On the lines of improving soil quality, as opposed to just chemically
fertilizing, you may wanna consider what I use. A product called Fertile
Earth Vegatable Formula contains a patented substance the company called
BioNatra, which is sopposed to be something like a bacteria food, as opposed
to simple plant food. It does not actually contain bacteria, but rather
contains substances that promote the growth of helpful soil bacterias,
fungi, and nematoads (sorta like the plakton of the dirt). It's natural and
organic. If combined with good amounts of dead plant matter on the bed you
are preparing it can make a significant boost on the soil fertility and
lowers the need for fertilizers. It is a liquid material that must be
diluted in water, and then can be sprayed using a mixer hose attachment
(don't use cheap ones they REALLY suck, ie. Wal-mart, Miracle-Gro brands),
or mixed in a watering can and poured right on the surface. I use this stuff
and I love it, You should check it out the website of the company if you are
at all interested, the stuff is non-toxic, lasts a long time (3 years in
proper storage) and is pretty cheap. The BioNatra product is so powerful in
high concentrations they use it at septic treatment plants to jump start
bacterial filtration processes. To some of you this might sound disgusting,
but if you understand soil bacterial makeup the way that Paghat seems to,
you'll understand how benificial a product like this can be...

www.fertile-earth.com

BTW I am not in any way affliated with the company, I've just done alot of
reading on thier products, and am a very satisfied customer. Check out thier
sections dealing with soil nutrients and fertility. They explain alot about
the effects of trace minerals in the soil that most chemical fertilizers
don't contain.

"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article ,
(Beecrofter) wrote:

Without having to resort to chemical fertilizers, what would be a good
way to increase N so the remaining growth cycle of the vegetables will
benefit? Reading up on it I find info that says to add 28 - 30 oz of
N
fertilizer per 100 sq. feet. But what I'm not sure about is if the
granular
stuff in the box at the garden center is most beneficial.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff
San Jose, Calif.
z 8.

fish emulshion

Stinky, stinky, stinky fishy lawns & gardens, & me without a clothespin
for my nose! Would the kelp alternative also do it in a vegetarian manner?

I fertilize much less than most folks but I also remove less (not growing
much in the way of harvested veggies, don't discard lawn clippings or
leaves). Some heavy bloomers I spot-fertilize about half as often as often
recommended, & many shrubs & trees get an annual slow-release fertilizing
in their vicnity, maybe not even always that. Everything does fine even
so. Now & then something blooms less than it might've if I'd slathered it
in fertilizer, though one rarely knows proof-positive why something blooms
a lot one year & less another year.

In some cases a nitrogen-starved soil is not all that much improved by
adding a lot of nitrogen per se, some of which literally evaporates, much
else rinses through, before doing a darned thing. And poor nitrogen levels
can be the result of other factors than amount of nitrogen added. The
health of a garden's nitrogen-fixing anaerobic & cyano bacteria is the #1
reason organic gardeners need to fertilize less than gardeners who use
chemicals. Kill the healthful bacteria, you'll never add enough nitrogen
to make up for the loss.

Other balances are also required. An expensive chemical nitrogen
fertilizer might be WAY more intense than say, oh, free spent coffee
grounds from Starbuck's "gifts to gardeners" program, but the
carbon/nitrogen ratio of the grounds is so correct, & the slow release, &
the healthful nitrogen-fixing bacterial action as the spent grounds decay,
& its moisture-holding capacity, so that in fact a soil enriched with
those coffeegrounds could end up being more quickly a better soil. So too
a corn gluten fertilizer, slow release good nitrogen balance, less
nitrogen lost to the atmosphere or wash-through (with proper bacterial
health in the soil). It's not only the nitrogen percentage in the natural
fertilizer that nitrogenizes the soil, but the protein content (of corn
gluten or coffee grounds or alfalfa) that converts to nitrogen only as fed
upon by healthful bacteria which fixes still more nitrogen from out of the
very atmosphere.

Or, an area heavily seeded with red clover for a couple seasons, then
plowed & planted, will have better nitrogen-fix than if it were done by
chemical fertilizer methods.

