Vegetarian Fertiliser-is there such a thing?

[Thelma Sanders]

Garden Organic sell 'animal free' fertiliser if you object to chemical ones.
Fertilisers

[bearded bloke]

Sorry,but what qualifies a fertiliser as veggie ?

[Two_Sheds]

the majority of weeds seem to be dandylions

and they're full of nutrients. Stuff them in a 5 litre water bottle, top with water, leaving an air gap of about 2". Then use it as a plant feed.
Also stuff in nettles & comfrey or borage if you find them.

im going to try a spend at least a couple of hours at least at weekends and the odd hour on evenings

That's not enough, seriously. I just did four whole days, weeding & planting, and that's on an already cleared allotment.

I am also a vegetarian but do not object using chicken pellets.

... are they battery chickens making the pellets? They are unless the label says "organic free range"

Sorry,but what qualifies a fertiliser as veggie ?

There are 3 different thoughts going on here:

1) vegetarian: no blood fish & bone.
2) stock free, aka vegan: nothing that's come from any animal, ie only feeds made from plants eg. comfrey, nettles, borage tea
3) organic: nothing synthetic (man made) eg. Growmore

[Olorin2001]

Sorry,but what qualifies a fertiliser as veggie ?

Where it comes from animals that are for food production it not veggie I presume!!!
So what about animals kept as pets, horses and such???
I fail to see the moral objection to that - maybe I'm being thick.
Millions of tons of animal manure is used commercially each year for your organic veg.
Millions of tons of sewage sludge is also used.
Since when does being veggie mean you forget being green and throw away perfectly good shite?

[iGrow]

Ok, I am a vegetarian organic gardener. As far as chicken pellets are concerned - sh*t is sh*t!

[Bill HH]

Choosing not to use poultry manure that have come from battery chickens is discrimination, their life is bad enough without them knowing even their poo is shunned by society.

[Two_Sheds]

Millions of tons of animal manure is used commercially each year for your organic veg....Since when does being veggie mean you forget being green and throw away perfectly good shite?

Some people consider the living conditions of the animal. If they object to the conditions, eg pigs in crates, cows in barns, veal calves, etc then they won't use anything that supports that industry.

I think it's fair enough for vegans to make their own choices.

And it's perfectly possible to grow food without manure: I've never used farm manure in m'life

[Bill HH]

Some people consider the living conditions of the animal. If they object to the conditions, eg pigs in crates, cows in barns, veal calves, etc then they won't use anything that supports that industry.

I think it's fair enough for vegans to make their own choices.

And it's perfectly possible to grow food without manure: I've never used farm manure in m'life

Two Sheds,

I am sold on using home made compost, it is the nectar of the Gods. But what advice can you give somone just starting a plot who has no compost but wishes to feed the soil and block out weeds?

[Kristen]

Re: rotavating

It will chop up pernicious weed roots, and their root-snippets will re-grow. Perhaps there are no/few pernicious weeds on the plot?

It will give you a flying start. I'm all for Newbies being facilitated to get growing - the harder the first hurdle is the less chance that they adopt it.

Having said that, an allotment that has been tended for decades is likely to have fabulous soil. So just cover (cardboard, whatever) and then "plant" when ready may well work well.

But if you can not easily stick a fork / spade in it and dig a bit then my choice would be to rotavate and then cover. Thereafter plan not to dig at all. Again, if it were me, I would spray the weeds with Glyphosate "just the once" to get a flying start; the use of herbicides, even "just the once", is definitely something that not everyone would agree with.

My advice to newbies is:

1. Only plant what you like to eat - very disheartening spending time on a crop that you don't like which then fails - whereas if you get a pathetic harvest (worst case scenario ) that you do like at least you will have some sense of achievement.

2. Plant high-value crops - runner beans is a good example, expensive in the shops because of the labour required to pick them, very productive for Grow-your-own.

3. Plant varieties with good flavour - you will enjoy them more than shop-bought equivalents. Sweetcorn is a good example of something that is much better fresh than "travelled". But also you can choose to grow low-yield but exceptional-flavour varieties, that are not available in the supermarkets.

