i love rabbit manure.. because it breaks down slowly and will not burn plants.... great stuff...

The best way to find out what you really need is to have a soil test done. In addition to knowing your NPK it is important to know your soil's pH. But you pretty much can't go wrong with well rotted compost for almost any soil. Concerning horse poop. You need to be sure that it isn't contaminated with Bermuda or Johnson grass seed. And Dawn knows about the issue with herbicide contamination. A search of this site will bring that up.

But without knowing those things about your soil, I don't think anybody can tell you exactly what you need.

Here in eastern Ok for instance, soils are acid, so several things get woodashes. But if you have neutral to alkaline soils, ashes would do more harm than good. So I would start with a soil test from the local extension agency.

This I am sure is a BAD answer and others will chime in.

For tomatoes I add Tomato tone. For the rest I add Garden tone. I add compsost when it is ready. I throw on my rotting leaves at the end of winter. I toss on my unsprayed lawn clippings throught the spring/summer/fall.

I started worm composting and add the castings and tea as they make them (slowly)

I spray neem from time to time in an effort to thwart many pests and fungi.

I spray BT (rarely) and that has kept the hornworms away.

I am adding crushed crab shells to my beds this year in an attempt to fight the nematodes. I occasionaly water with milk. If my dogs could break into my garden they would think they were at a Las Vegas buffet.

I'd LOVE some bunny poo and we are neighbors! Maybe I could trade some tomato tone, garden tone, and/or seeds!

Jo

ok, i'll start with a soil sample from the osu extension here in tulsa. i've got a little "meter" from home depot that tells me the acidity/alkalinity of the soil, and whether or not there's enough fertilizer, but it doesn't tell me anything else....

so much info to cram into this teeny little brain.....

:)

Dody, I have a small meter with two prongs and a pretty dial on it. I'm not sure mine can tell milk from vinegar. It can detect wet and dry a little, and if it were a little longer it would make a great back scratcher.
Keep the prongs very clean and it will work a little better.

I feel my plants can tell me more about the soil than the meter can. I hope yours is much better than mine.

I saw a kit at town today that I like the looks of, but not enough to pay $4.95. It looked like a hydrometer, until someone tells how wonerful they are my money will stay in my pocket.

Larry

If you work on building your soil, your soil will feed your plants and fertilization will be less of an issue. I'm not saying you'll never need fertilizer, but just that over time you will not need it as much.

In organic gardening, the whole process starts with the soil. What is soil, really? It is more than "dirt", although a lot of us start with dirt and work hard to turn it into soil. Soil is approximately 25% air (plant roots do not, technically, grow in soil...they grow in the air spaces between particles of soil), 45% minerals (this is dirt, which is just crushed up rocks), 25% water (not necessarily easy to maintain in Oklahoma), 5% organic matter (i.e. once living material, known as humus and compost and ultimately humic acid when it is broken down into its more minute forms in soil) and tiny life forms called microbes that we really can't see, but which research tells us are there. Microbes can include algae, protozoa, fungi, yeast, actinomycetes, bacteria and nematodes (both beneficial ones and harmful ones).

If you are starting out with dirt, therefore, you mostly need to add air, water and organic matter. The air part is easy and you may already have good air in your soil. If you have loose, friable soil, you've got air. If you have tightly compacted, dense soil like clay, you need to break it up by hand-digging, plowing or rototilling to get air in there between the mineral particles. You can do that by adding the organic matter because in the process of working organic matter into the dirt, you're adding air. Moisture will come on its own via rainfall or when you irrigate.

To add organic matter, you can add anything once living, including composted animal manures (chicken, rabbit, cow or horse, but not cat or dog), compost from your own pile, your city's composting facility if it has one, or from a commercial source), humus, pine bark fines (often a combination of humus and pine bark fines are sold bagged as "Soil Conditioner"), chopped/shredded autumn leaves, leaf mold (usually found under trees in woodland area and is decomposed leaves from a year or two before), old, rotted or spoiled hay or straw, and any number of organic products that add macronutrients or micronutrients to your soil. These include the following: alfalfa meal, blood meal, bat guano, bone meal, cottonseed meal, composted cottonseed burrs, greensand, lava sand, colloidal phosphate, granite dust or granite sand, kelp (seaweed) meal, earthworm castings, fish meal, dry molasses, soybean meal or a dry or liquid humate product.

