Organic Fertilizer For Vegetables: Enrich Your Plants and Your Soil
An organic food garden requires an organic fertilizer for vegetables. But what are the reasons for that? Why is it not possible to use a well known mineral fertilizer?
The reason is that if you do that you garden is no longer strictly organic, and that’s a fact. Why this is so is not to be explained in this article, but in one to come concerning this very aspect.
There are different kinds of organic fertilizers, each having their advantages and disadvantages depending on you, your possibilities and your garden.
If you want a fertilizer that is both a nutiemt supplier and a soil conditioner, horse or cow dung is a good one to choose.
If you want an organic fertilizer that slowly releases the nutrients into the soil you can choose bone dust. This is also good for plants that demand calcium and a high pH value, since bone dust contains a lot of calcium.
Growing a crop and then ploughing it right back into the ground is a method called green manuring. The preferred crop is some kind of leguminous plant since they have the ability to capture nitrogen from the air in coperation with specialized bacteria. This means that you will fertilize your soil with nitrogen rich organic matter, enhancing both nutrient and humus content. One of nature’s free ecological services.
When you mow your lawn you can collect the grass and put it on top of the soil in your beds. When you water, the nutrients in the grass will slowly dissolve and trickle down to the roots. The earthworms will also grab the grass and pull it down into the soil. Moreover, this grass cover will keep the soil moist and uncompact.
There is another fertilizer that, like bone dust, contains calcium, thus making it less of a good choice for your azaleas. This fertilizer is guano, which actually is the same as bird droppings. You find it at your nearest garden supplier.
