is fish emulsion enough food for my plants?

D

DasBhut

My soil has some black kow manure/cheap home depot potting soil, and I used myco on the seeds so the roots should be pretty healthy
 
do I need to give them more than just fish emulsion every week?
 
If it was my choice Id feed them a good NPK fert every two weeks and worm tea and liquid seaweed once or twice a month.
Thats what I did with my plants last yr and they loved it! I also added a bit of bonemeal when I transplanted the plants.
 
megahot said:
If it was my choice Id feed them a good NPK fert every two weeks and worm tea and liquid seaweed once or twice a month.
Thats what I did with my plants last yr and they loved it! I also added a bit of bonemeal when I transplanted the plants.
Click to expand...
 
what NPK fert did you use
 
If you're talking pepper plants, be aware you'll want to give them calcium once they start producing. This both helps production and helps prevent BER (blossom end rot.) I and many others on here use Botanicare's CalMag - my pepper plants love the stuff. 
 
As far as anything else goes, peppers are related to tomatoes, so you can use any fertilizer that's formulated for tomatoes. 
 
geeme said:
If you're talking pepper plants, be aware you'll want to give them calcium once they start producing. This both helps production and helps prevent BER (blossom end rot.) I and many others on here use Botanicare's CalMag - my pepper plants love the stuff. 
 
As far as anything else goes, peppers are related to tomatoes, so you can use any fertilizer that's formulated for tomatoes. 
Click to expand...
would 200 egg shells cooked and mixed into the soil +some epsom salt do the same as cal mag?
 
As for your initial question regarding emulsion: Fish emulsions are the byproducts of byproducts....hydrolysates are FAR superior to emulsions. I would suggest making your own. Its as easy as wiping your butt. Take fish, chop it up, add water, allow to ferment outside, stir daily, within two weeks you have the BEST "fertilizer" you can ever have. Period. 
 
As for calcium: its not as it seems. Lots of people here grow in "soiless sterile mediums" so of course they run into problems with deficiencies. If you have a well built, living soil and your composting practices are good, then you wont need to buy "calmag". Jesus this site is probably solely responsible for that companies staying alive! lol! Feed the Soil! 
 
Dig a hole, dump a bunch of scraps from the dinner table, cover the hole back up and let it be for several months. There you go.. organic living soil. If you want to speed things up, sprinkle some bokashi bran on it before you cover it up.
 
cactusMD said:
would 200 egg shells cooked and mixed into the soil +some epsom salt do the same as cal mag?
Click to expand...
 
I looked into this before, and have mixed thoughts on it because it gets mixed reviews. Also, I tend to trust more in research data provided by educational institutes doing ag research (such as New Mexico State University) and ag agencies than in general gardening sites, and I'm just not finding good data on the use of egg shells like this from institutions and agencies. From what I have found from those types of sources, though, is that crushed shells tend to work best when added to the compost pile and are allowed time to break down, rather than when added directly to soil. That said, I haven't done a comparison myself - I've only used CalMag, and that was after researching the egg shell method and other calcium supplement brands. So my personal perspective is to use what you can afford or have time for. I don't have enough plants to use more than a quart of CalMag over two seasons, so I don't consider that prohibitively expensive for me. But likely if I had a ton of plants, I'd give the egg shell method a try at least.
 
Pepper-Guru said:
As for your initial question regarding emulsion: Fish emulsions are the byproducts of byproducts....hydrolysates are FAR superior to emulsions. I would suggest making your own. Its as easy as wiping your butt. Take fish, chop it up, add water, allow to ferment outside, stir daily, within two weeks you have the BEST "fertilizer" you can ever have. Period. 
 
As for calcium: its not as it seems. Lots of people here grow in "soiless sterile mediums" so of course they run into problems with deficiencies. If you have a well built, living soil and your composting practices are good, then you wont need to buy "calmag". Jesus this site is probably solely responsible for that companies staying alive! lol! Feed the Soil! 
Click to expand...
 
 
lol man you are right about that! I think for most of us is just knowing how to make sure your soil is "living". I didn't do compost tea last year and just used fish emulsion and seaweed extract. My plants did fine but I experienced BER on quite a few different plants. This year I've switched to a local potting mix and going to try just using compost tea/fish emulsion. Maybe this will keep my soil "living"? Situational for everyone I understand.
 