I have a vegetable garden the size of a couple of allotments. I spend very few hours on it, so it can be done, although in fairness I have been doing it for donkey's years and have evolved a system that enables me to do that with minimal time commitment, and it requires a very high level of faff for some parts of the process (but that is indoors, evenings after dark etc., the time I spend outdoors on the plot, which is weather dependent, is minimal)

Most of the commercial plant fertilisers are either 'blood and bonemeal' slaughterhouse by-products or based on chicken excrement - given the sales volume I'd expect the source would be battery farms...

There are organic equivalents available, but they are quite hard to find, and expensive. For folk into Organic then I can well understand that the issue of, for example, antibiotics used in intensive animal husbandry, and the potential consequences of the effects of that in products such as Blood, Fish and Bone - or even Manure, are well worth considering; the fiasco of Aminopyralid is proof of that (Aminopyralid is a selective herbicide used on pasture which persisted in Hay fed to animals overwinter, persisted through the animal into its manure, persisted onto the allotments which the manure was spread on, and then killed all the crops and persisted in the allotment for a couple of years )

[Alison]

Regarding rotivating, my plot was a right mess when I took it on, waist high weeds and no sign of anything growing bar things I didn't want. Did find a row of raspberries in the end but you couldn't see them for the weeds. We strimmed down to see what we had and covered the ground. Gradually uncovered and dug beds where I wanted them, leaving paths between. It was hard work but I had things harvesting the first season and built from there. Another plot when down the rotivate route and has a far worse weed problem than I have due to all the roots, they find it very demoralising and no longer have that momentum that you have at the start. Basically they totally underestimated the ongoing work. Likewise you can chose to spray (I prefer to garden as closely to organically as I can, don't see the point in growing my own if I'm going to use the chemicals I don't like in commercial situations and I wanted to stick to that intent from the start, was very important to me and has helped give me a great feeling of achievement as many people told me I'd never clear a plot without resorting to weed killers, they are wrong, you can and although hard work, it's not a difficult task) but that doesn't mean that you still won't have loads of weeds, it won't kill everything and the really pain in the a&se things will hardly notice anyway .

[Kristen]

Gradually uncovered and dug beds where I wanted them

I'm seriously biased on this point, because my soil is heavy clay. Another month or two, covered or not, and the ground will set like concrete and be impossible to dig.

But if the soil is lush, as most allotments are after generations of care and organic matter, then it can probably be dug in the middle of a drought - or during a monsoon! - things I can only dream of ...

But if the soil is impoverished heavy clay then I think it is worth thinking about shortcuts to get it "open" before it set solid until Autumn.

[Two_Sheds]

what advice can you give somone just starting a plot who has no compost but wishes to feed the soil and block out weeds?

Mulch, aka surface composting, aka "chop n drop" all your weeds/trimmings. (photos in my FB link below)

[Two_Sheds]

I would spray the weeds with Glyphosate "just the once" to get a flying start;

I have used it, and it doesn't work. Or rather, it works on those weeds which are pretty feeble anyway, ones which are easier & cheaper to pull by hand. It looks as if it's worked: everything goes brown, but it doesn't kill the roots. It does kill worms and amphibians though.

Even strong Glypho will need several repeat sprayings to kill the roots: our lotty vandal glypho'd my flower border, and everything looked dead for several months ... but now the hebe & black elder have sprouted new leaves

The committee also spray the perimeter weeds every now & then: it works at first, everything turns brown & "dead", but it doesn't kill the weed seeds at all, so in a few weeks you're back where you started: with a weed infestation.
What I'm trying to achieve now is to cover the soil with a permanent planting (a living mulch) of plants: ornamental flowers on the communal patches. It works, and is prettier & more useful than bare brown dead grass.

A mulch can be almost anything that covers the soil: compost, straw, newspaper, plastic sheet, rotted manure, plants dead or alive, even dry dust is a mulch if you put it over damp soil

[alldigging]

The committee also spray the perimeter weeds every now & then: it works at first, everything turns brown & "dead", but it doesn't kill the weed seeds at all, so in a few weeks you're back where you started: with a weed infestation.

The council do this with the grass edges.
They kill everything at the edge which then allows the fast annual weeds to get in there. It isn't a long term solution.

[Two_Sheds]

Our council scalps the grass all spring/summer, rain or shine, warm or cold, so it's always brown

I'm trying to convert them to sowing wild flowers on some of the grass verges, which would reduce costs in the long term (no mowing).