The Benefits of Using Natural Fertilizers

Organic gardening is method of growing vegetables and other plants using natural fertilizers to enrich the soil, instead of synthetic fertilizers. While both fertilizers supply plants with necessary nutrients, natural fertilizers contain no harmful chemicals or processing. Learning about natural fertilizers, including what they do, how and when to use them can help anyone grow an organic garden.

Not all organic fertilizers are the same. Some fertilizer products available are labeled as organic or natural, but a gardener must look at the ingredients to be sure. Look for fertilizer labels that list ground feathers, manure, or other natural products as the primary ingredients.

Natural fertilizers have an advantages over synthetic products. T hey feed plants more evenly and slowly. Most natural fertilizers increases a soil's ability to retain essential water and nutrients. Nitrogen contained in these fertilizers is a slow-release form, so it feeds plants over time, which means plants do not need feeding as often as with synthetic fertilizers.

Gardeners can use natural fertilizers anytime without worrying about overfeeding. When using synthetic products, gardeners must read and follow label directions carefully to avoid overfeeding or burning plants. While you can apply natural fertilizers at any time, the ideal time is in spring, before sowing seeds or putting out transplants. This gives plants a good start, while also improving soil drainage. Gardeners can choose from a variety of natural fertilizers, such as blood meal, fish emulsion, kelp, composted manure, feather meal and bone meal.

• Blood meal is rich in nitrogen and beneficial to ground cover and annual plants.
• Fish emulsion is rich in both nitrogen and phosphoric acid, which is beneficial as a lawn fertilizer and for encouraging growth of rose bushes. It promotes more blooms or fruit.
• Kelp is dried seaweed that is high in nitrogen and phosphorous and ideal for fertilizing shrubs.
• Composted manure may be obtained from poultry or cows. Poultry manure is high in nitrogen and beneficial for annual flower beds. Cow manure adds nutrients to the soil and improves drainage; it is beneficial for vegetable gardens and annual flowerbeds.
• Feather meal is made from poultry feathers and a good source of slow-release nitrogen. It is a good fertilizer for shrubs and roses.
• Bone meal raises the soil pH and is rich in phosphorous, which encourages strong root development. It is beneficial for spring-blooming bulbs and shrubs.

Grass clipping are useful as an organic fertilizer. They provide continuous food for leafy plants that require a lot of nitrogen. Allow grass clipping to dry out before spreading them in thin layers around shrubs and trees. Gardeners must take care not to use fresh clippings or apply them in thick layers to prevent the clippings from forming a mat that prevents air and water from getting to the soil and plant roots. 

Organic gardening is rewarding and beneficial. Mother Nature provides gardeners with some of the best materials to feed plants and increase soil health.

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Best Vegetable Garden Fertilizers for an Abundant Harvest

Feeding Your Vegetable Garden so that it Feeds You

Our grocery budget has increased more and more due to the recession, increased fuel charges and shipping charges. All of these factors have raised the price of food substantially in the past year causing families to search for ways to cut their food budgets. Our family began planning a vegetable garden this winter in hopes of growing more of our own food for this summer. In addition to saving money, by having our own vegetable garden we will eat healthier and better-prepared meals. My father has planted vegetable gardens for years so I asked him what we should look for in a fertilizer for vegetable gardens. He said that he has used many fertilizers over the years in his vegetable garden but his top five best fertilizers for vegetable gardens were these.

The best all-purpose fertilizer for his vegetable garden was the Slow-Release All-Purpose Fertilizer by Gardener's Supply Company. This fertilizer is 100% organic, which we love, so there are no harmful chemicals to taint your vegetables. The slow release formula keeps a steady concentration of nutrients in the soil to enhance the growth of vegetables all season long.

Gardener's Supply Company also has the best tomato fertilizer for huge, plump and delicious tomatoes. This fertilizer also uses slow release to keep a constant level of nutrients in the soil to enhance root growth and fruit production. This fertilizer also contains phosphorus to enhance fruit production and is organic so that your tomatoes will be healthy as well as beautiful.

For beginner gardeners like ourselves, my father suggested we use Jobes Organic Vegetable Fertilizer Spikes. They are pre-measured, easy to use and provide great fertilization for a vegetable garden. Since they are stuck into the ground, they fertilizer vegetable plants at the root and promotes microbial action at the roots. In addition to being convenient, easy to use and an excellent fertilizer they are also OMRI™ certified for use in organic gardens.

