One of the other things that I learned in 2009 was that buying your supplies, of any type (seedlings, fertilizer, or tools) from a garden supply or nursery center is amazingly expensive. I live just down the road from a well known residential nursery center and while they do carry anything I would need, they seem to want far more for it than I think is reasonable. In 2009 my garden was a hobby. Our house hold had two working adults, so money put into the garden wasn’t all that important. It certainly wasn’t an economically minded venture.
The end of 2009 brought a lot of change. First one of us was out of work, and a few months later so was the other. After 3 months of zero outside income, the amount of cash available to hobbies is now zero as well. The book “Gardening When It Counts” by Steve Solomon is my new favorite book all over again. Even though both of us are blessed with great jobs again going into the spring of 2010, the mind set as definitely changed from ‘garden hobby’ to ‘garden as low cost high quality food’.
Part of that is now reflected in the title of my page. No longer just a garden blog, but also a food blog. What happens to the vegetables from seed to stomach.
The biggest shift for me is thinking about my little 1,000 sq ft garden as if it were a for-profit farm. WWFD is my new gardening slogan. What Would a Farmer Do? A farmer wouldn’t pay $3 a pound for fertilizer like I did last year (Dr. Earth by the 4lb box, $12). He wouldn’t skimp out on cheap seeds with bad germination and poor genes either.
My first act of Farmer-ness is to make my own organic fertilizer. Thankfully my paperback-bound-mentor Steve Solomon gives a full chapter on soil amendments including his recipe for his ‘complete organic fertilizer’, which he calls COF for short. It is made of some interesting things I figured would be nightmarish to track down. Things like seed meals (mostly husks and byproducts from oil manufacturing, bloodmeal.. ground and dried animal parts (lovely huh), and various other things like lime, dolomite, gypsum and basalt. WWFD.. he’d go to the feed supply store. Turns out I have one right beside the nursery.
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The thing about farmers is they generally don’t just have 1,000 sq ft. They generally have a LOT of sq ft. As such, the best bang-for-buck per ingredient is the 50 pound bag.
Steve’s recipe calls for 4 parts of a seed meal. Any seed meal will work (expect for coprameal, which isn’t as nutritious) DeYoung’s Farm Supply, where I got my stuff from, had two different kinds of seed meal.. Alfalfa meal and Cottonseed meal. I got 50 pounds of each. I put 2 parts of each meal into my first batch. |
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This is what the alfalfa meal looks like. It has a very pleasant smell.. sort of like dried hay.. which isn’t far off. |
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The cottonseedmeal comes in the same bag (both with a small tag stapled to the top describing the contents). The actual meal itself is slightly lighter in color and has roughly the same smell and texture as the alfalfa meal.
A quick note about cottonseedmeal from Steve’s book says that cotton isn’t a food crop and can therefore be more heavily sprayed with pesticides not qualified for human consumption. He notes that during the processing of the cotton all of the oil residues (which include the pesticides) are extracted under extreme heat, leaving the meal entirely free of any pesticide residues. He also notes that these cottonseed oils that are extracted contain all of the pesticide residues… these oils ARE used in processed foods. Something to think about when choosing your next salad dressing. |
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This is the blood meal. It looks like you’d think it would.. like dried and finely ground animal parts.. yummy. It smells pretty much like you’d think it would too, but thankfully, not nearly as strong as what I would imagine it would smell like if it were to get wet. Honestly though, once the whole batch is mixed together, it smells great. Like a fresh hay barn. |
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This is the gypsum. There are 3 types of lime that are added to the COF, all of which provide calcium in one form or another. Gypsum is calcium sulfate. |
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This is what the finely ground gypsum looks like. It doesn’t really have an odor. |
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Another type of lime, and the one used most by volume, is your standard agricultural lime. It contains nearly 100% calcium carbonate. |
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The final lime is Dolomite lime. Not to be confused with that great 70s movie, Dolemite. Dolomite contains both calcium and magnesium carbonates. |
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Mixed all together you end up with your complete organic fertilizer. I bought 300 pounds of total ingredients, with taxes it came to $149. I think a farmer would be much more willing to pay 50 cents a pound versus $3 a pound for his fertilizer. |
Steve does call for 1 /2 – 1 part of Kelpmeal for his COF. Kelp is super high in trace minerals, which are needed and used by vegetables Vegetables grown with available trace minerals provide a far superior nutritional content. Steve warns that kelpmeal is very expensive and you can get along without it. He wasn’t kidding. DeYoung’s had it in stock at $75 per 50 pounds. That is 50% of my total cost for all of the other ingredients, so this year I omitted the kelp. I’ll be sure and keep taking my daily multivitamin until I can afford the kelpmeal.