How do you add microbes to the soil? Mostly just by adding organic matter. With good organic matter and good moisture and air levels, you will have microbes providing you aren't adding something chemical to the soil that kills them. Dry molasses and sugar encourage microbial activity. If you can't find a bag of dry molasses in a feed store, you can use plain old sugar.

A lot of people never think about the microbes in their soil, but microbes are very important. It is microbes that break down organic matter, first into humus and then into humic acid, and finally into basic elements. Without a good population of microbes, your soil won't be as healthy as it can be. Soil that is low in organic matter has a low population of microbes, so add organic matter all the time as mulch to keep your soil healthy.

We have a saying, particularly in warmer parts of the country that explains where all that organic matter goes, and it is this: "Heat eats compost" meaning heat breaks down your compost and humus and it "disappears". So, you don't just add compost or humus once and say that the job is done. You add compost and humus continuously. The easiest way to add it is by mulching with the organic matter of your choice. You can use half-finished compost, pine bark fines or small bark nuggets (better in ornamental areas but I use them in the veggie garden too), uncontaminated hay or straw, grass clippings collected from your own yard as you mow, autumn leaves you collected and chopped/shredded in the fall and then held in bags to use as mulch on top of the soil surface in your spring garden, etc. You even can use shredded paper, cardboard or layers of newspaper laid on top of the garden beds as your first layer of mulch and then put something more visually pleasing on top of them. As a bonus, earthworms love paper and cardboard and will come to your beds and help break it down, leaving behind earthworm castings as they travel through the soil. Compost breaks down year-round, although faster in warmer and moister weather, and slower in drier and colder weather, so you just keep piling on more and more. This is a method of building the soil from the top down, and it doesn't require that you go back and rototill every year to work these materials into the soil. Rototilling may be necesssary the first time you break new ground, but after that it can be a problem. It disturbs the soil structure being built so carefully by your earthworms and other soil-dwellers and by your microbes.

Think rototilling or plowing is necessary? Walk into a natural woodland and look at how the soil is built. On top you'll find newer leaves, twigs, bark, dead tree limbs or trunks, and even the bodies of insects, small animals and birds. All these items gradually decompose and enrich the soil, and other than small burrowing animals, no one is running around the woodland rototilling. Over time, rainfall and decomposers like earthworms carry the nutrients from the surface-level mulch/compost/humus materials down into the soil and the soil renews itself and everything in the woodland grows fine with no human intervention. Rototilling and plowing destroy soil structure and can cause a layer of hardpan to form just below the lowest rototilled or plowed soil. Rototilling and plowing expose billions of weed seeds to sunlight, which causes them to germinate. I don't rototill if I can avoid it, but it is necessary the first time you break up clay to add organic matter.

What does your soil need in order to be able to feed your plants? It needs the 13 essential nutrients derived from the mineral content of healthy soil. The three macronutrients are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). The ten micronutrients soil should contain are iron, zinc, calcium, copper, magnesium, manganese, boron, molyndenum, sulphur and chlorine. Now, are you going to fret and worry and try to make sure your soil contains 45% oxygen, 44% carbon, 2% nitrogen or 0.3% magnesium? No, of course not. What you're going to focus on is adding organic matter. With a good blend or organic matter, air, and water added to your crushed minerals (dirt), you're going to have soil that is full of life and is self-sustaining as long as you keep adding organic matter to it. The organic matter, in a sense, feeds the soil and the soil feeds the plants.

Does that mean fertilizers aren't necessary? No, but it means you'll rely upon them less. I have used Tomato-Tone (for tomatoes, peppers and eggplant) and Garden-Tone (for everything else) for years (and Holly-Tone for my hollies) because they contain micronutrients (aka trace elements) which makes them different from most chemical fertilizers that tend to focus almost exlusively on N-P-K.