I think a lot of the methods that consider the health of the bacteria,
rather than the amount of nitrogen in a fertilizer liquid or powder or
granual, might not be as reliable where crops are harvested or grass
clippings carted away, which also remove nutrients galore so that
bacterial action can't keep up. But for a flower garden with very little
harvested out of it; where one uses a mulching lawn mower, & permits
fallen leaves to decay as a natural surface mulch rather than swept away;
& with a healthy worm population churning the ground naturally -- then
healthy bacterial action is going to keep a pretty good nitrogen balance
going even with much artificial feeding, or a feeding of corn gluten or
other natural but slower-release fertilizer (even just sawdust!) the
nitrogen strength of which is weak except when enhanced by bacteria.

There are natural nitrogen cycles, & without any fertilizing at all,
nitrogen levels will lower & rise on their own in a balanced garden. It's
doubtlessly easier to maintain that balance when the goal isn't to harvest
food, but many a produce grower also manages with entirely organic
methods.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

jhultman wrote in
news:1059412409.120754@sj-nntpcache-3:


Prompted by poor size on the tomatoes...

I bought a soil test kit and found that PH is 6.5 7.0 = Generally
Acceptable.

P and K were high but N is depleted. Which explains the poor fruit
sizes?

My romas are the size of a large marble, tomatillos too.
Other tomato varieties size are less than expected...

This is the first time this ground had been set up as a bed.
Previously is sat covered with plastic and tan bark for ten + years.
In preparing this 160 square ft. bed I started with
about 3 cubic yards of compost added and rototilled in. Put some lime
in the soil and tilled that in with the compost...

Without having to resort to chemical fertilizers, what would be a good
way to increase N so the remaining growth cycle of the vegetables will
benefit? Reading up on it I find info that says to add 28 - 30 oz of
N fertilizer per 100 sq. feet. But what I'm not sure about is if the
granular stuff in the box at the garden center is most beneficial.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks,

Jeff
San Jose, Calif.
z 8.


Here's a thought ... if the tomatoes really are nitrogen deficient,
wouldn't the leaves also turn yellow, starting at the bottom?

jhultman wrote:

Prompted by poor size on the tomatoes...

I bought a soil test kit and found that PH is 6.5 7.0 = Generally Acceptable.

P and K were high but N is depleted. Which explains the poor fruit sizes?

As others have mentioned, most home soil testing kits are a waste of money and
even in professionally tested samples, nitrogen levels are extremely difficult to
assess accurately. And as others have already mentioned, adding supplemental
nitrogen at this point is unlikley to do anything significant for your fruit.

If this is the first time use of this bed for many years, the soil is likely
uniformly deficient in the soil organisms which provide much of the nitrogen in
the soil. 3 yards of compost as an amendment sounds good, but a starved soil will
soak that up without effort and ask for more. Plant a cover crop this winter that
is a nitrogen fixer - fava beans, red clover, vetch - then till it in in the
spring. Continue to amend each season with composted manure as well. Rebuilding
the soil is not a quick process.

Vegetables and other small fruiting crops have high nutrient demands and benefit
from supplemental fertilizing duirng the growing season. There are lots of good
organic fertilizers you can use - balanced ones that contain all three of the
essential nutrients as well as those which are heavy on the nitrogen end like
kelp meal, alfalfa meal, bat guano, feather meal, etc. I feed my tomatoes with an
organic rose fertilizer from Dr. Earth - I always get great crops in our very
short tomato season.

pam - gardengal

"paghat" wrote in message
news
fish emulshion

Stinky, stinky, stinky fishy lawns & gardens, & me without a clothespin
for my nose!




I think it's all deodorized now. The stuff I bought is. No fishy smell. I
wonder how they remove the stink?

karen

"NewsUser" wrote in
:

jhultman wrote in
news:1059412409.120754@sj-nntpcache-3:


Prompted by poor size on the tomatoes...

I bought a soil test kit and found that PH is 6.5 7.0 = Generally
Acceptable.

