The question of the Best Organic Fertilizer for your vegetable garden, sounds like it should be easy to answer. I know, let's just Google it! With 512,000 results it should be easy to find the Best Organic Fertilizer!
The first article that comes up is a garden forum. Great! I am certain that there will be lots of exceptional, highly intelligent, useful suggestions from a highly ranked gardening forum. Wait a minute! I was expecting one or two great answers; but there are seven pages of responses spanning four years.
Some responses say the best organic fertilizer is to use compost. Others say corn meal is all you need, while others say to search out Dr. Earth products. Now, I have a list of about fifteen products that are considered by these experts as the best organic fertilizer, to use in my garden.
I searched through the next four or five pages of results for the best organic fertilizer. Now I am really confused. I have no idea what fertilizer to buy. In addition I am really confused about what organic means.
I was hoping to save time and money searching the internet for the best organic fertilizer, but if I buy everything on my list it will cost me about $450. I have a better idea. Let's call four or five gardening nurseries and ask their opinion. Hoping for some consensus, I now have another five products on my list.
The question of finding the Best Organic Fertilizer might need to be answered another way. May I suggest a scientific approach? The first thing I recommend to my customers is a soil test. Not just any test with one of those soil test kits you get at a big box store. But a test performed by a professional analytical lab. They only cost in the range of about $30! The inexpensive soil test kits with the capsules you break apart into water and soil are useless. Don't waste your money or time with these products.
The results you receive from the analytical testing lab will not get you any closer to finding the best organic fertilizer. It will give you some valuable information. Most importantly it will tell you the pH of your soil. Knowing the pH of your soil is comparable to the importance of knowing your blood type before getting a blood transfusion.
You should expect about a three week turn-around time for results. The report should tell you the soil pH, current nutrient levels in ppm, salt levels in the soil, organic matter in the soil and a few suggestions on what amendments you need to add per acre.
First things first, what is your pH? This needs to be addressed first and foremost. If your pH is lower than 5.5 or higher than 7.5 you will want to create a plan to adjust it. Adjusting the pH is tricky and seeking expert advice at this point is advised. A substance with a pH of 7.0 is considered neutral. Vegetable garden soils perform best in a pH range of 6.0 - 7.2. Fertilizers are not the answer to lowering or raising the soil pH. This article is about the best organic fertilizer, not changing the soil pH. More here Pestisida Organik
After you have a plan to deal with your soil pH, you will want to address the salt levels. If the salt levels are too high then they should be adjusted before adding any amendments. Depending on the salt levels several applications of 4-8" of water will need to be applied to the soil and allowed to thoroughly drain. Very few plants will grow in soil with high salt levels. If the salt levels are borderline high plants will grow poorly and exhibit nutrient deficiencies.
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