As long as you're using an organic fertilizer made from more than one ingredient, you've probably got the major nutrients (nitrogen, phosporus, potassium) and the secondary nutrients(magnesium, calcium and sulfur) covered. The lesser trace elements like copper, boron, zinc, manganese, molybdenum, etc., often are found in balanced organic fertilizers too. Otherwise, they're likely to be found in your soil anyway although they are not always found in a usable form.

From a soil test, you can learn what levels of the three major nutrients your soil has, its pH, and some other useful data. I find it more helpful, though, just to watch how my plants grow. If I have a good balance of major and secondary nutrients and adequate levels of trace elements, I'll have healthy plants that grow and produce well. In the conventional, chemical-oriented gardening world, too much emphasis is placed on N-P-K. What's really important is to have good leavels of oxygen (45%), carbon (44%) and hydrogen (6%). That N-P-K everyone worries about is not that large of a percentage in the soil. Nitrogen should be approximately 2%, potassium 1.1% and phosphorus 0.4% So, try to focus overall on providing your soil with air, water and organic matter to supplement the naturally occuring dirt (crushed minerals) and everything will work out fine.

In your first year of organic gardening, you may find it hard to give up the idea of using a fertilizer with a higher N-P-K number. Trust me, though, if you are putting organic matter in the soil, you won't need that chemical stuff. You can use any of the granular organic fertilizers if you want, or you can use all kinds of liquid organic fertilizers, like compost tea, liquid seaweed, liquid fish emulsion (the odor will attract cats and some wildlife) or even a combination product that contains liquid seaweed and fish (and it is really stinky, too).

One important part of organic gardening is to strive for balance and to not go overboard and add too much of any one thing. If you've previously gardened in a conventional manner this can be a hard habit to break, but just remember that what you really need is to take the crushed minerals (dirt) you start out with and add water, air and organic matter. It really is that simple, so don't make it too hard or too complicated.

Dawn

there is an encyclopedia worth of information in the group! i need more brain cells! :)

jo- you're on! i would be happy to give/trade for all the "brown jelly beans" these guys give me! they make me a 5 gallon bucket full every week. do you have any of the nemux pepper seeds? those are the only ones i've been wanting and haven't gotten my hands on yet. and really, more than anything, i appreciate the help and support. i don't think yours is a bad answer at all - i think you've shown me perhaps what dawn was talking about. don't make it too complicated. a few simple things...

Larry, that's good to know about the meter. i never even thought about the fact that it might not be accurate, or as accurate as they claim it to be. we "noobies" are a gullible bunch! put something pretty in front of us, tell us we need it for "the best harvest ever!" and we'll buy it up lickety- split. i've got some vinegar and milk, i might just try that experiment tomorrow... :)

dawn, when i started these beds last year, i used the sqf method of making soil. 1/3 compost,1/3 perlite and 1/3 vermeculite (sp)... i thought that everything did ok last year, every 2 or 3 weeks, i'd throw some rabbit poop on it. i want so bad for it to be simple and uncomplicated, but i'm looking at these seed catalogs, and there's SO much "stuff"...it's for this and that, so many different #'s in the fertilizers, meals and quite frankly, it's overwhelming!

so, thanks, these are exactly the answers i'm looking for. i was on the verge of spending lots o' money. i was on the right track, and perhaps just a few adjustments are what's needed. i love knowing the "why" of things, not just the "how" of things, if that makes any sense.

and, may i for one say, that if you all had an online "class" in gardening, i'd pay to be one of your students! the amount of knowledge in this forum is astounding! i like that everyone has a slightly different angle on things, and i'm getting a well rounded education.

dody :)

Dody,

I try to ignore all that stuff the gardening catalogs want us to buy. We don't need 99% of that stuff.

When we bought this land, it didn't take a rocket scientist to see that the soil in the woodland was at least 1000% better than the soil in the grassland areas, which were fallow farm fields where cotton and other crops grew long ago, but which had slowly reverted to grassland with mixed brush.

So, all I've really been doing since we moved here is trying to recreate in my garden the same type of soil I have in the woodland.

In the really old days, settlers would cut down the trees and farm a piece of land until it was depleted, then they'd move on, remove more trees and use that land until it was depleted. In a way, agriculture in this country has sort of had that same mindset, taking from the earth without really putting anything back, although at a certain point, everyone began pouring synthetic N-P-K products into the soil to make up for what the plants were taking out of the ground instead of moving on to new virgin ground. The way we've done it for so long isn't really sustainable.

