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Natural Fertilizers

When you add lots of compost to keep up the humus level of your garden, you don't have to worry much about NPK. Good compost provides most of the nutrients plants need. But if you're in the process of building up soil fertility, like I am, your garden plants need an occasional NPK boost. Furthermore, applying a little fertilizer at strategic times helps any plant reach its fullest potential. Strategic times to fertilize are: when a plant develops true leaves, when it begins to bloom, and again when it starts setting fruit.

If you have access to manure, you can provide a quick nitrogen pickme-up for any plant that's about to bloom by giving it a shot of manure tea. Cover manure in water and let it steep for about a month, strain out the solids (toss them into your compost heap), and dilute the liquid to the color of weak tea.

Another good source of nitrogen is dried blood meal, a slaughter-house byproduct. A good source of phosphorus is bone meal, a slaughter-house product made of steamed, ground-up bones. Heating it with wood gives you a ready source of potassium in the ashes from your stove-about 50 pounds of ashes for every cord you burn. In addition to supplying potassium, wood ashes also sweeten acidic soil. Soil acidity (pH) is measured on a scale of 0 to 14; 7 is neutral. Soil that's be low 7 is acidic; soil that's above 7 is alkaline. Extremes in pH tie up nutrients, and most vegetables do best in neutral soil.

The ashes of dense hardwoods like oak and hickory are best for sweetening soil. Apply no more than 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet per year. If your soil is on the alkaline side, you can lower the pH by working in sawdust, leaf mold, or peat moss. Because I used lots of sawdust to improve my soil's humus level, I also added ashes to balance its pH. Now that I've got plenty of compost, my soil's acidity takes care of itself, since compost tends to neutralize pH. Despite all the sawdust, ashes, and compost I've added, my garden's soil still isn't perfect-but it is well on its way.

SOIL TESTS

To find out what's in the soil in your garden, fill a quart jar one-third full with soil and two-thirds full with water. Shake the jar and set it aside until the soil settles into layers: The bottom layer will be sand; above the sand will be a layer of silt; then comes a layer of day; and on top of the water will float undecomposed organic matter. A good mix contains about 20 percent clay, 40 percent silt, and 20 percent sand plus organic matter. Another way to find out what kind of soil you have is to squeeze a moist sample in your hand. If the soil forms a tight, sticky ball, it contains too much clay. If it feels grainy and crumbles no matter how hard you squeeze, it has too much sand. If it forms a loose mound when you squeeze gently, but crumbles when you squeeze harder, you've got good garden loam.

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