with homemade compost (topped with ramial wood chip mulch), occasionally supplemented with compost teas made from comfrey, or with a little liquid seaweed.

[velikipop]

Dice,

When you used the bales of alfalfa did you get any new seeds of alfalfa sprouting? My community garden has a bizzare policy against the use of alfalfa in the dry grass form but I can sow it as a winter crop!!!Apparently they are concerned that the seeds will spread from the dry bales to other plots.

Habitat-Gardener,

Can you explain how you make tea from comfrey? Iwould love to try try it because I have quite a bit of it growing and I only put it in the compost.

Thanks,

Alex

[dice]

[alfalfa]

No, I did not have alfalfa sprouting from either the bales
or the pellets. (I did have wheat sprouting from a bale of
straw this spring, though; not much of it, but there was
some.) Apparently a lot of the alfalfa for bales is mowed
long before it sets seed. A lot of places get more than one
mowing a year out of it. Looking at hay bales in the
farm+garden section of the for sale listings on Craig's List,
I often see descriptions like "first cut", "second cut", and
so on in the listings for bales of alfalfa.

Alfalfa is characterized by "autotoxicity" (Wikipedia), meaning
that it is difficult for its own seeds to sprout in stands of
growing alfalfa. I do not know whether that extends to alfalfa
seeds having a difficult time sprouting in dry, harvested alfalfa
as well.

[velikipop]

Thanks for that info Dice.

Alex

[dice]

The rule against spreading bales of alfalfa at the community
garden might be intended to avoid disease issues rather than
seed issues. It is possible that bales of alfalfa could bring in
spores of soil diseases from wherever the alfalfa was grown.
(Alfalfa can get verticillium wilt, but it is a different strain
of the fungus than those that attack tomatoes and potatoes.
It could carry spores of other diseases, though, even if it is
immune to those diseases itself.)

I figure that there are so many ways for my plants to get
diseases that any risk from spreading alfalfa around on
the beds or mixing it into soil, etc, is a drop in the bucket
in the overall disease risk exposure.