P and K were high but N is depleted. Which explains the poor fruit
sizes?



My understanding is that N will always show low on soil tests. Plants
use lots of it and what's left over eventually leaches out of the root
zone (and possibly into the groundwater). Others are correct about
taking care not to add too much nitrogen to tomatoes or you'll get
lots of green and little fruit.

You can add nitrogen back to the soil by fixation or fertilization.
Legumes take atmospheric nitrogen from air in the soil and convert it
to a form plants can use. That might not help you right now though.
You can use organic fertilizers like fish emulsion or fresh manure if
you don't want to go with a processed fertilizer. Best suggestion is
to contact an extension agent for advice since they are familiar with
your climate and soils.



Oh yeah, I forgot, I read somewhere (might have been on a 10-10-10
package) that the nitrogen is highly soluble and will wash through the
soil rather quickly (while the P & K stick near the surface), so your
soil test may reflect that, depending on the depth your sample came from.

If you're looking for a quick fix, I've heard of people using cheap dry
dog food. I've never done it myself.

In article , Salty Thumb
wrote:


If you're looking for a quick fix, I've heard of people using cheap dry
dog food. I've never done it myself.

Never heard of that, but it's actually quite fascinating, as indeed it
includes many of the same rendering-plant gross-out garbagy ingredients
that are elsetimes used as fertilizers, except a half-peg higher in the
chain so not quite as leached of nutrients as would be fish or bonemeal
for gardens. And not inconceibably better as a fertilizer than as a
dogfood.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/

jhultman wrote in message news:1059412409.120754@sj-nntpcache-3...

This is the first time this ground had been set up as a bed. Previously is
sat covered with plastic and tan bark for ten + years. In preparing this 160
square ft. bed I started with
about 3 cubic yards of compost added and rototilled in. Put some lime in the
soil and tilled that in with the compost...


Covered with plastic for ten years? That soil was probably deader than
Elvis. You will just have to wait until it recovers. You can probably
try everything in the book to speed recolonization of the bed, but
they all more or less start with massive amounts of organic material
plus time. I would put more organic matter on top, since after all
that soil is probably dead down a few feet, so I am not sure that your
6 inches of compost have really remediated the bed. Earthworms like
manure and leaves, and you may want to make sure there are some
earthworms to start with. Mushrooms like wood chips, coffee grounds,
and mixed yard clippings (www.fungi.com for edible mushroom inoculants
both for mulch and the compost).

Everything above except the chips will be gone in several months.
Probably growing peas during the winter will help (you can plant them
right into the mulch, unless it is badly matted they will come up all
right... they might not like a pH of 7.0 though), as will adding some
organic high N source to boost levels over the year. Generally, no
need to lime in San Jose, specially if the soil is dead already. For
this year, foliar feeding will help you get something out of it.

Home soil test kits are crap. The reason that the Nitrogen reading is low is
because Nitrogen dosent occur naturally in the soil like Phosporus and
Potassium. It is water soluble, so any Nitrogen you put into the soil is
easily washed away with when it rains or when you water. To put it simply, the
easiest way to "increase nitrogen quickly" is to fertilize the plants.

toad

(paghat) wrote in
news
In article , Salty Thumb
wrote:


If you're looking for a quick fix, I've heard of people using cheap
dry dog food. I've never done it myself.

Never heard of that, but it's actually quite fascinating, as indeed it
includes many of the same rendering-plant gross-out garbagy
ingredients that are elsetimes used as fertilizers, except a half-peg
higher in the chain so not quite as leached of nutrients as would be
fish or bonemeal for gardens. And not inconceibably better as a
fertilizer than as a dogfood.

-paghat the ratgirl


now that I've thought about it, adding dog food directly to the soil
probably isn't a good idea ... what I have heard is people add dog food
to a nitrogen deficient *compost* pile. adding dog food directly will
probably just invite snoopy, spike, olaf, ranger rick, sammy squirrel and
ollie otter to an early breakfast buffet.

-- Salty