Ever heard of using a fish in every hole where you plant a tomato? An egg in every hole? A chunk of horse manure or cow manure or 1/4 cup of chicken manure? What about the shells of a dozen eggs? Lets talk about these supplements and why. We know egg shells are used to prevent blossom end rot in calcium deficient soil. We know npk can be introduced through a variety of methods. You will here of green sand, azomite, small amounts of sea salt being used. Oak leaves, wood chips around the plant. Old hay for mulch. Biochar , green weeds, or a sponge. Some use blood meal, dog food, old kitchen scraps or bones. Fermented Manure teas are used a lot in my area. Some use nothing but worm castings. The list is long and i believe all these things are founded on some truth but tell us what you do and why. Maybe you use just 13-13-13 or miracle grow. I’m not judging chemical or organic methods merely observing your methods. Years ago i watered my tomatoes with fish wastes when i did water changes from the large number of tropicle fish i raised. Believe me fish wastes work their is a reason aquaponics gas gained popularity. Some even use only water and nutrients as hydroponics is becoming more and more popular.
A friend of mine raise Walleyes in a super large greenhouse, a large portion for them, the other side grows just about anything. Uses very little fertilizer. It’s a work of art, how everything works like a charm.
It’s amazing how creative some are. He sells the fish to restaurants only.
Do they eat pellets? I’m very curious about his operation. Sometime you might see if he would mind if you took pictures and documented some of his methods. Having fish and garden produce is difficult to beat. There are people who incorporate in chickens, ducks, pigs, or goats which sounds hard to do but its not. I have known people long ago who had saw catfish the length of your leg due to their farming. What happened was they raised pigs and those pigs were raised on wheat. The pigs went to the stream to drink and wheat from tbeir whiskers stayed in the water which catfish showed up to eat. I have heard of people fishing under mulberry trees since the fish went there to eat mulberries. I have mentioned using a solar light close to the surface of the water to attract insects to a pond that acts as a fish feeder as the bugs fall in the water. Food is plentiful in many places but us humans are not always proficient at utilizing our resources. I’ve made so many mistakes farming they are innumerable. People now im told use crawdads in the south in rotation with rice fields. Their profits are double that of the normal farmer. Truly some ingenious people out there solving some huge problems in agriculture. When i taste lobster, clams, shrimp and others it certainly makes me wish our climate in Kansas was slightly different. I do feel fortunate we can raise tomatoes they are my favorite thing from the garden most years.
The tomato plants that are growing in the water are huge and whatever he grows in there. Haven’t talked to him for awhile. His operation is all first class, something I can,t afford or want. He was a engineer of some kind and about as old as I am, he is a single guy living in a small A frame home that looks small next to his greenhouse.
The idea of using fish for plant fertilizer made me immediately think of this place located a few towns from me. They do a huge service for alternative education in the area school districts.
This guy operation doesn’t looks like the video, not even close, must be state funded.
I have never buried anything with my tomatoes but I buried 3 raccoons with every fruit tree I planted and my trees exploded in growth. I placed them a foot from the center of its tree in an equilateral triangle. I harvested a lot of corn that year.
I recall a guy who used what I was call “raw” compost (basically recent kitchen scraps), and he had some amazing tomatoes. I have a compost pile which is not completely “done” and I am thinking of putting some on my tomatoes.
Once upon a time we buried kitchen scraps in with tomatoes. I’ve used old grains in fruit tree holes as well. Soybeans smells really bad when its wet so its one you want to get underground fast but it makes great fertilizer. Many grains smell like fresh pig manure when wet.
Compost works very well, each year I probably get several hundred volunteers in my compost pile. Each fall I haul in horse manure and straw to build a compost that’s about 20’by 20’. Layers of straw covering layers of manure. The I just let it cook while winter rains keep it cooled down. In spring just before I plant spuds, I till the pile so that I can have fresh compost ready to pouring each hole. Then shortly thereafter, the whole compost is covered in volunteer tomatoes, which usually out perform any other variety that we plant and raise from seed.
