tomato fertlizer.

[flowerbug]

Not long at my house. Mine all escaped through the drainage holes in their tub and I found them dried out on the basement floor.

have to keep worm buckets covered too or they may wander at night, i use fine mesh cloth to keep fruit flies and fungus gnats and other bugs from getting in or out. the rubber o-rings from bucket tops are perfect for keeping covers on.

because i can go on at length repeatedly i'll just put this link here:

http://www.anthive.com/project/worms/


and a bonus track about taters and veggie scraps:

http://www.anthive.com/project/taters/

 

[Titan Farm]

@ducks4you
I agree with the things you said except where you said if you over fertilize you will have many, many leaves and not too much fruit, that part is incorect. If your feeding a balanced fertilizer or one that has a higher
phosphorus amount than the nitrogen then you will have a good fruit set and if your feeding the latter of the two you'll get better fruit set than growth. It all about feeding the right fertilizer at the right time.

 

[ducks4you]

I can agree with that.

 

[flowerbug]

too much fertilizer at any time is wasted and a pollutant if it leaches into the groundwater or is in runoff. i don't think it makes any sense to add things to a garden if there are no signs of deficit.

my experience differs with different kinds of peppers. if i plant the sweet green bell pepper California Wonder directly into the worms/etc that i use i will get heavy green growth but not many peppers. if i plant the sweet red bell peppers into that exact same stuff i get a good crop from them. and i know it is only that one variable that changes because i usually put all my peppers in the same gardens so the soil and watering and light is the same.

 

[Nyboy]

Stuffed Bell Peppers

 

[flowerbug]

Stuffed Bell Peppers

we've made thousands of them. we've been planting more red peppers the past few years and only a few green pepper plants, but still manage to make several batches of stuffed peppers from them. i roast the red peppers and then freeze them, they're so sweet it's like candy. best eating. i got 24 red pepper plants yesterday and six green pepper plants. that's plenty for us and our other families that we feed at times. all good eats...

 

[Titan Farm]

Yes, there is all ways the treat of runoff and ground water contamination.
But the threat is much less when using a organic nutrient rather than a chemical fertilizer. It's like I said in a past post its all about feeding the right fertilizer or nutrient at the right time.

The thing we have to remember about organic nutrients is this, when you add organic nutrients to the soil the microbes in the soil has to first break down the nutrients in order for the plants to use them, it part of that symbiotic life. Also organic nutrients are more forgiving, if you over apply alfalfa meal, bat guano or even worm castings what isn't used by the microbes and plants is used to build and better your soil.

I also see it like this, adding organic nutrients to a garden on a regular bases will give you a better soil which in turn will give you a better plant that can handle stress, lack of water, pest problems etc. a lot better than one that has minimal nutrition and will give you a better yield at the end of the season than a plant on minimal nutrition.

 

[seedcorn]

Excess fertilizer runs off whether organic or not. If it’s water soluble, it’ll go. If it isn’t water soluble, it’s unavailable to plants.

Nutrients are kept in place by organic matter & clay.

 

[ducks4you]

we've made thousands of them. we've been planting more red peppers the past few years and only a few green pepper plants, but still manage to make several batches of stuffed peppers from them. i roast the red peppers and then freeze them, they're so sweet it's like candy. best eating. i got 24 red pepper plants yesterday and six green pepper plants. that's plenty for us and our other families that we feed at times. all good eats...

I dehydrated my big crop of sweet peppers last year and canned them in quarts. It takes a few minutes in boiling water to REhydrate them to cook with, and DD's eat them from the Ball jar like candy. WELL WORTH the effort of growing and preserving, not matter what your preferred method is.