Gardening without animal fertilisers

[MarkHackwell]

I havnt really found any discussion on this on here that keeps going as of yet but I am now looking at the possibility of turning my allotment more towards being vegan.

The first question I have is I will need to move from the traditional fertilisers such as manure because of it being animal based so was looking at using Hay to dig into the ground, will this work?

A lot of Composts also appear to have some sort of animal fertiliser in them. Once the compost I have is used up I will be looking for the vegan alternatives, so like Fertile Fibre but it's not cheap any other's anyone knows?

Another question is the seeds that you buy from most companies would be treated with fungicide of some sort, any idea where to buy seeds that aren't treated with this?

[Jimny14]

https://veganorganic.net

Might be helpful

[Nicos]

Interesting link jimny!

[Chestnut]

This may seem a very basic question, but it is something I hadn’t really thought about until I read this post...
Would it be OK under vegan gardening principles to use plant material which has simply ‘passed through’ an animal - in other words, manure from herbivores such as horses or rabbits, or a wormery?

Otherwise green manures and composted plant matter would certainly be high on my list, and seaweed if you can obtain it?

[Jimny14]

Depends on your definition of vegan I guess. Not eating or using any animal products is a fairly standard definition. It does beg the question where do you stop. The wormery and compost is a difficult one. Animal products would suggest anything from an animal and Mark does mention not using manure as it's animal based.
Worms are animals and therefore anything from a wormery can't be used in this definition.
Now that brings me on to compost. My compost bin only ever has veg matter put in to it but is often full of worms, wood lice and other beetles and insects etc. I can't guarantee that most of my compost isn't actually the droppings of detritivores, worms etc and therefore can't be used by the most strict definition of veganism.
A way round this would be to discount insects worms etc from your definition and just use plant based compost.

[veggiechicken]

Interesting question Mark. Lots of advice on various websites, it seems. How much it agrees??
I've met staunch vegans who rescue battery hens and let them live out their days with them. I don't know what they do with the droppings but I doubt that they send them away in household rubbish.
As for seed suppliers, I would think Real Seeds wouldn't be treated.

[burnie]

Soil is full of excrement from living organisms, me thinks it would be impossible to grow out doors and not have said contamination(if that is the correct phrase). To say manure is not a vegan product seems to me to be excessive, no animal is harmed in this natural products manufacture, it is a fundamentally natural process, that we also take part in. Now I can understand not using Fish Blood and Bone, and some of the chemicals used in fertiliser may not all be man made, but compost and dung being excluded makes me think that folk would be dying of starvation if that were removed from the food growing process.

[Kirk]

I think that the only seeds I could say have been treated were onion seeds, they came coated like little blue and something else coloured balls. Think the colours implied the nature of the reason for the coating. One was fungicide and the other I cannot recall.

Maybe a poor question but even if coated why not use them? Whatever the coating is it will have come from a batch of chemicals and be as far an animal product as you can get. May not be organic but it is almost certainly totally Vegan. Expect that bags of Growmore will be entirely from a chemical works and so vegan, use that in place of manure.

In this respect are you talking about a Vegan veg plot, although I will say it is difficult to define such, or an Organic one. There is a huge amount of small life in soil that dies and naturally composts down as organic organic material. How do you count the 500 worms that died last month and stop the plants taking up their remains and nutrients?

Worm poo (casts) is one of the best fertilisers there is.

[Jungle Jane]

Animals aren't harmed in the making of blood,fish & bone either,are you going to cover the plot incase of bird droppings?

[Snadger]

Is Vegan not a term for what you eat........i.e. veggie/fruit/nuts alone. We seem to be discussing organic growing?

Without all manner or small invertebrates breaking down detritus into a soluble form we would have no fertilizer or compost and vegetables/fruit would suffer.

[Jungle Jane]

Vegans don't like to eat animals or buy leather etc man made objects made of animal,including the new pound notes,but I think the use of manure,blood,bone etc they're all by products. Animals are farmed because some people eat meat,the blood & bone comes from the slaughter house. Everyone would have to stop eating cows etc for them to stop being able to produce it,I think it's a good use of the remains if you look at the bigger picture.

[veggiechicken]

Vegans won't use anything derived from animals. BFB would definitely be out as it requires the slaughter of animals for its production. Similarly, vegetarians would not use BFB.

The Vegan society define veganism as

"A philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude—as far as is possible and practicable—all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."

[Thelma Sanders]

Not wishing to have philosophical debate on a gardening forum, but a person can be Vegan, but don't see how a garden can be. *confused*

Surely all you can do is not buy/add any animal by-products that you disapprove of. So you could use Growmore (non-animal) instead of blood/fish/bone (animal).
Are you rejecting non-animal fertilisers as well, although many of them are natural and just mined from the earth. Digging for the future: Sirius Minerals' Yorkshire fertiliser mine an investment set to last '100 years'

The only other option is digging in green manures and compost made with vegetable waste and weeds/prunings. Straw adds bulk organic material, but little in the way of nutrients.

You can use nettle and comfrey teas.

[Jungle Jane]

When our fish used to die & one hamster,I buried them in the garden next to shrubs,what would a vegan gardener do with it?

[Chestnut]

Thank you all-It seems there are a lot more complexities to this - I have learned quite a lot of new things today!

Found a quick reference chart for the green manures which you may find helpful
https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/sit...-%20list_1.pdf

Also, one more idea would be something like a hugelkultur bed where larger pieces of plant such as logs can also be buried to release nutrients gradually as they rot down, covered by smaller materials such as chopped leaves, seaweed, compost then finally soil.