Plant fertilizer
Posted by Additional_Insect_44@reddit | preppers | View on Reddit | 51 comments
Ok so some here basically do survival gardens, or gardens anyhow. I learned about fertilizers and how to add different amounts to differing plants. Big three are:nitrogen, potassium and phosphate. Blood meal, planting legumes and miracle grow assist with nitrogen, rotting bananas, potato skin, and other stuff like potash assist with potassium which feeds the whole plant, and phosphate can be found in bone meal or crushed eggs bone etc. I know there's others like iron pellets, magnesium, etc but it's good to prep on all these.
OakParkCooperative@reddit
Instead of stocking up on "fertilizers", learn to "compost" your food waste, livestock waste, humanure, garden/yard clippings.
Healthy "compost" grows your food
Not bags of supplements.
BigDog95046@reddit
Instead of just sticking to 1 method, learn to use all the tools available to you
Additional_Insect_44@reddit (OP)
That's fine but I realized compost takes time. This is for quick boosts.
thundersnow211@reddit
If you aren't doing soil tests at a lab, don't be putting trace minerals into a garden.
How would the native americans handle soil depletion? they moved somewhere else.
Additional_Insect_44@reddit (OP)
They also made compost. Squanto taught the European pilgrims how fish is great. Bone has phosphate and I think there's nitrogen in the flesh or blood (?).
SuperBad69420@reddit
https://humanurehandbook.com
Dangerous-School2958@reddit
Just read a strange article. Some Romanians were taking about their tourism trip into North Korea. People there have to weekly supply the state with a certain amount of kilos of human waste. A quota due regularly
uhyeahsouh@reddit
North Korean soil is abysmal, and they don’t have the petrochemical industry or technology to make synthetic fertilizer.
Before modern agriculture, Europe did the same thing. “Black soil.”
Misfitranchgoats@reddit
You got my upvote. I read it. And people don't realize how good their pee is for their garden.
overkill@reddit
My wife still gets mad that I piss in the compost pile. I realise not everyone does this...
A human excretes in a year (roughly) the same amount of nitrogen as is needed to fertilise a years worth of food.
Foreign-Royal983@reddit
I took a semester of horticulture, and our soil science teacher actually encouraged the practice of peeing on compost.
Additional_Insect_44@reddit (OP)
Before I planted onions in the main compost ( for fun to see how it'd work) I peed regularly on the compost.
uhyeahsouh@reddit
Get chickens and keep them in a mobile coop. Keep a compost pile of all yard clippings. Use the chickens to fold the compost.
After season, move the chickens into the garden so they can fill and add their own fertilizer.
Hegelkulture is a friend of long term fertilizing and only requires an ax, a shovel, and a sore back.
hezzza@reddit
Urine for nitrogen. Free.
TheSensiblePrepper@reddit
I would recommend everyone check out the YouTube channel Gardening in Canada. Ashley literally has a degree as a "Soil Scientist".
Plane_Kale6963@reddit
If you're not already gardening don't count on being able to grow food for survival. Learn about growing food and put in several growing seasons before you try to plan for even partial self-sufficiency. You won't grow most of your sustenance unless you have acreage.
Redcrux@reddit
I have had a large successful garden for many years and I don't think I could grow for survival if shit hit the fan without prior notice.
Seeds: bought seeds go bad after a year more or less. They are hard to collect, genetics gets watered down/mixed, and it lowers your yield since you can't start a new crop while the old one is maturing. Plus germination is difficult and can be dependent on electric light and heat if your weather isn't absolutely perfect.
Fertilizer: compost and manure will do the trick but it's not as reliable and takes time (~6 mo min) to build up supply.
Weather, bugs, theft, diseases, birds, squirrels, racoons/possums...
It's bad enough on a normal day... Don't want to imagine how hard it would be in shtf.
livestrong2109@reddit
Squash seeds are a mess a few generations in. Something will one hundred percent mess up your genetics.
Tomatoes you might have better luck with. I've had bush beans start climbing a few gen off.
Potatoes... that's the safest for genetics, but they're susceptible to a lot of disease.
849@reddit
It's very easy to save squash seed... you just need to manually pollinate as soon as the female flower opens and then tie it shut with a rubber band, and gather your seeds from that fruit. Or only grow one variety of each species.
A lot of species can cross and it doesn't really matter tbh. Save enough and plant enough and just keep the ones that grow true to the area. Though I will say it's stupid to try and begin all this after society has broken down - these skills are built over years and by the time stuff is happening you want to have your own supply of native seed that you know what to do with.
Additional_Insect_44@reddit (OP)
Sunchokes and beans may be key.
Plane_Kale6963@reddit
I think a lot of people with no experience growing food think it’s just a matter of planting seeds, fertilizing and watering and voila = instant self sufficiency 😆
last_rights@reddit
Yeah, I'll let you know if I ever get more food before the squirrels do. They eat everything in my garden.
Dangerous-School2958@reddit
Yeah, when it becomes necessary, eating the little intruders will help offset caloric loss from the garden.
jusumonkey@reddit
We have a colony of cats that lives next door. Birds and squirrels don't bother my garden much.
Mostly I worry about bugs and fungus.
Additional_Insect_44@reddit (OP)
Yea no, it takes time. I'm growing a lot right now even so I had to buy herbs to help repel pests. Not to mention water usage. What to plant near other plants.
