Even though I am not a brug person, I'd like mine to grow and bloom. What's the best fertilizer, how much, and how often? Mine are in pots of varying sizes from 1 galllon to 20 gallons.
Thanks.
Fertilizer?
I like to use osmocot... I put twice as much as needed and feed twice as often
I have heard on here that practically every fertilizer is used. And some use anything they get on sale. Some swear by MG foliar which I use routinely with various granulars at the soil line. Most time released. Osmocote is popular. Some swear that the fertilizer doe sbeter if it has minors in it. I find if in pots they need much more fertilizer than in the ground. I am switching to the cheap stuff at HD soon after seeing the results my friend got with it. It was 20 pound bags of 16-16-16. I will be interested to see how mine do on that.
The message from Dave's is feed alot and feed often!
I just tilled in 800 pounds of manure, watered the ground with epsom salt and am headed back with seafood emulsion. Who knows what I'll go back with next?!?! This is the first time I have row run them. All the named ones are by the pond or out front, but all the crosses and 'mutts' (unknowns) got a 200 sqare foot garden to themselves. They better get pretty in a hurry and earn themselves a place in a real garden. LOL
Badseed, have you tried that much manure with brugs before?
If I was you, I would plant one to see what it will do. The reason I'm saying that is that too much manure will cause rapid growth to the point where the plant can't absorb enough calcium. Also excess magnesium (epsom salt)causes calcium deficiency. It sounds like you are setting yourself up for potential trouble.
All Solanums are sensitive to Calcium deficiency. Tomatoes drop buds and get blossom end rot, Potatoes grow deformed leafs and small thick-skinned tubers.
If your plant grows at 80 mph and gets deformed incurled leafs, it probably was too much.
On the other hand, your brugs might love it, and I'm all wrong.
I used a dump truck(the big kind that hauls gravel)size load of manure on my gardens last year. I had it all around my brugs(used about a bushel basket on each brug). They didn't seem to mind. We use Epsom salts on our tomatoes and peppers to combat calcium deficiency, we put a tablespoon around every plant, keeps them from getting blossom end rot. I use Epsom salts regularly on my brugs, they love it. The only thing they didn't like was iron, one died within a few days, several others lost their leaves and took weeks to recover. I followed the label directions and know it was not mixed too strong. I haven't used iron on the brugs since then. This is just my experience.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Cala's secrets come out . . .
So when you say you dumped a load of manure or Chele saying 800 lbs, what kind and where do you get it?
I added iron to my brugs just before I left........LOL! I had no idea.
Hi Cala,
I think my tomatoes would benefit from epsom salts. About how much do you use on your peppers/tomatoes and brugs? Is it something where the amount is critical..or is it a bit forgiving?
Plantsrfun, yes, you can overdo it, I use a tablespoon per plant. You can melt it in warm water and pour it on, or just side dress with it for tomatoes and peppers. More IS NOT better, lol.
Kell, I get composted horse manure. There is a mushroom farm not far from here, they get horse manure from Kentucky, compost it, grow mushrooms in it, then sell it. They can only use it once, so they have lots of it. The only bad part, it smells like a horse barn around here for a couple of weeks after I spread it out.
I have a neighbor with a sheep farm and he is always happy to get rid of it. I used to raise rabbits, that is the best. No weeds!
Badseed that sounds like a lot of tender loving sweat you put into preparing your brug bed. I hope they flourish and make you a proud momma.
Root swears by rabbit poo. Maybe I should look around for some. How about chicken manure? HD sells that by the bag.
I use tons of horse manure,and manure tea...the brugs seem to love it......
Im an into into tropical fish and have about 395 gallons of tanks in my living room which i syphone about 30 percent out of every two weeks. I ahve no brugs by the door, but my crazy pumpkins LOVE it------course they get what ever is on sale too. But I can see a huge growth spurt every wter change. I think Ill try a much longer hose and see how a brug or two reacts.
Plays, I use pond water on my brugs sometimes. I was wondering if the fish poo was good for them.
Kell, I put some iron on 3 potted brugs due to yellowing leaves and dropping bloom pods. They took it just fine and have been much better since. Who knows the whys and wherefores of why something works well for one person and not good for someone else? I used a tablespoon per gallon of iron sulfate (dry granules). The shredded white stopped dropping buds and has been blooming beautifully, and another unknown has been blooming more than it ever has. I know iron isn't the bloom fertilzer really, is it, but it sure helped these plants do better.
