Too much compost?

allanreed2000

22 years ago

I've always had a great vegetable garden by adding 20 bags or so of compost to my garden from my town's compost facility. This year, I moved the location of my garden and made raised beds. With the raised beds, I had a lot of soil to add, so I brought in two truckloads of compost and used that to fill my raised beds. I figured my veggies would love it! Instead, my tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and okra all look very sickly. They've been planted for 6 weeks now and have hardly grown. I brought the compost into my raised beds in February, so it had a couple of months break down even more before I planted in April. Is there such a thing as TOO MUCH compost? As a side note, my town's compost facility works by picking up grass clippings and yard waste each week, then it cooks the compost and releases it to homeowners every month or so. A few pictures of my tomatoes and eggplants (that appear to me to be suffering) are attached.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pictures of my garden

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Comments (7)

Bill_G
22 years ago
I see a lot of sticks and bits of wood in there. Hard to tell how finished this compost really is. Did you till the dirt underneath and then mix it with the compost, or did you pour the compost over the top?
allanreed2000
Original Author
22 years ago
The compost had cooked for over 90 days at the Compost Facility and they said it was "ready to use". I didn't till the dirt underneath and mix with the compost. It was just straight compost. I did let it sit for a couple of months and aerated it periodically before I planted my veggies in it.
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Bill_G
22 years ago
Can you go out there right now and make a mudball out of that stuff? If you can't it needs to be mixed with dirt. And probably coarse screened to get the biggest pieces out.
squeeze
22 years ago
sounds like the kinda stuff that would dry out real quick, and being yard waste and made on an 'industrial scale', prolly deficient in various nutrients - if those plants were in my garden I'd say they needed a good shot of nitrogen and more water - maybe you could 'scratch away' some material around each plant a few inches down and add some of the soil from the old garden?

Bill
allanreed2000
Original Author
22 years ago
Thanks for the feedback. You guys were right on...

Here's an update. I sent a soil sample off to my local Extension agent. In case you're interested, here are the results:
pH: 8.5
Nitrogen: 3 lbs/acre (LOW)
Phosphorous: 566 lbs/acre (HIGH... should be ~65)
Potassium: 6473 lbs/acre (HIGH... should be ~256)

Therefore, the recommendation was to add 0.9 lbs/1000 sqft of Nitrogen.

I tilled up my entire garden last weekend, and added 14 bags of topsoil (40 lbs per bag). I'm hoping that by aerating the compost and adding the topsoil, I've improved things. I then added 34-0-0 fertilizer to the whole thing and started over with tomatoe and pepper transplants, cuc, bean and okra seeds. Hope it works!
bluebloom
22 years ago
Hi Allenreed2000,

Did that (per your last post) do the trick? Any updated photos or yummy harvests to tell about?
allanreed2000
Original Author
22 years ago
Hi Composters:

An update... My garden did terrible this year! My tomatoes were very sickly and only produced a handful of tomatoes. My peppers have grown very tall, but have yet to produce any peppers (lots of flowers, but never fruit). My watermelon did the same (lots of flowers, no fruit). Two things did well, however: cucumbers and okra.

I've given up for this season. I'll till everything up again this fall, and send off for another soil test. I'm hoping next year my soil will be in its prime!