The only organic I recommend for citrus is Espoma Citrus Tone.

I bought that! I was wondering if I can add that around the plants I am currently giving the Jack's professional and AS to.

I recommend a fish emulsion and worm/insect castings for containers and fish emulsion and composted chicken/cow manure for in ground veggies, flowers and fruit. In the article you mention, the author is using a highly processed version ("liquid hydrolyzed fish product") of what I use (fish emulsion) as an example. The author is using this product because of it ease of use in a large scale, inline fertilizer mixing apparatus. This is connected directly to the irrigation system for automated fertilization of crops. An awesome tool, but unless you have fields and fields of crops then you probably don't need one (or can afford one) and subsequently don't need to buy such an expensive product. The fish emulsion I use for flowering is still several times more expensive then a chemical fertilizer (by weight of nutrients), but not twenty times more expensive and is applied in much smaller, more frequent amounts. This makes it about as cost effective as the chemical fertilizer in my books. Personally I would stick with one or the other. Chemical fertilizers can negate many of the positive effects that organic fertilizers cultivate.

Some good information:

http://www.fao.org/agriculture/crops/thematic-sitemap/theme/spi/soil-biodiversity/case-studies/soil-biological-management-with-beneficial-microorganisms/en/

Also check out FAQ #5, if not the whole thing:

http://organiclifestyles.tamu.edu/soil/microbeindex.html

Hope you enjoy the reading material :)

Thank you! Just what I needed to get more informed. I'm thinking for now that a combination will help me because of the dire immediate need for nutrients along with a desire to keep long term ground quality in mind.

Thanks for the responses! It has really helped me think through options, and I think my strategy for now is to continue organics for my flowers and vegetables, which have done well on that for years, and save the Jack's and AS for the citrus. That might be a better way of doing a combination, rather than trying to do both for one plant.

I have found the organic fertilizers very unreliable while the others very reliable. I have also noticed that the chemical ones are readily available to my tree verses the organics that take quite some time to make a difference and only if you have good b iota in the pot which hardly ever happens like in ground...

Before coming here years ago, I was a true 'ORGANIC' grower and use all the stuff that is available out there from worm casting, Epsom salts, coffee grinds, cold pressed 'fish emulsion', Neptune's Harvest' in particular, liquid beneficial bacteria, shark, bone meal, citrus tone and so on. None have ever lived up to what chemical fertilizers do for my trees and in fact many have clogged up my mixes and suffocated the roots over time or encouraged salt accumulations..

Mike

If you want to see the difference between citrus grown with organics, and citrus grown with conventional fertilizers, the next time you are at the supermarket compare the grapefruit on the organic shelf and the grapefruit on the regular (chemical grown ) shelf. I was at the supermarket a couple days ago and the organic grapefruit were just the size of an orange. The quality was lower and the price was higher.

My father bought 2 acres from an old orange grove in Glendora CA in the early 60s to build a house on. Glendora was prime citrus country up until the post war population boom in suburban southern CA. After the house was built we had about 1.25 acres of Washington navels that were probably 40+ years old. Up the road from us lived the old guy in his 70s who had spent his life working the citrus groves. He used ammonium nitrate fertilizer, 34-0-0, on all of our trees. You can't get that easily anymore because you can make bombs with it and diesel oil, that's what Timothy McVeigh used in the OK bombing. So now I buy ammonium sulfate from Orchard Supply Hardware. It might even be better than nitrate since southern CA soil is usually alkaline although at 21-0-0 its total Nitrogen content is lower. If I didn't have an easy and close source for the sulfate I would look for lawn fertilizer sales at the big box stores. Not the kind with herbicides or pre-emergent weed killers, just straight lawn fertilizer with a high Nitrogen content. Citrus needs N more than anything else.

And anyone who has only bought waxy, inert Washington navels from a store has no idea what an amazing fruit it can be when picked from an established tree after a long season of ripening.