It’s maybe about 5 pounds. Anyways, I have been thinking about how to benefit from its usage without experiencing drawbacks. Basically, how to get more food at a cost effective rate without slowing down the gains I want from my landrace projects.
I am afraid this fertilizer will inadvertently skew my landrace results. Some plants that would be culled in a no fertilizer or homemade natural fertilizer situation might be more successful in a synthetic fertilizer situation.
What if using this fertilizer will create the conditions that favor varieties who do not form relationships well with soil microorganisms? What if this practice would select against varieties that would engage in good relationship with microorganisms? I’ve read or heard that using synthetic fertilizer changes the relationship the plant has with the microorganisms.
I’ve also heard that plant mothers pass on a memory to their seeds to expect and prepare for certain conditions such as free food.
I’ve got (5) buckets that are 5 gallons each with tops. In those, I have been brewing and using my own homemade fertilizers that are basically rotting weeds and other vegetable waste. A few of those buckets have been in active use for about a year. I probably have more anaerobic bacteria in there than there are people in this world. I wonder if I could feed this bag of fertilizer to those microorganisms. Maybe they can convert it to a more beneficial form?
My goal is to keep enough plants alive to create some hybrids. I’ll build a fence to keep the deer out if necessary (probably will have to), I’ll fertilize if I have to. And I plan to weed my garden to give my plants a chance, at least as much as I am able to. I’ll even put some sevin dust and go around mashing bugs if I have to. You have to save some seed to be able to start a Landrace.
ya i agree with Rylan, the goal is to garden the way you want to garden, and pick the best plants for the way you garden. Sure, if you did it the hardest way possible for the plants then when you give them fertilizer they’ll get even better, but still the goal is to make plants that are perfect for the way you do stuff
This is a really interesting question! Thanks for asking. My own conclusions about synthetic fertilizer are also very negative, so while I’ve no interest in using them I’m likewise curious if there’s any genuinely good use they can be put to. Like maybe growing food in poor soil in emergency conditions - - but a short-lived emergency a season away?
If you’re just starting to regenerate human-degraded conditions, maybe you could use it to grow a mean cover crop mix. Perhaps the net effect on soil biology is positive?
Riffing on a point you made, RegAg circles regularly tout the damage synthetic fertilizers cause to soil biology. I believe this to be correct, but am less familiar with the literature than I would like. I do wonder if any damage caused by a single application of synthetic fertilizer to degraded land growing a regenerative cover crop mix would be offset by the effects of the mix itself.
I can’t think of any way to use it for anything directly related to growing landraces - - cover cropping and growing condition management in general seem to be outside of its intended scope, and with good reason.
Maybe somebody who thinks more conventionally about gardening might appreciate the fertilizer?
For your proposed use I’m afraid I have no idea. Another interesting thought!
Synthetics do impact soil life and interrupt relationships with plants but I can’t see that a one off use could have that much long term impact. You can make it more microbe friendly by ‘humifying’ it - mixing it first with something like worm compost extract or similar.
How about saving it specifically for crops you’re having a hard time getting to grow without fertilizer, so that you can get to the point that you can save a first generation of seeds from them?
The reason I’m not interested in fertilizer (outside of compost or manure) is that chemistry fertilizer steps in and stops the commerce of the plants and microbes. It hops in like Walmart and non of the mom and pop stores can survive.
If the plant is spoon fed chemical fertilizer then it doesn’t bother to learn how to be a plant that has to interact with the microbes and organisms in the soil that make nutrients available to plants.
I can see in some situations that you are working with what you have and the soil may be near sterile. If you have no soil life for plants to interact with then using some fertilizer to help grow cover crops and establish plants to work up healthier soil. Etc.
I have noticed this fertilizer has chlorine, up to 13% of its contents. This is relevant to the idea of adding it to my homemade fertilizer brew. I avoid adding fresh tap water to it when I am making it because of the chlorine content. I either add rain water or let the tap water sit out for at least a couple days to let the chlorine evaporate.
Adding this fertilizer to it I feel would be a bad idea.