Sorry Cactus, not to side track from your question. I had good growth last year with Fish Emulsion. I just used "Alaskan" that I bought at Lowe's. Seemed to work fine but man talk about stink! The type I bought was 5-1-1 so a little heavy on the N side of the scale which can cause good growth, lots of leaves, and not many flower/pods. So i'd recommend something along with it. As stated above I'm using a compost tea along with Fish Emulsion this year. Got to just try what works for your situation seems to be what I've found out over the past few years. What works for me in dry/windy west texas is probably complete opposite for you in nice humid Florida.
 
I've read of people just using a compost tea and that's it while having great results.
 
Just remember it's much easier to OVER care than UNDER care your peppers.
 
I think I'll just use canal water, egg shells/table scraps in the dirt,  and fish fertilizer (it's freeze dried powdered anchovies/sardines)

one major thing I noticed about all my sprouts is that the sprouts I didn't use tap water on came up earlier, are growing A LOT faster, and have a better color.

my guess is the chlorine in the water is messing with them, but I have a canal a few feet from my backyard so as long as I feed them fish powder and canal water (lots of turtle manure and microbes) they should be fine.

that's probably also why compost tea is so good for plants, not really because of the nutrients but because you're not killing all the microbes around the plant every time you use it
 
cactusMD said:
I think I'll just use canal water, egg shells/table scraps in the dirt,  and fish fertilizer (it's freeze dried powdered anchovies/sardines)

one major thing I noticed about all my sprouts is that the sprouts I didn't use tap water on came up earlier, are growing A LOT faster, and have a better color.

my guess is the chlorine in the water is messing with them, but I have a canal a few feet from my backyard so as long as I feed them fish powder and canal water (lots of turtle manure and microbes) they should be fine.

that's probably also why compost tea is so good for plants, not really because of the nutrients but because you're not killing all the microbes around the plant every time you use it
Click to expand...
 
Yes, that's right. Just so you know, if you have to use tap water and are afraid of the chlorine, just leave some of it sitting out for a day and the sun should kill off most if not all of that chlorine. We get a local report from the water company once or twice a year showing a total list of what all is actually found in our tap water here. Good to know. You could probably call your water company and request a copy.
 
If you soak the shells in vinegar for a few days then dry the vinegar off you will be left with relatively free calcium you can mix with water and feed your plants. The shells should mostly dissolve.
 
I'd go along with Spicy, here. A 5-1-1 fish fert with bone meal to supplement should work well. Bone meal gives a good dose of phosphorous and calcium though it raises the N levels.
 
Pepper-Guru said:
As for your initial question regarding emulsion: Fish emulsions are the byproducts of byproducts....hydrolysates are FAR superior to emulsions. I would suggest making your own. Its as easy as wiping your butt. Take fish, chop it up, add water, allow to ferment outside, stir daily, within two weeks you have the BEST "fertilizer" you can ever have. Period. 
 
As for calcium: its not as it seems. Lots of people here grow in "soiless sterile mediums" so of course they run into problems with deficiencies. If you have a well built, living soil and your composting practices are good, then you wont need to buy "calmag". Jesus this site is probably solely responsible for that companies staying alive! lol! Feed the Soil! 
 
Maybe someone (you) needs to write up a basic tutorial on building a "living soil".  :drooling: 
Click to expand...
 
Pepper-Guru said:
There is already an ongoing soil thread. Lots of great info in there :)


BUT I guess a nice comprehensive guide to building a living soil thread wouldn't take me that long.... :)
Click to expand...
 
 
Yes, on types of soils to use, but a guide on starting living soil and keeping it alive would be great! I can already picture what most of it would say just by being around you guys for this long, but a nice guide would be an easy way to obtain all that info in one go ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top