jasonvanorder
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Location: West Michigan zone 6a

New soil. Best fertilizer.

So this coming spring I'm going to be ordering some soil to fill the new beds. I'm hoping to get a 50/50 compost soil mix but it depends on the cost. If I have to go with straight soil what would be the best fertilizer to give it a bit of a jump start for the year? In the fall I plan on mixing in leaves grass clippings and and some "left overs" from the kids bunnies.

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applestar
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Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

Partly, it will depend on what you intend to grow. Depending, you will still need extra fertilizer even with 50/50 mix.

Other part is what nutrient are already there. Some people will recommend getting the soil tested. You can also rely somewhat on what kind of weeds are currently growing and how your plants perform after seedling stage.

Are you trying to stay organic?

When I do use fertilizers, I use balanced (equal numbers) organic fertilizer for general application, tomato-tone for tomatoes and fruiting crops after flower bud formation, and higher in nitrogen for heavy feeders like corn and squash, onions, etc. (tried pasteurized chicken manure-based fertilizer last year). I also grow legumes in succession before the heavy feeders.... and make pseudo hugelkulture beds for deeper rooted long season crops.

bri80
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Location: Portland, OR

For best results you need both compost and fertilizer. Compost is not adequate fertilizer, and adding fertilizer does not provide what compost provides.

Compost provides decomposing organic material, which is crucial for soil structure, drainage, microorganisms, earthworms, etc. It will provide a little bit of nitrogen and other nutrients, but not nearly enough to grow quality vegetables. Your grass clippings/etc may provide enough organic matter to get you through the season, especially if you grow a cover crop or two, but if I were you I'd get the soil/compost mix. Once you have that infusion of compost, yearly cover crops will keep your organic matter at good levels for quite a while.

Fertilizer provides the nutrients you need for quality vegetables. This is my go to:
https://downtoearthfertilizer.com/produc ... mix-3-2-2/
I use it in everything. My vegetables get HUUUGE. I can't recommend this product enough. It is a slow-release, organic fertilizer for pretty much all purposes.

I add appropriate amounts of agricultural lime to it for most vegetable applications. It doesn't come limed, which is great, because then you can add lime/gypsum/etc to your specific pH needs. Avoid dolomite lime (lime with high levels of magnesium) with it, ag lime is mostly calcium with only trace amounts of other minerals. If you let magnesium get too high in your soil you get really clumpy, hard soil - no matter how much compost you add.

imafan26
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Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

If you are buying the soil mix, is it a nursery mix? I can get a nursery mix from the local composting facility that has soil, compost, cinder (used for drainage) or sand, with or without added manure. The nursery mix has been formulated to be ready to plant and passed a germination test. It is actually too alkaline for some plants so it was not for acid loving plants but was fine for most vegetables. The compost facility does test their compost and has posted the analysis on their website. Maybe yours does too or they can provide something if you ask. I would not lime without a soil test so you know how much to add or if you need it.

Compost isn't fertilizer and it is used up,so you have to continue to replace it everytime you plant. The epsoma product is a good organic fertilizer and most readily available. Fast release nitrogen sources would be fish emulsion or blood meal. I would still get a soil test and ask for organic recommendations for the amounts to add.

You have to remember it will take about 3 years for an organic garden to mature and be as productive as a garden grown conventionally. It takes time to build the soil web and get it established so it is more self sustaining.

Often people put in a new garden and start off planting the highest nutrient hogs like corn or tomatoes instead of legumes like beans or peas which when inoculated can help build the microbe population in the soil. Planting a green manure first wouldn't hurt since they usually are fast growing and tilled under in 6 weeks and add a lot of biomass to the soil.

Dolomite lime is usually the one for changing pH. Gypsum is primarily for saline sodic soils that have poor drainage. Gypsum has both sulfur and calcium so it does not change pH very much. Gypsum binds with the magnesium in soils that have toxic levels of magnesium. Usually clumpy hard soils are clay based. Adding compost actually helps to improve tilth but clay and compost hold a lot of water so watering needs to be monitored and adequate drainage needs to be present. Gypsum does help to make poorly draining soils more workable. Clay soil must never be worked wet, or the texture of the soil changes (clumpy and cloddy) and can take a long time to fix. Chicken manure can also increase the pH by about 0.5% on average. That is mainly because layer hens are fed calcium to strenghthen the egg shells and so the manure is high in calcium and very alkaline.
https://vric.ucdavis.edu/pdf/Soil/ChangingpHinSoil.pdf

Whether you use conventional fertilizer or organic, you should still be adding compost everytime you plant. Plants and the soil organisms don't really care where their nitrogen comes from but they need a balanced diet. It is possible to overdose on organic compost and but hard to over do fertilyzer unless you use the wrong one like chicken manure in alkaline soil. It is easy to overdo concentrated conventional fertilizer because a little goes a long way as it is more concentrated and has less filler by volume.

Some people say that conventional fertilizer kills soil organisms, but that is only true if the soil is not balanced. If you ate a diet of only one thing, you would not be healthy for long either. Soil microbes need nitrogen but they need carbon too, so always add compost and till in clean garden residues for carbon and only add the amount and kind of fertilizer that is needed. Other things which kill microbes is tillage. You want to disturb the soil as little as possible; that is the thinking behind no till farming. However, I haven't figured out how to do no till without having a lot of competing weeds and compost on top doesn't help my clay soil much.

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jal_ut
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Location: Northern Utah Zone 5

Get something with NPK on the label. This means nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, the three most often lacking nutrients in soil. Follow the instructions that came with the product for usage.

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Gary350
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Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

Best garden I ever had was when I lived in Michigan 50 years ago. Soil is very good there and growing season is very short. I remember tilling the soil and planting the garden did not use any fertilizer at all. There were 100s of butterflies then there were so many butterflies in the garden all day it was impossible to count them all, so many different kinds and different colors. Add lime or wood ash to your soil that prevents blossom end rot is several plants, tomatoes, melons, peppers, squash.



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