Ignoramus8233 wrote in
:

On 2008-05-27, TomC wrote:
zxcvbob wrote in
:

Ignoramus7406 wrote:
On 2008-05-26, zxcvbob wrote:
Ignoramus22089 wrote:
On 2008-05-26, zxcvbob wrote:
Ignoramus22089 wrote:
I was a little turned off by the prices of fertilisers sold for
gardens (at home depot), but I have a bag of 10-10-10
fertilizer for lawns, the sort that does not have any
herbicides (ie, not a weed and feed type, just feed).

Would you say that this is approproate for garden with tomatoes
and peppers and so on.

Thanks

Yes it's fine. (10-20-10 or 12-24-12 is more traditional for
vegetables) Don't use much or you'll drive the earthworms away.
I used 1 tbsp per bush, spread around evenly with 1 ft radius.


That should be fine. Last year, my peppers and tomatoes weren't
doing very well, except for the one tomato that was next to the
compost pile.
So I gave them a little fertilizer and they took off. This
year, I
bought a pick-up load of compost and tilled it in, along with my
little bit of compost. The purchased compost didn't look very
rich (and it doesn't hold much moisture), so I'll probably have to
add nitrogen this year, but going to use it sparingly.

I used shredded paper for a mulch around my peppers last year
(junk mail, statements, and bills) and the worms loved it. I had
to keep replenishing it as they pulled it down in the ground.
That may even have been part of the problem as the decomposing
paper tied up the nitrogen.


I always used to use chicken poop for fertilizer, which worked
great, but due to neighbors snitching the chickens had to be eaten.

Has anyone tried composting lawn grass?

Maybe I should save up a pile of it from my lawnmower, and let it
rot for a year or something?



Lawn clipping make good compost, but you'll need to mix shredded
newspaper with them to get it to work. I prefer to leave the lawn
clippings on the lawn to recycle the nutrients in-place, but if I
let the grass get too long, I bag the clippings (or rake them if it
was *really* long) and compost 'em.

Better still, use the grass clippings as a mulch around plants to
retain moisture and keep the weeds down. After the season, work the
the clippings into the soil. Great for the worms and the soil.

This seems like a good idea, can you clarify, do you mean to use them
as mulch around food plants like tomatoes?

How thick layer would you use?


2-3" layer around the plants; enough to keep weeds out and moisture in.
Leave about 2" open around the plant stems so they don't rot and bugs
won't have a place to hide and eat away at the stems.