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Reduce and re-use is really possible with organic gardening. But organic fertilizers still have an important role. This is because harvested fruit, vegetable and flower gardens take a lot out of the soil. And you need to maintain soil nutrients for your fruit and vegetables to provide you with essential nutrition.

When You Need To Use Organic Fertilizers

Most garden soils contain the bare essentials. But that may not be enough and many cultivated plants need more to fully develop.

• When growing nutrient demanding crops
  Brassicas, potatoes... modern varieties of some plants are more demanding - composted or dried manure is essential - and it's available here in clean easy to handle - poultry manure pellets and buttons,
  
• For continuous cropping season to season
  with no breaks in your crop rotation organic fertilizers are very useful as supplements see pelleted poultry manure again.
  
• When growing in containers
  you can make good earth for containers from garden compost, loam, leaf mold, perhaps comfrey leaves and fed with specialised organic fertilizer blends,
  
• For plants growing on the same site for long periods
  e.g. lawns, shrubs, hedges, trees... garden compost and manure is still a great provider - Find more here on lawn and shrub fertilizer,
  
• When growing on thin unfertile ground
  work in manure - continue to use organic fertilizer to make better quality compost, and grow clovers and beans as green manures to dig in. See organic base fertilizer and re-mineralizing rock dust on link here.

Harvest Organic Tomorrow >  Chicken Manure >  Tomato Feed >  Fish Fertilizer >  Bone Meal >  Blood, Fish, Bone

In fact, I always add organic fertilizer for important crops and flowers. But I recycle the green waste through compost and also build moisture retentive, increasingly fertile soil. And the important extra organic fertilizer that I use does no damage and saves waste.

Provide Complete Fertilizers - Keep It Simple And Whole

Growing plants need all the major nutrients and more. Don't focus on N for leaves, P for roots, etc... Remember that you are growing whole plants, not leaves without roots, or flowers without leaves. So avoid single nutrient plant foods.

Correct Problem/Deficient Soils

Move the complete range of nutrients from bagged composted manure and organic fertilizers through your plants and into garden compost. Made from living plants, compost contains all the essential nutrients at an ideal ph and so eventually your garden soil will come right.

Manure and garden compost dramatically improve soil condition too. So I can grow more kinds of plants with fewer worries about drainage and water shortage. And as the earth gets richer and deeper I can grow plants with closer spacing and look forward to bigger harvests and more flowers still.

Discover how dried  chicken manure helps  break open stiffer clays soils.

Alternatives To Fertilizer

• Simply water your plants when dry to bring existing soil nutrients to your plant's roots,
• Grow your plants with a strong healthy root system,
• Maintain healthy soil that's well-aerated, free draining and moisture holding and you'll help most garden plants to bare flowers and fruit in plenty,
• Soil micro-organisms are important for feeding your plants too,
• The organic gardening term 'feed the soil not the plant' recognises all of these benefits. So add organic matter.

Advantages To 'Feeding The Soil'

• You'll be able to grow more types of plant successfully - more free draining, more moisture holding, organically rich, diverse soil micro-organisms support plant growth and condition your soil so it's easier to work,

Does it really work? Of course it does!
Most things that go wrong in gardens are something to do with not keeping the natural connection with soil.
And without chemicals it's really simple - here's what you do.

Now Here's The Brainy Bit About Organic Gardening:- The aim of organic gardening is to be sustainable and reduce external inputs. Plant nutrients are recycled from waste garden plants, fallen leaves, grass cuttings, prunings... through compost... back to the soil and your plants.   And there's more...


In addition, natural methods are used to reduce losses and 'mop up' extra soil nutrients before they are lost. Soil micro-organisms are naturally recruited to incorporate additional free nutrients such as soil nitrogen from N fixing soil micro-organisms. Green manures and cover plants are important too.

Micro-organisms can be inoculated into the soil to boost nitrogen fixing and help plants access extra soil nutrients. Your plants always used these natural fertilizers until cultivation and chemicals degraded the soil. My page on natural fertilizers is being updated.

But many productive crops remove considerable amounts - some that we eat for example - then we usually need to add some fertilizer on top of garden compost. Remember - the nutrient value of your food will suffer if you don't replenish soil nutrients. Composted animal manure is the most important organic fertilizer.

Which Fertilizers Are Acceptable In Organic Gardening And Which Are Not?

My Favourite Organic Fertilizers

• Pelleted Chicken Manure and 6X, use carefully - details on this link...,
• Fish, Blood & Bone, a compound organic or semi-organic fertilizer - varying release rates & usage details on this link...,
• Bone Meal, - pure form is not complete organic fertilizer, details on this link...,
• Seaweed Meal and Liquid Seaweed, find out more...,

Some products are not suitable as organic fertilizers. Consider these:-

• Where does the fertilizer come from? e.g. is seaweed under threat from commercial exploitation? Does mining calcified seaweed destroy marine life? Does your fish fertilizer come from fish waste or fish exploitation?
• Does manufacture use vital resources or involve pollution? e.g. carbon from natural gas burnt for producing chemical nitrogen,
• How does it get to you? e.g. transporting a big load of fresh manure?
• Is it excessive or wasteful? Use of Bat Guano and Urea has attracted many supporters but they are both considered bad for organic gardening,
• Does it destroy soil fertility-building micro-organisms?
• Is it a danger to your plants in its content or by your method of use? e.g. blood meal can be fast acting in warm conditions and with ill-effects on your plants.

I've read the analysis on chemical fertilizers.
Do chemicals provide more nutrients?
In my experience plants get sufficient from organic materials. The extra in chemicals is either not needed or is damaging and wasted. Big farming and gardening are different things.
You can find more on chemical fertilizers here but I suggest you try the links below to grow a healthy organic garden.

Garden Gate

  Click Below To View All My Pages    on organic fertilizers and methods

My Neighbour's Garden Plots

• Find out * more about organic fertilizers from an interesting and enthusiastic gardener.
• Discover how * organic gardening works from this group of poineering organic gardeners.
• For Oregon gardeners Rogue Valley Soil Testing checks your ground so you know what to grow.
  
  
• Home Of The Organic Gardener