Osmocote® Vegetable & Bedding Smart-Release® Plant Food by The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company is a good all-purpose fertilizer for vegetable gardens. The formula is a slow release, multi-nutritional formula providing a balance of nutrients to vegetables all season but must be repeated approximately every four months. The benefit of this vegetable garden fertilizer is that you can also use it with trees, shrubs and perennials for those who wish to have one convenient product for all of their fertilizing requirements.

Another all-purpose product from Scotts is their Scotts® All-Purpose Flower and Vegetable Food. This food may be used on flowers and vegetable gardens making it a convenient product for gardeners. The slow-release formula protects from burning the plants and maintains a steady flow of nutrients into the soil. This vegetable fertilizer is relatively inexpensive if you are searching for a quality product with low cost.

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Organic Vegetable Gardening the Lazy Way: My Lazy, Cheapskate Gardening is Environmentally Friendly

When some gardeners start talking about organic vegetable gardening, it sounds like a cult, and an expensive, time-consuming one at that. It doesn't have to be hard to be organic. My vegetable gardening methods are "organic", not because I have any deep convictions about using organic versus synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, but because I'm a lazy cheapskate. If I can prevent weeds without buying and applying herbicides, grow vegetables without buying and spreading fertilizer, and keep the bugs and other pests under control by letting them kill each other, I'm happy. My budget is happy too.

The vegetables grow in raised beds made from the sides of discarded water beds held in place by 4x4 posts: it's cheap and sturdy. The picture shows the bed, a hopeful quail looking for vegetables to eat, and the soaker hose that minimizes water use. That's an eggplant in the foreground, in late March. By July it was 4 feet tall and 4 feet wide.

Organic Weed Control: My vegetable garden's organic weed control consists of a 4 to 6-inch deep layer of mulch, made by running the prunings from my trees and bushes through my chipper-shredder. Only a few weed seeds will come through the mulch, and they are easy to pull. The mulch also reduces the amount of watering I have to do by preventing evaporation.

The drawback to the mulch is that it attracts birds. The quail love to dig holes in it to make shady resting spots under the vegetables. The curve-billed thrashers and the towhees dig through it hunting for bugs. They are excellent bug controllers, but they throw mulch out of the beds and leave huge holes in the dirt. I have to throw the mulch back into the beds a couple of times a week.

Organic Fertilizer: Tree shreddings composted with the high-nitrogen beans that fall from mesquite trees and the grass clippings from the lawn, make good fertile soil for the raised vegetable beds. I mixed compost 50/50 with the alkaline native dirt the first year and just keep digging more compost into the beds every spring.

Where I deviate from the "organic" party line is with soil amendments. The local desert dirt (it doesn't deserve to be called soil) is alkaline, low in available iron, and high in clay and even the water is mineral-laden and alkaline. Vegetables don't grow well in it, even with lots of compost. I'm not going to waste time making compost tea, and I'm not going to waste money on various organic supposed remedies like bacterial infusions, Mycorrhyza inoculants, volcanic sands, and such. The dirt needs a higher pH and the most economical way to get it is to mix liberal quantities of soil sulfur into it. I also add a small amount of ammonium sulfate to the beds about mid-summer to give them a nitrogen boost.

What Grows Well: With this low-effort approach to organic vegetable gardening, I grow herbs and vegetables that are hard to find locally, or too expensive in supermarkets. The hot Arizona summers limit my choices because the usual garden vegetables can't survive the heat.

Tomatillos thrive and produce gallons of fruit.

Until the squash borers struck, the squash were thriving and producing a dozen or more edible squash a week per plant. With some screen to keep the adult borers from laying eggs on the stems, they should do better this year.

Artichokes grew and thrived, but they took up too much space to be practical. I gave the plants to a gardener with more room.

There was way too much okra! Okra is an African plant that apparently loves 110-degree days, and alkaline soil. A short row of 4 plants produced more than I could stand, and even the co-workers were losing enthusiasm for it.

Eggplant, like okra, grows almost too well. I harvested 15 to 20 softball and larger eggplants a week starting in mid-June. Much of it ended up going to friends at the office.

What Did Not Grow Well:

Tomatoes were not a success, probably because they were in full Arizona sun and heat stressed. Except for basil, the herbs either died or grew so slowly they took weeks to recover from harvest. I'm building a new bed in a spot that gets afternoon shade and will try again.

