fertilizing

[solar grass]

I am interested in how folks fertilize their herbs and vegetables. I have potted herbs - basil, rosemary, mint, chives, dill, cat-mint, as well as lettuce, tomatoes, bell pepper, chilli, spinach...

I would like to know how to fertilize and how often.

I'm thinking of using household ingredients: egg shells for calcium, aquarium water for nitrogen, urine, milk and coffee grounds are all other ingredients that I have readily on hand.

However, I'm not sure how often I should fertilize and in what combination. Obviously some plants like the tomatoes will need more, than say the rosemary. Difficult!

I cannot make a compost heap or have a wormery where I live, so I've gotta do the best I can with what's at hand, and I want to keep it organic.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

[rainbowgardener]

Well to start with, the herbs really don't need to be fertilized at all if they are in the ground. Whatever nutrients are in the soil is enough, they are adapted to poor soil.

You didn't say where you are. Most parts of the US it is getting too late for lettuce and spinach, which are cool weather crops and really don't do well once it gets hot. They can be planted again in the fall.

I don't understand why you couldn't compost or have a worm bin. I don't have a worm bin going right now, but I did one one recent winter and kept it indoors all winter. No smell or problems with it being indoors. Who could tell you you can't have a 20" x 30" plastic container inside your house?

Another alternative is trench composting. Dig a trench in your garden, empty your kitchen scraps bucket into it and cover it over with several inches of soil. Voila, composting, with no pile.

Keep your garden well mulched. Not only does it suppress weeds and conserve moisture, but the mulch breaks down to feed the garden.

All the fertilizing I do is compost and mulch.

[digitS']

I do the trench composting, fairly much just as described by RainbowGardener. I dig the compost out of the trench later but the decomposition takes place mostly underground. Or, I do a composting-in-place and the trench is actually a planting bed that can be used the following season, altho' sometimes I will plant fall greens on that bed. And, I used to travel around the garden with my posthole digger and a bucket of kitchen scraps .

I used fish emulsion of some of the greens in the garden just yesterday. Generally, I don't do much of that since the greens are out of the garden so quickly that they just make use of the plant nutrients in the soil.

I'll also buy organic fertilizer by the bag and use it most anywhere. I don't do much container gardening but if the plant starts are running a little late in being set out - a half-teaspoon per plant of that dry fertilizer works fine. I've used the fish emulsion for the same purpose and even tried it for bottom watering the flats last year but I really wasn't sure how to dilute it when used that way.

My fertilizing schedule in the garden is to side dress or use the emulsion about once a month if the plants will remain most of the following month. That means I'm planning to fertilize something like sweet corn twice even tho' the soil was prepped before the seed was sown.

My next fertilizing tasks will be getting some fish emulsion on the leeks since I finally got the weeds out of them! Then, it will be about time to put a little dry fertilizer down and cover it with compost to act as a mulch for the potatoes. Both of these, the potatoes & the leeks, have been in the garden for well over a month but the weather has been cool and they haven't made a lot of growth.

Steve