What I love so much about organic gardening is that if you build and feed the soil, the soil takes care of the plants and you are not sitting there staring at an odd leaf in the garden, comparing it to on-line photos of nutritional deficiencies in plants, and saying "is this magnesium defiency?" because if you're feeding the soil with organic matter, the soil will give the plants what they need and you won't have to worry about stuff like that. Instead of using up soil, we're building it back up again while we're gardening. I think that's how agriculture should be practiced all over the world....not just taking from the soil but giving back to it. We only have one Earth and we have to take care of her.

A couple of days ago I was reading some historical documents from our county where farm land was advertised as having "black prairie loamy topsoil" many decades ago. Where is that black loamy topsoil now? Well, it isn't here because it blew away in the Dust Bowl and what we have left now is river sand down by the river and mostly red clay subsoil everywhere else. Every year my garden soil looks a little more black and a little less red. To me, that's really exciting. Maybe no one else in the world will know or care that the red clay is changing back to healthy, loamy prairie soil but I know.

Dawn

I love the looks of the soil when it looks dark in color, but is light to put you hand into, and just smells like it should. Am I weird?

I notice that I take things from my garden to eat. I feed the parts that I don't want to eat to the chickens, and any leftovers. The chickens make eggs, and they make fertilizer, which goes back into the garden eventually to start the process over again. Just seems natural.

Thanks to all for this thread. Other than my first year or two gardening, I've never used any fertilizers other than manure, leaves, and that sort of thing so I'm rather ignorant on the subject. I'll continue to use those things here but am considering jumpstarting things a bit with a fertilizer of some sort. The new garden will be going in on what was previously cornfield and, therefore, sucked dry. Tractors and combines have compacted it severely, it's been continually and intensely planted every year with nothing going back into the soil other than the normal big ag chemical sorts of things -- I assume enough nitrogen to get that corn to produce each year. I've dug around in that dirt and it just strikes me as "dead". That's the only thing I can think of when I feel & smell it. I can bring it back but it will take time to add in the good stuff and that's why I was considering the ferts. But, I didn't want to just go grab a box of MG or whatever generic NPK I found first.

So TomatoTone and GardenTone, huh? I'm going to read up on those.

I did manage to contact the local tree service and they said they'll be happy to share their sawdust and chips with me. I'm trying to see what other organic matter I can claim to go with that. By the time I put the garden to sleep this fall, I should have plenty of natural fertilizers to feed the garden.

(Forgive any typos. I have an infected finger that has me typing in a very strange manner. (And not letting me plant anything!))

Carol, You're not weird. Or, if you are, you're not the only weird one because I am the same way. I agree that having poultry in conjunction with our garden is a natural process, and one that is soaring in popularity too. I'd much rather use compost made on our property, mulch 'made' or gathered on our own property, etc. than purchase something from someplace else.

Chickens are great at turning "waste" products like leftover veggies and parts that you cut off before preparing the veggies into compost. Chickens also are great at churning their way through the veggie garden, digging and scratching and eating bugs. I love that they are helpful in so many ways and also that they are fun to have around. When they are in the garden with me in early spring, they are clucking softly to one another and to me the whole time and sometimes they follow me around like little puppies. Of course, they're hoping I'll dig up a big, fat, white grub worm or two for them.

Diane, I cannot really describe dead soil, but like you, I know it when I see it. The good news is that it only takes a little effort to put compost, humus and air into the soil, and rainfall usually takes care of the water part. Your soil needs manure, manure, manure or compost, compost, compost, or both. Chemical farming and heavy plowing also can just destroy your soil's microbial life, but that life returns quickly when you start getting organic matter back into the soil.

One of my favorite things about Tomato Tone and Garden Tone is that they now contain microbes, and have for several years now. Using a fertilizer with added microbes helps bring dead soil back to life much more quickly.

