Hello, I am relatively new at gardening. I’ve done well with tree fruit but not so good with vegetable gardening. Last year I used slow release fertilizer in the garden and it didn’t seem to work that well. Wondering what everyone else uses and how to get it cheap.
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I take a cue from many others on the forum and dilute and distribute my collected liquid gold in order to add (primarily) nitrogen to the soil. I do also collect large quantities of spent cold brew coffee grounds from a local operation, but those I just use as a large scale top dressed mulch on the soil, allowing worms to do the work of tilling it in.
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I put in garden soil then dig a hole, throw some red wrigglers in and my food scraps. Bury the scraps each batch, stop 1.5 month before planting. Fill up the rest with bagged garden soil.
When i plant, I’ll heavy hand some osmocote and scratch it in so the birds don’t try to eat it.
Here’s how my garden looked in the past with this method.
I only do this for my raised garden beds.
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Here’s how it looks this year while i was away. I planted a garden for the new home owners. I moved but left the water on with a timer and my neighbors harvested for me❤️
It’s still a jungle and my zucchinis were HUGE! without seeds yet as well. I didn’t plant the sunflowers or green beans 
they’ve been a weed to me. I planted green beans 3 years ago and they’ve come back every year. The sunflowers, i never planted but i did have a bird feeder where they popped up so I’m guessing they came from there.
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Also, despite what everyone’s told me about “it takes years for egg shells and seafood to decompose”… Within the end of year when we’re pulling things out and turning the soil, there are next to no evidence of either. Most I’ve found have been the main pincer claws of the crabs I eat and some chicken bones 
no egg shells, no nothing.
I sometimes crush the bones of the drumsticks I eat and put it in as well but I usually fill it up with old fruit, veggies, rice, and seafood. Anything that’s really big like pork bones or chicken femurs, i usually don’t but the chicken rib and body, i will.
Mind you, i don’t have the usual pests like raccoons and such though. Only robins and bunnies but i feed them so they stay away from my main garden.
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I did that for 10 years (pit compost) until the word got out to the local rat population. About 5 years ago I switched to the compost tumblers to foil the rats. The mantis one is particular good at it because it is metal and round. The rats trying to get to it slip right off. I have tried several Costco special plastic ones that compost fine. But the rats can chew thru them and gain access. The metal mantis ones are in a class by themselves to foil the rats.
Bigger bones I throw into the wood stove or outside fire pit. They become bone dust.
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I have an admittedly easy climate to grow in - dry and warm summers in northern Utah with snowy winters. I’ve planted tomatoes in the same bed for 15 years with no disease problems.
But for fertilizer when I’m planting seedlings, I dig the hole a little deeper and throw a handful of alfalfa pellets in the bottom (from any feed supply store), add a little soil, and then plant the seedling - tomato, peppers, cucumbers…
I also put all my leaves in the garden in a pile for winter so by the following summer they are matted into wet layers that can be pulled off by hand in pizza sized slices and placed around each plant to hold down weeds, retain moisture, not blow around, and the worms eat them up all summer, providing castings…they’re gone by fall.
That’s really all I do…
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Thankfully I’ve only had to deal with small, but oddly friendly mice.
Sadly, i had to close up this area that they entered from and add in some snap traps 
but when i was pregnant, all the animals were SUPER friendly. This one sat beside me.
I was sitting on the steps to my back porch and heard a tiny ruffle of leaves. Looked down and saw I had a new friend.
I get good results using generic organic granular [fertilizer] (https://www.concentratesnw.com/?product=concentrates-purpose-fertilizer-5-5-3-organic-20) (5-5-3) along with some compost and fish emulsion.
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I use anywhere between 1 to 4 cups of granular fertilizer while planting the starts in late spring. e.g. 2-3 cups for squash a cup for tomato.
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Use fish emulsion once a week from late spring to mid July until the plants are grown to their mature size.
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Reapply granular again in end of July in 1/2 quantity.
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Z6a here.
I use commercial urea instead. 46-0-0. Cheap enough although I have to buy it from a landscape supply place instead of Home Depot around here. I go ahead and make a fairly generous direct application in late fall a couple of weeks after dormancy. Not much chance of burn and the Urea has a chance to break down into more useable (by the plant) components by early spring.
I get a load of wood chips early every spring in my pickup and decompose it with the urea. (Roughly 6-10 pounds of Urea per full-size half-ton pickup load.) To mimic animal urine, it only takes 2, 3 oz.or so, dissolved in a five gallon bucket of water—about a sippy cup full—- to duplicate that, to put things in perspective.
I’ve gotten to the point where I have a year or two lead time before I need to use it. So decomposing it as efficiently as possible isn’t real critical. Also, a modest amount of half-decomposed chips makes a good mulch during growing season.
I invested in a soil test of my wood-chip compost. I visualized my pile spread on the soil maybe an inch or two deep, guesstimated the square footage and added the indicated nutrients based on that, one half a few weeks after the decomposition has started so that the pile has gained some absorbency, then, a few weeks after that has had a chance to sink in, I turn it over and do the same on the other side. By the time it is “finished” as they say, it is like rich soil, but no more than that. I think it important to resist the temptation to turn it into a vitamin pill for your plants.