Bobby_Marks3@reddit
Especially when discussing soil quality and fertilization. If you take a high-SOMETHING soil and add more SOMETHING, it will kill plants. Ideally you'd know how to perform your own chemistry soil tests for these kinds of things, but a more basic option is the trial and error of gardening all the time. To learn how long the crops you choose to grow in your specific soil affect the need for crop rotation and fertilization.
in_pdx@reddit
I found a nice flow chart for identifying nutrient deficiencies in plants.
Clickable image with much more info is at: https://landresources.montana.edu/soilfertility/nutrientdeficiency.html
Tip: If your plants develop a magnesium deficiency, you can use epsom salts (you may have those on hand as bath salts)
in_pdx@reddit
Here's the link to the full-page version of the image: https://landresources.montana.edu/soilfertility/images/DefFlowChartMobile.png
IrishSnow23@reddit
I think ultimately if SHTF, everyone needs to get organized. WHO in the community is a strategist that can help align everyone by strengths. These people are the gardeners, these people are the handymen and women that can help construct, these people are the protection and watch group, who is in charge of rationing the food supply, and so on. Ultimately, I know that I don't have all the skills and will have to rely on others. It will all come down to people banding together.
Narrow-Can901@reddit
My advice from what I’ve read
Efficient-Water2384@reddit
I watch someone on YouTube that bought an old nursery and used a bag of slow release fertilizer that was left there by previous owners. It had begun to break down in the bag and killed a bunch of her plants, and some she saved by replanting. If you're using old product, maybe test on a couple plants of differing species before using on your entire garden.
Ryan_e3p@reddit
You got the basics down!
Additional_Insect_44@reddit (OP)
Yea and use milk! I told people that it's good for tomatoes.
Dialaninja@reddit
There are way better calcium sources for your buck than milk for plants, like, literally almost anything. If you have nearby limestone, use that, otherwise crushed oyster shells and the like are available fairly economically, if you have a real deficit (keep an eye on your ph though)
Ryan_e3p@reddit
Like, good milk, or spoiled? Because honestly, if things are bad where I'm relying on a garden, milk is going to be at a premium, and I'm not going to be wasting that pouring it into dirt. Quite a bit different than making bonemeal, using eggshells, etc.
Additional_Insect_44@reddit (OP)
Either, the plant needs calcium.
Ryan_e3p@reddit
Might be worth it to buy Calcium Nitrate 15-0-0 in bulk. 25lbs of it is only $60 for the water soluble stuff. Half a pound of it is used to make 100 gallons, but can be stretched a bit.
throwawaybsme@reddit
Weed tea: add a bunch of weeds like dandelions into a bucket, fill the bucket with water to just cover the weeds, leave in the sun to ferment for 4 weeks, stirring weekly
Use this to water your plants. It's a huge hit of good nutrients
Additional_Insect_44@reddit (OP)
Anything else? Dandelions are herbs they're good in vitamin C.
iwannaddr2afi@reddit
Comfrey "tea" is great for this
throwawaybsme@reddit
Yup. Get yourself some block 14 cuttings. I take lbs of greens from each plant 3 or 4 times a year.
AdditionalAd9794@reddit
Largely, atleast at a home gardener level. I feel the whole NPK fertilizer thing is an industry built to suck as many pennies out of the consumer as possible.
You dont need them, compost, that's literally all you need. Between food waste, fall leaves, wood chips(chip drop is free), grass clippings and just random plant debris from your yard.
You produce far more nitrogen, potassium and and phosphorus than your garden is going to use up. Often times all the nutrients are already available in your soil, it simply lacks the biology to make it available
Additional_Insect_44@reddit (OP)
Egg shells too. That and crab shells and fish makes good compost just takes awhile to rot.
MeeMeeLeid@reddit
I was just thinking about this today. I am focussing on adding some edible permaculture to the garden this year. No, rhubarb and berries won't sustain me. But they may eventually be a partial replacement for some expensive foods that I rarely splurge on. They have essential nutrients. They're great as a treat in good and hard times alike.
Anyway, I am thinking about where to put things and how to test and correct my soil for each plant. I also am interested in learning free or cheap ways to do it. I might want to get a compost pile going, too.
Additional_Insect_44@reddit (OP)
Asparagus. Sunchokes. Fruit bushes or fruit trees. Ginger root.
Utter_cockwomble@reddit
If you're on the US, your state university AG extension office is your best bet.
FlashyImprovement5@reddit
You are in the US, find out if/when your county offers Master Gardener's classes
Cute-Consequence-184@reddit
You need to have soil tests done. You can't just throw f the fertilizer at plants and expect them to grow. It can do as much of harm as good like getting too many leaves but not roots.
You should get a soil test done in a lab. In the US, thats usually done through your local county level Extension Service Office.
ApprehensiveStand456@reddit
Not sure how bad we are talking about things getting. But urine can be used to fertilize your garden. In ancient times urine had lots of other uses like tanning hides and dying fabrics.
throwawaybsme@reddit
You gotta mix it with stuff, or you'll burn the plants.
Piss on a bale of straw and let that age. Just keep peeing on it for a few weeks.
You can also pee directly on your compost to help speed the process
Dadd_io@reddit
I prep a 40lb bag of fertilizer. I also save seeds so I can go crazy if I need to.