My garden isn't growing like everyone else's here - fertilizer?

[gumpsgirl]

The man at our local co-op says it's because I need to fertilize it. I added chicken manure/pine shavings to our garden in March and tilled them in really good, so what else do I need to do? I'm not crazy about chemicals, but my husband is saying we need to put Miracle Grow on everything.

Any ideas here?

 

[me&thegals]

There are so many other possible factors that's it's hard to know where to begin...

How old is your seed?

Is your soil very sandy/clay? Has it been tilled a lot or walked on a lot and become compacted?

How old was the chicken manure?

What has your personal weather been like? Do you have overhanging trees that block sun/rain?

Is this a new garden? It takes a while to build up soil fertility, especially if it used to be a conventional field or lawn. I get discouraged sometimes about my gardens that have most recently converted to organic, but over time they get amazingly mellow and fertile.

When I get nervous about my plants and feel the need to fertilize, I mix up a huge batch of compost tea. We have a big rain barrel, a 50-lb onion sack filled with composted manure, tied shut and left in the barrel full of water. After a couple days, I start using it to water the plants that look a little anemic.

Good luck!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm not opposed to using appropriate chemicals but I am opposed to throwing chemicals at everything. I checked a box of Miracle-Gro I have and it shows:

Nitrogen - 24%
Phosphate - 8%
Potash - 16%
+ bits and pieces of others

It's not that bad a general mix, but different plants need different things. Nitrogen is good for corn, but too much nitrogen can cause some plants to grow a lot of vegetation but little fruit. You need to know what your plants need so you can provide what they need instead of something that will make them look like they are doing well but really won't help them produce what you want. A soils test could tell you what your soils are deficient in. Your county cooperative extension agent can help you with that, probably pretty inexpensively though it will take time. You can find them under county government in the phone book. Hope that made sense.

You can over-fertilize too. I find I have to be careful not to burn melons, squash, cucumbers, things like that. Miracle-gro is pretty strong. A little could go a long way.

I don't know how big your garden is. A 20 or 40 pound bag of chemical fertilizer may be a lot more cost effective than Miracle-Gro. Don't get the weed-n-feed though for your garden. The chemicals in weed-n-feed would consider grass good and your garden crops bad.

Since you added the shavings along with the chicken manure, my guess is that you did not have enough nitrogen to decompose the shavings (the carbon-nitrogen ratio was too high), so the shavings took available nitrogen from the soil to aid in their decomposition.

Depending on what your crops are and how big an area we are talking about, I'd be tempted to get a bag of say 10-10-10 fertilizer and carefully feed the plants. Maybe even something a little higher in nitrogen.

Hopefully the real experts will weigh in. Good luck!

 

[Texan]

I am new at this but I learned a VALUABLE lesson about chicken manure. Make SURE you compost that stuff for a year (or better). They say the issue is to much nitrogen and that to much nitrogen can stunt the growth of your plants. I stunted the growth of almost all my peppers. My egg plants were not successful either. My blue potatoes are just recovering after I moved them to another garden bed. My tomatoes plants that I have moved tripled in size almost right off the bat. The ones I left are still only 18 inches tall. The only thing doing well in there are the green beans. I hope that is not your problem. Good luck and let us know.

 

[gumpsgirl]

Thank you all for your thoughts and help!

I've never been very successful in growing a garden here in the southeast, but am determined that I am going to be able to do it this year! I grew up in the west (Colorado to be exact) and gardening there is much different than it is here.

I have been out working in the garden this morning. Everything is looking great, except the corn. I think it is what is needing attention at the moment and I'll leave the rest of the garden alone. The cabbage is getting huge along with the green beans, peas, zucchini, and butternut squash. I would like to see my watermelons and crenshaws getting bigger, but hopefully they will take off soon.

Thanks again for the opinions and help.

 

[patandchickens]

In this circumstance, where you have messed with your soil but are not sure to what effect and things aren't growing right, I would really advise not adding fertilizer without doing at least SOME sort of soil test first. Even if it's just the (pH, N, P) kits you get at the garden center.

It is quite possible you are temporarily N deficient b/c of the shavings you tilled in... but, test. Then you will know you are doing things in the right direction, rather than making things worse

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Rio_Lindo_AZ]

My garden sometimes goes throught those tough phases too. It's usually a change in weather and everything kicks back in in a couple f weeks. Do you have a plant whoes roots are dominating other plants? Sometimes that can also be the case.

 

[Liberty7]

This might help. I just posted this in the 'Compost' category, but I'll put it here as well:

I got this from the book 'Great Garden Fix-Its.'

This has to do with making a compost bin/pile and the CARBON-to-NITROGEN radio you should have is 30-1.

CARBON NITROGEN

Carboard bits Alfalfa
Cornstalks Bloodmeal
Dry leaves Coffee grounds
Sawdust Fresh weeds
Shredded paper Grass clippings
Straw Human hair
Wood chips Kelp meal
Kitchen scraps
Manure

MAYBE manure (nitrogen) can be too much of a good thing if over done.

 

[gumpsgirl]

Thanks for that!

 

[patandchickens]

This has to do with making a compost bin/pile and the CARBON-to-NITROGEN radio you should have is 30-1.

CARBON NITROGEN

Carboard bits Alfalfa
Cornstalks Bloodmeal
Dry leaves Coffee grounds
Sawdust Fresh weeds
Shredded paper Grass clippings
Straw Human hair
Wood chips Kelp meal
Kitchen scraps
Manure

WARNING, because of something people frequently misunderstand: this "30:1 C:N ratio" thing means the ratio of carbon to nitrogen atoms, NOT a ratio of 'things from high-carbon material list' to 'things from high-nitrogen material list'.

If you make a pile with 30 parts sawdust to 1 part manure, it will take approximately forever to break down

This 30:1 business is a useless concept unless a person is inclined to look up book values for the C:N ratios of their materials (which still may not be quite accurate for the particular stuff you've got) and then do some calculator work to figure out how much of each will give you that ratio.

A more USEFUL guideline, for those disinclined to doing math (tho it's really pretty easy), is to aim for somewhat more brown stuff than green stuff in your pile, but not *vastly* more brown than green.

(You will see different brown:green ratio numbers quoted in various places. IMO in large part that is because they're making different assumptions about what your likeliest brown and green materials are. But you know what, unless you are in a giant hurry [in which case, get out your calculator and also just learn to know how your materials behave], it just doesn't matter all THAT much, you only need to be in the general ballpark to get pretty decent composting rates)

Pat