Here's the Espoma website that describes their fertilizers. One of my favorite nurseries in Texas carries the Tomato-Tone in small bags, and I buy quite a few of them but they have the Garden Tone in the big bags, and I usually only use 1 or 2 of them a year.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Espoma's Website

Most of what I do is a direct result of picking Dawn's brain, so it's no surprise that my list looks like a very pared down "for dummies" version of Dawn's. I can only handle so much new info at once before by brain starts to smoke, so her easy-to-incorporate ideas such as mulching with grass clippings were right up my alley.

I suspect she would frown on my use of BT and neem, (even though they are organic), and I do plan on using them less this year, but in prior years hornworms STRIPPED my tomato plants, and last year I didn't see any. I was careful to only use my BT on my maters (and it only affects leaf-eating caterpillars), and I still had many beautiful different caterpillars and butterflies in my herbs and wildflowers.

The hard part for anyone turning to organic fertilizes will be locating the Espoma products (tomato tone, Garden-tone) at a fair price. The only place I found either locally was at Southwood Nursery on Lewis, and the prices were INSANE. Something like $10 for a little 4# bag of tomato tone.

I wound up placing a big order at Sears, at the time they has 20# bags of Tomato-Tone for eleven or twelve dollars, and I took advantage of their "free 30 day trial Shipvantage trial offer". So my big order containing over 50 pounds of Epsoma products shipped free, and I cancelled the Shipvantage before the free trial period was over.

If anyone finds a reasonable local (or fairly local) source for Tomato-Tone and Garden-tone this year, I am all ears.

I don't have nemux pepper seeds...the only peppers I got this year were Carolina Wonder and Charleston Belle. I do have quite a few interesting tomato seeds, and a big old bag of Wando peas. I'd be happy to bring my seed folder for you to look through to see if anything tickles your fancy.

I have a bunch of raised beds (I can't count them as they are all buried in snow, but I suspect I have a round 20) and would love any poop you can spare. I'll even come clean out your cages for you if you tell me how the first time...I've never had bunnies.

Jo

Thanks for the link, Dawn. I'm going to find out who sells for how much in my area. Oh, I found their locator doohickey. Nothing around here but maybe I can talk Geo. Keller & Sons into ordering it. IF not, it looks like there's a location three hours from here in the same city as my mother. Yay!

Oh, thought of another question: Are there any dangers from cow manure? I've shied away from horse manure in recent years but wondered if cow manure would be a safer bet with the whole 'cide issue.

Diane

Jo,

I never would frown upon your use of Bt or Neem., and would, in fact, defend your right to use them and your decision to use them.

Both Bt and neem are useful products and I have used them in the past and wouldn't hesitate to use them in the future if I thought I needed them. Instead, though, I focus on encouraging beneficial insects and let the beneficial insects take care of the pest insects. It is a harder process because it calls for a lot more patience, and I don't always have that much patience, but it is more in keeping with the kind of sustainable gardening I'm attempting to do.

I do use some pesticides selectively. For example, I couldn't garden without Slug-Go Plus because it controls the pill bugs and sow bugs that inhabit my mulched beds by the millions. It doesn't completely wipe them out, but it keeps their levels low enough that they aren't devouring every seedling within 24 hours of me transplanting it into the garden, which is the issue I had with them in the past.

I also wouldn't want to garden without spinosad for a few selected applications, including as an organic fire ant killer. Nosema locuste is a pretty good control for the younger instars of grasshoppers, although it has less effect on the thousands of migrants who fly in from elsewhere later in the summer.

I just don't have a tomato hornworm problem here. If I did, I'd spray the plants with Bt. Even with 140 or 150 tomato plants, I probably don't see more than 8 or 10 tomato hornworms total in any growing season, and some years I see none. I believe the beneficial parasitic wasps here control them.

It took me a long time to wean myself off using lots of organic pesticides, but I did it because I wanted to move from organic gardening to sustainable gardening, and it is such a slow process. I've done it as a slow 'cutting back' type of process and not a 'cold turkey' one.