Thank you all for the ideas. This fertilizer was so cheap, hard to pass up. Anyways, I think what I am going to do is use it on my tomatoes and cucurbits AFTER I have made my seed selections. I am selecting for earliness. Once I have enough early seed, then I will start using this fertilizer to increase food production cost effectively.
If anyone can spot a hole in this strategy, please let me know.
I’m not a microbiologist, but I know my school garden is being used for research re: the effects of varying fertilization strategies [conventional, intentional/aggressive topdressing with compost (us), and truly lazy gardening] on soil microbiology. I expect to hear preliminary findings soon comparing the latter two.
Personally, I minimize use of conventional fertilizers in the garden but topdress with a couple inches of compost each year and maintain an always-decaying mulch layer on top for water management- in my climate, that reduces irrigation needs by over 50%. But, I do topdress with some cheap conventional fertilizer the first couple years after converting an area from grass to vegetable production, knowing that I’m starting from a very nitrogen deficient state and being in a bit of a hurry to get into production.
I shy away from using anything like that in my garden. I just think, without any real evidence to point to that any sort of chemical is probably bad for the soil in the long run. And, I don’t know what kind of residual effect it might have or how long it would take to be rid of it once applied.
This is the second time recently I’ve heard of purposely encouraging anaerobic bacteria. The other was a presentation by I don’t remember who, that anaerobic composting had some benefit. I’m curious about that because I have never been a fan of anaerobic bacteria. It can produce some pretty bad toxins and smells bad, at least when it happens in an overly compacted and overly wet pile.
Does rotting the weeds submerged in water create the anaerobic conditions? Because I often do that too, just not in a sealed container. What are the expected benefits of the anerobic bacteria?
Here’s my opinion. I am not an expert, but I have thought through this.
What happens in my liquid rotting buckets is the bacteria (mostly anaerobic) consume this rotting material. They live, produce offspring, and die. This process repeats many times. The stink is awful when I open the lids and use it, but I’ve gotten used to it.
When I pour this liquid which includes the dead bodies of billions of bacteria and their by products, it provides the plants with immediate plant available nutrition,
Also, the soil microbiology love to eat this stuff too. Any living microbes that are in this liquid when I pour it are then introduced to a hostile, foreign, new environment in which they get outcompeted and consumed.
So to answer your question, I don’t do this to introduce microbes in the soil. I do this for the nutrition benefit.
Last, I expect not a lot of scientific facts are available on this practice because there is not money in it. I believe the provable studies are backed by companies who pay for these studies, and they pay for studies that have the potential to make them money. There is no money in the gardner who makes his own fertilizer from his weeds.
This is basically just Jadam’s liquid fertilizer, and yes, if you leave it like that it does exactly what Austin is talking about (at least that’s the theory, I don’t know how much science is behind jadam). The other option is to get leaf mold and put it in a bucket with some mashed potatoes for 24 hours and that’ll get you living good bacteria. It’s kinda the backbone of that entire method
Oh, so that’s how it works! I didn’t realize the point was to create more dead bacteria, rather than more living ones! That makes sense – loads of nutrition right there for plant roots to uptake.
Years ago I started experimenting with some anaerobic buckets. However, I haven’t put any more effort into them since finding out how toxic hydrogen sulfide (a potential byproduct) is.
I imagine there are probably safe ways of handling all this, so folks who are interested and do their research beforehand should be okay. For me personally, since I have plenty of space to compost the potential benefits weren’t worth the effort/worry.
So, the sought after fertilizer product is the dead bacteria? Interesting idea but I also have plenty of space and don’t see a need for messing with it.
There are lots of example of good living anaerobic bacteria that help plants-- like lactic acid bacteria. Other ones fix nitrogen, break down organic materials. It’s like everything probably and a diversity is good. They’ve been stigmatized by certain famous people, but IMO improperly and we shouldn’t be so wary. Ones that make alcohol definitely probably not too good for plants, but that’s a small percentage.
Is the type of bacteria in fermented foods good for plant roots? I ask because I often have yoghurt containers sitting around after eating plain yoghurt. If I filled them with soil with bothering to wash them first, would the leftover yoghurt vestiges be beneficial to the plants that go in them?
