Homemade Fertilizer

About 10 years ago I bought Steve Solomon's book, "Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades".   It's a great book. Gardening on the west coast has very different needs as opposed to gardening east of the Rockies.  In the Gulf Islands (and Vancouver Island) we have quite mild and wet winters.  We don't get that hard freeze which is so helpful for killing off a lot of pest insects.  Our soil is also naturally acidic.  Steve Solomon says that we need to grow differently from how people grow back east.  He's very opposed to mulches as he says they encourage wood bugs and earwigs.  I agree, except I still put mulches on a number of crops once they're big enough to take care of themselves.  We have very dry summers here and our soil needs all the moisture-retaining tricks I can throw at it.  Plus the mulch is very good for the soil.

The most important thing I've taken away from his book is his recipe for "Complete Organic Fertilizer".  I make it up fresh every year.  It has quite a bit of lime in it, both agricultural and dolomite, which is important for our acid soil.  I believe he's changed the recipe somewhat from the one in the book I have, but I still use that original recipe.  The main ingredient in his recipe is seed meal and he recommends either cottonseed or canola seed meal.  I use the canola one because cotton is a heavily-sprayed crop.  Plus the canola probably comes from Alberta which is a lot closer to home than the southern States!

I scatter a quart of fertilizer on each raised bed (they're about 3'x14') just before I do the final turning of the soil and before planting.  Steve says that this lasts a couple of months and recommends side dressing as well.  A handful down each 4' row at the outer edge of roots scratched into the soil is his suggestion.  Longer-growing crops will likely require another side dressing or two.

So here's his recipe:

8 parts seed meal
1/2 part dolomite lime
1/2 part agricultural lime
1 part bone meal (up to as much as 2 parts)
1 part kelp meal (up to as much as 2 parts)