Any poo is good *lol* No, btw. cats poo we probably will like to keep miles away from our noses, right. Fish poo, horse, cow, goats and chickens poo. I hope we soon decide what chickens to buy here *lol* Lene want`s something we can eat later, but I have a soft heart, so I am more for egg-layers (smart, right?). Having a chicken yard will also mean plenty of hay to cover with in the gardens.
only bird poo I ever get is on my windshield:(
My 800 pounds of manure was tilled in 1 foot deep over 250 sq feet or so of garden. Brugie sent me a seedling last year that had been started in March and I potted it with manure, bone meal, blood meal and watered with sea food emulsion. It bloomed that summer and again a month or two later. I'd say the plant liked it well enough. LOL That same seedling is some seven feet tall now with a trunk the size of my forearm. The manure is a manure/compost mix and the numbers are only 0.5 0.5 0.5. I also use diluted sea food emulsion and diluted epsom salt which works wonders on tomatoes and peppers. It helps with setting blossoms sooner as well as preventing blossom end rot. I think my brugs are probably just as spoiled rotten as everyone else's. I'm just not a big 'chemical' user. :)
You all put me to shame. I am a city girl at heart, pooless in California. You all make me want to rush out and gather up the first poo I can find. I had no idea there was so much poo out there for the asking. How come you can only buy cow and chicken poo in the nurseries?
I wonder if my plants grow so well after a good rain from all the bug poo in the air that the rain brings down to the ground?
Hi Cala,
thanks for the info. I'm hopeful it will do the trick.
I also have heard that rabbit manure is excellent and that unlike other manure, it can be mixed in without composting....
Plants, that is true. I used to clean out under the rabbit cages and put the manure right onto the garden. It never burned anything. We had a hundred rabbits at one time and that's a lot of bunny poo.
Kell,You need a chicken or a rabbit for a pet!!!!
Then you get the poo for free!
Maybe a c-ment chicken ,Huh?
Cement chicken??? Only if we buy her a cute little pink outfit for it so it won't clash with her brugs! LOL LOL
I hear bat doo doo is really excellent-almost makes me want to put up a bat house so I can have some guano or whatever they call it!
Okay y'all, poo is good, but I know from experience that It can be overdone. 800 pounds just sounded like a lot.
Last sommer I had a compost pile that had mostly brown leafs and a lot of horse manure. This spring I had thrown sprouted potatoes in it and they grew like crazy but after ahwile the leafs became deformed. They where small, hard and under curled. I had used the same compost on two Brugs and they did the same thing.
After spending half a day on the internet reading about deficiencies I came to the conclusion that it was caused by a lack of calcium caused by the heavy manure in the compost.
After applying calcium the problem corrected itself.
Here is a good site with a lot of photos, also on the main page is a very good explanation of what different nutrients does for the plant, and the dangers of applying too much of one thing. The link takes you to the potato photos since that is related to brugs. http://www.luminet.net/~wenonah/min-def/potato.htm
Paintedlady, i think soil is so different to start with everywhere and that means different soils need different nutrients. i have sand on lime rock...gonna read you link, i get confused about the calcium/magnesium thing, lack of one means the other isn't being used even though it's there or something.
i'm an osmocote fan, would never find time to fertilze every week. i have access to goat compost, use that and lots of black cow.
Well, I have just added compost tea, which I got by accident. (I had two 5 gal. buckets of composted cow manure which got filled by all the recent rain from Bill.) I used that water off the top for the brugs, and will keep doing so for a bit. My one pitiful brug I posted now has a couple more blooms, so maybe this will help it along.
Plants in pots need lots more nutrients than plants in the ground simply because as they are watered the nutrients are washed out of the pots. It is possible to overdo any nutrient(even the basic N-P-K).
I also agree with Arlene, soils are different. You won't know if you have deficiencies in your soil until you have it tested. I thought wood ashes were good for the soil, but too much of those made my daylilies yellow. The pH of the soil was way to high from the wood ashes and it took a couple of years to make it more neutral. It's much easier to correct a deficiency than a toxicity. Sandy soils lose nutrients faster than clay or loam soils, clay being the slowest.
Most composted manures aren't nearly as high in N-P-K as manufactured fertilize, I think Badseed said hers was 0.5-0.5-0.5. On the other hand, eight hundred pounds of 20-10-20 might make your brugs grow 50 ft tall, lol.
I saw some Black Hen for sale, in the same style bag as Black Kow. However, I don't think it's composted, just pelletized, so you have to be careful. Also, I think it's mostly nitrogen so I would add some bone meal to get it to bloom........ I also read a couple days ago that Peter's has more micronutrients than Miracle Grow and the bruggies did better with that...