Diane, With cow manure, the problems that arise are usually one of three issues:

1.) Herbicide contamination. Sadly, this is becoming a bigger issue every year instead of a smaller one. There are several very effective broadleaf herbicides sprayed on grass and grain crops that are very slow to break down (3 to 4 years) and can survive going through the cow's digestive tract and can survived being composted. Once your soil is contaminated with these, there is no remedy except to remove all the soil to quite a depth or to wait several years for the residue to break down enough. (However, you can grow grass or grain products in those areas.) I no longer use locally-raised hay unless I know the folks personally who raised it and they can assure me their pastures are not sprayed with Grazon and the other similar products that contain the herbicides in question. I've seen too many people lose their entire garden after years of growing successfully and it is not a risk I want to take. The thought of starting over with a new plot of land and spending a decade to get that soil into the same condition my garden soil is in now is just more than I can bear. You cannot escape the contamination issue in this country because these herbicide residues have been found in commercial, bagged compost and manure products that were made from hay, straw and grass/grain that was sprayed with these herbicides.

2) E. coli contamination. In limited cases, some leafy crops have been contaminated with E. coli from animal manure. You can avoid this by hot-composting your manure and by never spraying manure tea on leafy crops. If I use manure tea (and I've switched mostly to alfalfa tea because of the growth hormones in alfalfa) at all, I apply it to the ground and avoid getting it on the foliage. Several years ago, one of our neighbors' young cattle dogs died after rolling in cow manure. An autopsy later found he's had some sort of open wound in his back, and the vet surmised that E. coli entered through that open cut and infected the dog, eventually killing him.

3) Weed seeds. If you are using local manure given to you by a local rancher, be sure you hot-compost it and that it is fully decomposed before you use it. You need the heat to get high enough to kill the weed seeds or you'll never get rid of all the weeds that the manure brings into your garden. If you are using purchased, bagged manure, it usually has gone through the hot composting process and there will not be an issue with weed seeds. My compost piles always get hot enough in spring, summer and fall, but sometimes the winter piles cannot attain the heat level needed to kill weed seeds or E. coli and other undesirable pathogens, so when I build a fresh compost pile in winter, I don't add manure to it. If I have any cow manure at that point in time, I compost it separately and wait until it has heated up a lot in spring or summer before I use it for anything. People here (since we're surrounded by ranchers) offer me manure all the time, but I mostly turn it down since they all use conventional chemicals and I want to avoid those.

Dawn

Thanks, Dawn. I was aware of all of those but was secretly hoping that cows had some magical digestion process that took care of #1. LOL There is just no way to beat that one, is there? Guess I'll stick with what the chickens give me. We do a deep litter so there's just not a whole lot of it very quickly. There are less and less things I trust to put in my garden each year and that's sad.

Turns out that garden center near my mom's only carried TomatoTone and only in the small bags. My search continues... Of course, I need to figure out how much I think I'll need for a year before I make a purchase but I assume a 4-pound bag will not cut it.

Off to do some figuring and then continue my search.

Diane

After some initial searches, it seems that the best online buy is from Sears if you do what Jo did. ShipVantage still offers a 30-day trial and Sears carries the 40# bag of Garden-Tone for $27.99. I'll link both in case this helps anyone else.

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/nb_10153_12605_NB_ship+vantage

Here is a link that might be useful: 40# Garden-Tone

If anyone in Tulsa or Jenks orders Epsoma products from Sears this year using their free trial shipping, I want in! I can Paypal you or come to you and give you cash in advance. I burned that bridge last year. :D

Jo

Diane,

I'm the same way in terms of bringing in less and less "outside" material for my garden every year.

I usually put a handful or two in each planting hole when I plant a tomato in the ground. I don't know how to estimate how much a handful is. I have pretty small hands.

In one 4-lb. bag, you'll have about 12 cups.

There's directions on the Espoma website that tell you how much to add if you are adding it directly to an entire bed or row (think it is 3 lbs. per 50 s.f. or, for a single plant, about 3 Tablespoons).

I think they recommend fertilizing at planting time, then side dressing 10-14 days later, and then feeding twice a month. My in-ground plants are lucky if they get fed at planting time and then 2 or 3 weeks later. The ones in containers do get fed Tomato-Tone more often, or at least until I run out of it and then decide "it isn't worth it" to drive to Dallas to get more in July or August or whenever.

Dawn

jo, i'm in! let me figure it out, and i'll email you :)

dody