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Anaheim, CA on Oct 18, 2011

If you had fresh compost to your garden do you still need to fertilize?

I have a wonderful compost pile and I'm afraid of over fertilizing since I did that once. I had beautiful tomato plants with nice shiny green leaves but no tomato. Now I know they had too much nitrogen. Now I'm traumatized! lol

4 Comments

Walter Reeves Decatur, GA

Much depends on the nutrient content of your compost. If it has a lot of green materials such as grass clippings and kitchen vegetables, it probably has an analysis of 2 -1-1. Theoretically you could feed your plant with that analysis - but since you're also adding a lot of organic matter to the soil with the nutrients, your soil might become too water -retentive for vegetables to thrive.
The alternative is to use high nitrogen organic fertilizers such as fish emulsion or blood ...»
meal or other products.
Plants that have big leaves (squash, etc), big fruit (tomatoes) or starchy kernels (corn) appreciate extra nitrogen. Leafy vegetables like lettuce, chard and mustard could probably get what they need from rich compost.

on Oct 18, 2011 · Like 2
Donna Dixson Buford, GA

What did you have or do you have as your compost composition Freida?

on Oct 18, 2011 · Like 1
JL Spring & Associates Richmond, VA

Compost in general will surely help fertilize for you...tomato, pepper and eggplant love it from my experience! Grow On! JL

on Oct 18, 2011 · Like 1
Freida W Anaheim, CA

Sorry I took so long to get back here. My internal drive crashed and I have been fooling with it for a couple of days now. I have kitchen scraps (no meat) and yard leaves and I sometimes go to Starbucks and they give me a big bag of used coffee. I built 2 compost bins out of pallets and they work great. Oh yes Walter! I took a whole bunch of my compost out to a front garden at the beginning of summer and got huge Zucchini! So I guess the compost high in nitrogen would be better on the ...»
greens huh? Makes sense. Now I'm planting peas and thinking they need some of my Black Gold tomorrow! Thanks for your input. This is a nice and informative and friendly place!

on Oct 28, 2011 · Like 1