Inorganic complementing organic.........

[Snadger]

Ok, I'll probably get hauled over the coals off the organic fraternity, but this year i have went half and half and had wonderful crops.
I always keep my soil in good condition with lashings of organic matter but this year in about April time I applied a light dressing of slow release inorganic balaced fertiliser to the whole plot.
This is just now starting to pay off. My crops are healthy, I appear to have all but, got rid of a couple of my fungal problems i.e.clubroot and onion white rot which by this time last year had reared there ugly head.(Don't know whether there is a link?)

The one downside of all the homemade compost I apply to each planting is that I have loads of weeds. I compost everything, including weeds and am never very thorough with it preferring to chuck em in a heap until they turn from green till brown and then they are shovelled back onto the land. My beds are weed heaven, but the way i see it is if the weeds are growng well the plants should also prosper.
The only downer is that one small patch of onions have a touch of mildew, but thats probably because they are planted too close together, are too well fed and because of the glorious weather we are having (not!)
The slow release fertiliser I used is temperature reliant rather than water reliant which would have turned into a quick fertiliser with all the rain we've had.

[binley100]

very brave of you to come out Snadge..........

[solway cropper]

I've gone the opposite way and got my best results ever. I never did use much in the way of chemicals but in the first few years I did apply growmore, sulphate of potash and superphosphate until I became self-sufficient in compost. This year the beds got a thick mulch of compost and I use a lot of home-made liquid feeds plus BFB. I reckon my success is down to my no-dig/no tread policy as much as anything. If you don't walk on the soil or dig it over you find it develops a much more open texture which must benefit the plant roots. I'm not against chemical fertilizers, I just don't like spending money on something I can make myself.

On the subject of weeds, the thick layer of compost keeps them down initially and I start off a lot of my plants in modules so they have a head start over the weeds. With the closer spacing of block planting the weeds don't really have much chance to get established.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Snadger,

I for one see nothing wrong with what you are doing, after all we grow to eat. It would be great to be able to be totally organic but we also have to live in the real world. If I can use a chemical fertilizer without poisoning either the land or my food and at the same time get a better crop then that is the route I take.

Glad to hear your crops are doing well.

Colin

[Lotsaveg]

It's a no-brainer for me... If it's Safe and Effective, it's OK!

A lot of the big retailers are changing their stance which is why you now see a lot more 'Residue Free' produce rather than 'Pesticide Free'

[Two_Sheds]

The label may very well say "safe and effective", "residue free" etc. They thought aminopyralid was safe too

[taff]

I dunno about the no dog no tread thing...I haven't been digging for three years, I've stuck compost on top [probably not enough] and whenever there's a few weeks without rain, the ground is hard as nails. probably should do some ground cover growing over winter.
Um, I'm on the half and half bandwagon too. Some of the toms are now getting photrogen instead of or as well as comfrey, to see what happens.

[chris]

Well, I've not trodden on a dog either, taff and that's working well for me

[zazen999]

Yelps.

[taff]

that'll teach me to type when I should be asleep, like now really
woof!

[snohare]

woof!

Ah, I know why Taff is dog tired...he's a WWoofer !WWOOF UK | World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms

The point worth noting about artificial fertilisers is that they trash the bacterial and fungal ecosystem. At a microscopic level, they will create more of a monoculture in terms of biodiversity, if you can say that of a system where the figures tend to include trillions of individuals per square centimetre, and God knows how many species per plot. (What happens is that although there are still lots of bugs etc, they have a lot fewer genes present, leading to a genetic bottleneck.) Maybe that is why Snadger's diseases are not so active this year - conditions have changed - but if they adapt, then there may be fewer competing/predatory bugs and fungi to lessen their impact; and that tends to be a one way street, to judge by insects and pesticide resistance.
As far as I know, there are so far no proven long-term implications to this, but I do wonder what the future holds, given that atmospheric gases are changing radically, and the bacteria in the soil are very important part of how these gases become incorporated into soil as nutrients. (That's how nitrogen and carbon come to be present in the soil, to a large degree.) In some places, eg peat bogs, the soils are now no longer carbon sinks (ie absorbent) and are now emitting excess carbon into water supplies - in a toxic form, which the last I heard was not filterable at the water treatment plant. Would this happen if there was more biodiversity amongst the bacteria in bogs ? Will it happen in normal soils when their carbon sink becomes overfilled by 30 Gt of carbon emissions per year ?
Personally, I use no dig, manure and cardboard/newspaper wherever possible, but I feed the soil if I have to, and with raised beds the weeds have much less of a chance. I just wish I was better at making compost !

[Lotsaveg]

Talking about dogs... or not as the case maybe.... I took my dog for a walk across the park last weekend and duly picked up his doings in a bag. An old chap with a plastic sack then came over and asked me if he could have the doings for his garden! I then watched him go off and pick up other piles across the park! !!!

I thought I'd seen it all with dog poo after watching a lady pick hers up with her bare hands last year!

[binley100]

ewwwwwwwww........gross , and no matter how much Jake produces there's no way on this earth that it going in my compost bin.

[zazen999]

Talking about dogs... or not as the case maybe.... I took my dog for a walk across the park last weekend and duly picked up his doings in a bag. An old chap with a plastic sack then came over and asked me if he could have the doings for his garden! I then watched him go off and pick up other piles across the park! !!!

I thought I'd seen it all with dog poo after watching a lady pick hers up with her bare hands last year!

Yelps again. That's SO wrong.

[Lotsaveg]

I wonder if you could get away with it if you use appropriate chemicals? I saw on one of the Horticulture TV programmes that a toilet on their allotment was used for producing manure from human waste.

Definitely not for me though!!! A few years ago I found out that a colleague who sold organic veg to his workmates was emptying his cesspit on his garden every few months... My purchases stopped immediately!