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Improve Your Yard Organically: 14 Simple Environment Friendly Gardening Tips

Most people believe that the basic idea behind organic gardening is to avoid using pesticides and chemical fertilizers on your lawn. While this is certainly some of what organic gardening is about, it's not the entire picture.

Your yard is really an ecosystem. Damage one part of the ecosystem through pesticides, everything else in the cycle is damaged. Keeping chemical use to a bare minimum is a first good step. Wise planting and watering practices will also help keep your yard healthy and sustainable. A healthy yard requires less chemical help and eventually it can get along with nothing more than fertilizer. This is the goal that we all strive for with organic gardening.

Controlling weeds organically

Weeds are one of the biggest reasons that people use yard chemicals. To keep down the growth of weeds, use mulch around your planting beds and beneath your shrubs. Some people prefer wood chips or bark chip. You can also use layered newspaper topped with a thick layer of grass clippings. Mulching retains moisture in the soil, which means less watering.

Maintaining a healthy lawn is also important to managing lawn weeds. Weeds grow where the grass is thin or patchy. Over seeding these areas will help choke out the growth of weeds.

For dandelions, try using a special dandelion digging tool to lift them out. If the soil is moist, they'll come out very easily. A Japanese gardening tool works for weeds found in planting beds. This thick, long handled knife has a serrated edge on one side, and makes weeding a snap.

If you have weeds growing in the cracks of your sidewalks or stone walk ways, a slick trick is to pour boiling water over them. This does an incredible job of killing the weed clear down to the root.

To kill large areas of weeds or grass in your vegetable garden, alley way or in places where you want to create flower beds, stretch sheets of visquine over the area. The heat from the sun will kill the vegetation beneath within a matter of a few weeks.

Fertilizing organically

Maintaining a healthy yard is important is you want to reduce the amount of chemical additives. While there are many organic fertilizers on the market, there are less expensive alternatives.

One easiest method is to drop the clippings when you mow. A season's worth of grass clippings are the equivalent to one application of commercial fertilizer. Keeping the grass slightly longer will also allow it to grow deeper roots, and slow down the rate of water evaporation.

Compost is nature's perfect fertilizer and is rich in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Best of all, it can be made free in your own yard. Composting is mixing together nitrogen rich "greens" such as grass, with carbon based "brown" waste such as leaves. Through the use of a compost system and the help of microorganisms, these materials break down into a rich, earthy material. Compost will improve the texture of your soil and provide nutrition to your plants.

If you live out in the country, bags of steer or chicken manure are wonderful supplements to your yard. I apply the stuff liberally over my lawn and flower beds in the summer.

Bug control organically

As my yard has shifted more towards organic gardening methods, pest problems aren't as frequent as they used to be. A healthy collection of birds, spiders and ladybugs do a fabulous job of taking care of most of my yard pests. For the occasional pest, there's some easy ways to get rid of them.

Control snails and slugs in your garden by trapping them with small saucers of beer. Set the rims set at ground level so it will be easy for them to crawl in.

To trap earwigs, set damp paper tubes around your beds during the night. By morning, the tubes will be filled with the little critters.

Make collars out of plastic yogurt containers to prevent bugs from nibbling away at the stems or climbing up into the leaves.

Aphids can be washed off rose buds using a garden hose. Cradle the bud in your hand and gently rinse until the aphids drop off. Since the aphids will crawl back to the buds within a few days, you'll need to repeat the process a couple of more times. For tenacious aphids, mix up a solution of soapy water and apply with a sprayer. Once you've permanently stopped using bug spray on your gardens and lawn, you can safely add live ladybugs to your yard to also help reduce the aphid population.

Set out bird feeders. I have a large population of birds that are drawn to my yard by the feeders and stick around for the bugs.

Think about replacing some of your plants with those that are pest resistant. Low water plants tend to be disease hardy and resistant to pests. There are also a some tree varieties that are also disease and pest hardy. Ask your City Forester for recommendations.

There's no denying that gardening organically is a lot of extra work at first. But over time, it does get easier and soon you'll notice your yard becoming healthier and less prone to disease. Weeds seem to become less of a problem. And, you'll discover birds and other small animals returning to your yard to help with pest control, pollination, and reseeding.

The public library is full of information about natural gardening methods and it's benefits on the environment. You might also want to contact your local county extension office; their Master Gardeners have a wealth of up-to-date information and will be invaluable in getting you started.

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