The wood-chip composition doesn’t change much from year to year around here allowing me to use the same recipe year-after-year, buying just what I need in terms of ferts. Overall, reasonably cost-effective. You don’t want to go crazy with N ferts for fruit trees anyway.
Th finished product is quite acidic, so keep up with the Ph testing.
With screening, (rabbit wire is about right,) the addition of Turface pebbles, (also available at the landscape supply store,) vermiculite, you can turn it into soil for your raised beds and sidestep the “container soil” ripoff at the stores.
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I’ve always used whatever combination of animal manure and leafy vegetable matter was available currently/locally. I used to mulch the vegetable garden during the growing season with a thick layer of rotting alfalfa (highly nutritious stuff), then in the winter I’d dig that in along with whatever cow, sheep or horse manure I could get. I’d let the chickens into the garden during the winter too; they’d help with the digging, root up tough weeds like bermuda grass, and turn food scraps into good manure.
Now I grow everything in containers in a small greenhouse, and fill the containers with pure compost I make by layering vegetable matter and manure - these days, mostly cottonwood leaves and mule poop - with the soil from last season’s containers.
It’s fun to turn any available organic waste material into food, and keep the cycle going. You could read up on what makes good compost with a good nutrient balance for your local conditions, or just experiment with whatever’s locally available as I and others here have done. It really doesn’t matter if you “sheet compost” (i.e. just spread it all in the garden) or make compost piles; I only do the piles because of growing in small containers, and get an extra upper-body workout turning them over. Just don’t put overly-fresh manure directly on growing plants and you’ll probably do fine.
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when my animal manure isnt broken down enough to use in the beds i buy large bags of blood / fish bone meal and a bag of azomite from walmart. i add about 10c blood, 5c bone and a few cups azomite in a 4’ x 12’ raised bed in April and plant in May, the next year ill just add about 10 shovelfuls of composted chic manure.
Ive found fertilizer brands really dont ake a huge difference. Ive had great luck with my veggie garden and little luck with my fruits. Honestly a generic fertilizer has worked best at planting time and then depending on the veggies depends on a follow up. Corn gets another side dressing of high nitrogen about knee high and at tassel. Onions get an ammonium sulfate side dressing when they start to bulk. Potatoes I usually get Dr earth organic and and a handful of sulfur to help against scab. Outside of that my tomatoes really take off with the generic water soluble miracle grow. Also, drip irrigation is a game changer.
A soil high in organic matter with good tilth and drainage is where you should probably begin. Also be sure it is in a desirable pH range. Additional fertilizer is something you use to tweak productivity but production is mostly the result of the soil itself.
As someone suggested, I also use my own urine to give my plants a boost of readily available N early in the season- it is also extremely high in K with enough P for most plants because of ready availability. Once the plants in my garden reach middle development they don’t really need anything besides what they draw from my high organic matter soil.
My garden is generally the most productive that visitors, including gardeners, have ever seen- with a couple of exceptions. Okra and egg plant don’t do very well. The egg plant need protection from flea beetles and apparently okra in my region needs almost dawn to dusk sun. If I cared more about egg plant I’d use floating row fabric, but usually my low production plants give us more than we need.
Besides the fact that my soil has benefitted from years of organic mulching a big advantage is that I use the so-called French intensive gardening technique with big raised beds unsupported with rigid frames. The idea is to make the soil naturally well aerated by creating a land-slide affect, but I think it is mainly just the raised beds that give me a leg up, if only because they warm up earlier than a less elevated method.
Fast release N is fast release N no matter the source. Any form will give plants an early boost in cool soil. P is supposed to also be a problem for many plants when soils are cool and mycorrhizal action is not adequate. The problem is you don’t want to add too much of it to soil and create an imbalance of excess P that is very difficult to correct. Using diluted human urine in spring works for me. OM only releases adequate N and P when it warms up.
Rich people I work for often have landscape contractors create productive veg gardens by using nothing but an artificial sand and compost mix contained within raised beds supported by wood. No one worries much about supplementary fertilizer and the gardens are always productive.
I prefer the challenge of starting with natural soil.
I find it amusing that you ace fruit tree growing but fail at vegetables. You must not be located in the humid region. Here, the vegetable garden is much less challenging than the orchard, as long as you control caterpillars. Frequent BT apps take care of them if you don’t want to use synthetic pesticides, which may require far fewer apps.
I would not say that I ace fruit growing by any means. I get production on most of my trees but If I had to make money doing this I would lose my shirt. The only reason I’m better at growing fruit trees than gardening is because I have done it for much longer. Gardening is a more recent adventure for us. Also, I’ve been a member if this message board since the beginning so that has helped. We did well on tomatoes last year and a few other things. Terrible on lettuce.
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Sorry, when I wrote that I forgot I was writing to you.
No problem.
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