There’s a lot to be said for a healthy compost pile. During the growing season it is then planted in zucchini, cucumber, and of course a few tomato volunteers.
By the way if you give your tomatoes a few foliar treatments of Epsom salts and a little calcium supplements with your compost, no other fertilizer is really needed, and the magnesium will greatly enhance the acidity of your fruit.
I have put a variety of vegetables, including tomato, 9" away from a pile of mostly fresh grass clippings say 3’x3’x2’ high .
Runoff from pile into roots promotes plant growth
I put a few cups of fish waste- scraps leftover from cleaning some big striped bass- under my tomatoes once. They were a good foot deep. Some animal dug up every single tomato one night and destroyed my tomatoes in the process. Now I stick to side-dressing with horse manure.
ive put strait scraps under my trees and bushes and buried it in woodchips. did wonders. i think as long as it isnt turned into the soil it wont hurt them.
During the winter, I dust the area fairly well with wood ashes from my wood stove. That adds calcium, potassium, and some other minerals. I have acidic soil so it works out well. We make our own dog food, the meat portion is chicken thighs. The bones from that get dried and also go into the wood stove. That adds calcium and phosphorus. My soil test states the calcium level was low, so this is good.
I also go through a lot of coffee. The grounds go onto the soil and get worked into the soil. They add nitrogen, carbon, and support soil microorganisms. I also add crushed eggshell, a lot of it. More calcium, also nitrogen from the protein membranes. Through the winter I fertilized my garlic with eggshell and coffee ground, and those look like corn plants now - huge. I hope the garlic bulbs are also good.
During the summer, I bury the chicken bones between the tomato plants. My garden is fenced in so no animals dig them up. Most disappear through the year.
Edit: Oh, one more thing, we do our own haircuts, so that goes there too, for nitrogen and sulfur. There’s not much of that. However, my dog is like a sheep. His hair goes into the compost.
I’ve heard the Epsom Salt story about Tomatoes for years. I’ve always been skeptical.
Recently I saw a graph from a researcher showing that at certain stages of the growth cycle there is more uptake of Magnesium and Potassium than even N. Close, but ahead.
I’ve decided not to get too wrapped around the axle about this stuff. I’m leery about using manures for food crops. Otherwise I would put lots of chicken manure in there if I had a ready supply. I’ve inadvertently turned a caliche outcropping into a kind of a permaculture thing that way so I’m a believer.
I’ve had soil tests run on my compost heap which I break down using Urea and Calcium Nitrate. I spike it with real-chemical-name ferts as indicated and call it a day. I try to resist the urge to go beyond “fertile loam” to “vitamin pill for plants”.
One very real and potential problem using municipal composts and manures is herbicide contamination. Once I contaminated tomatoes with manure and then last year ruined my tomatoes with compost.
Tomatoes and grapes are sensitive to the presence of herbicides in the millionth of percents.
This year I went with alfalfa hay (the farmer said it hadn’t been sprayed), and Milorganite.
maybe thats why my 2 grapes never came back this spring. i did use some round up type weed killer about 2 ft away last fall…
Round up type, as in glyphosate?
Glyphosate is pretty easy to use, and does not have long term effects. But many products with glyphosate (including certain Round Up formulations) have longer lasting herbicides that will wreck anything around the spray area, whereas glyphosate will only affect the plants it was sprayed on, and only if those surfaces were green tissue.
I have so many plants I have found it hard to feed everything. I use organic and chemica. My go to is time released fertilizer. Once and done. Supplement with organic fertilizer. They make some excellent time released products I’m trying out a few. This year I’m using hyr-brix fruit and berry fertilizer. So far I’m impressed. Although it is an excellent year I’m not exactly sure why? I have the best fruit set I ever had. That is more environmental though. From strawberries to pluots the fruit set is outstanding. Anyway I think I’m going to stick with this time release. I’m trying their fertilizer for corn this year too. Again a once a season fertilizer.