Grow Your Own Magazine

I've been growing tomatoes,peppers and chillis for the last couple of years in my polytunnel using no pesticides ,but have been feeding them with phostrogen tomato food.I've been very happy with the results.
This year I want to go completely organic but don't know what the best organic replacements are for artificial soluble fertilizers.
Any advice/help greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance ,Ben.

Hi Ben, Organic feeds for plants & veggies
Westland -

__________________
Smile and the world smiles with you

Thanks for the link,Gardenplot.That's just what i'm looking for.

I want to go completely organic and will be giving it a try westland feeds is good i have used it on my plants and will be using it on my veggies this yeay.

__________________
Smile and the world smiles with you

If you live anywhere near the sea you could make your own, I make mine using seaweed gathered from the slipway on the beach, wash it put it in a hessian bag with an equal amount of comfrey and hang the bag in a barrel of water, leave to ferment for a few weeks then use the liquid. refresh the contents of the bag when you top up with fresh water.
put less in the bag for a weaker feed or put more in the bag to make a stronger feed.

Makes a good tomato feed but it absolutely stinks.

Cheers Chris

And, there's comfrey and nettles steeped in water for a few weeks as a liquid feed. Although, I've not tried this yet.

Tracey

HMMM..

Maybe I should add nettles as well

Do these homemade feeds give similar results to proprietry ones?

Sorry I dont know I havent done any compparison tests, maybe I should this year.

Yes Dr. crichmond, maybe you should! We'd all be interested in the results.

__________________
Manda.

"Wouldn't it be nice
For maybe an hour
To not have a care."

thnx 4 the advice

I think the mind thinks that anything like Comfrey tea, nettle tea and sheep muck in a muslin bag hung in a water butt, because it stinks to the high heaven, is going to do the plants good!

Could be termed the 'fresh FYM syndrome'!

There are too many variables to be too exact especially about dosage, but it saves you money, is more ecologically sound than buying additives, and sometimes,............ to grow something exceptionally well with organic fertiliser you've made yourself can boost your feel good factor and make you want to experiment a bit more each year, getting better at it and improving your soil, and crops, as the years go on!

__________________
My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Some years ago when I still had a greenhouse and grew tomatoes, I tried one year out of interest feeding alternate plants with tomorite or an infusion of nettles. It made no difference to the plants, they all grew well with lots of toms. Maybe they don't need feed at all, depend what you grow them in.

__________________
http://www.weltaf.co.uk/
Why keep a dog when you can bark yourself !

I fed my cauliflowers with a mixture of manure/comfrey/nettles steeped in water and they did very well indeed. I'm not sure if it was the feed or the extra water which the feed was delivered in, but the results were so good I'd recommend giving it a go, definitely.
V stinky though.

__________________
All at once I hear your voice
And time just slips away
Bonnie Rait

ive mad liquid fertilizer out of comfrey you can get special barrels for the job, or just cover or paint a plastic bottle black with a teeny hole in the bottom leave the leaves in the bottle to do there work and collect and bottle the liquid as it comes out

agree with muckdiva is smelly though

Found this information -

Comfrey - Rich in potassium and good for tomatoes onions beans and other potash hungry crops.

Borage - Very high in nitrogen and good for greedy vegetables such as squashes and melons. Borage is also a very good plant for attracting bees.

Nettles - A good pick me up for plants and makes them more resistant to disease. A good blanced feed. Added to the compost heap they act as an activator speeding up the decomposition.

Hope this is of interest.

__________________
Gardening requires a lot of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. Lou Erickson, critic and poet

Good idea.Think I might try some with no feed,some with bought feed and some with homemade feed.