Ways to combat higher fertilizer prices and sustaining ourselves in the long run.

Good evening folks! How are you? I'm looking for ways to combat higher fertilizer prices in an organic fashion without the chemical types and help others cope with the uncertainty in the world right now.
How can we create fertilizer for commercial use without chemicals and help grow crops quickly into autumn? I wanna help my community and others as much as possible. Please reach me on this forum if you need me. Good night!

Compost is the obvious one but takes time to build up. Shorter term, growing legumes as a cover crop and cutting them in before they set seed adds nitrogen without buying anything. Nettles steeped in water make a decent liquid feed too, and if you have access to wood ash that adds potassium. None of it replaces a full fertility programme overnight but it does reduce how much you need to buy in.

I would add that many cities/municipalities have massive composting programs, with the intent of keeping as much kitchen and yard waste out of the landfills as they can (to extend their useful life, and reduce methane emissions).

Usually, the resulting compost is free. I know, I know, it's not organic. But it is available right now, for free. Personally I mix the "city compost" I pick up with biochar and my rough compost and other magic ingredients, letting it cook in an anaerobic slurry for a bit, in the hope of mitigating any chem nasties. I haven't had a problem so far but I'm careful.

Pee!
in that fall,top your beds with wood chips or leaves, then add pee.
Pour it right on.
Also a good a good substance for charging biochar.
One poster here used it in subirrigated planters for growing corn!


Another source of nutrients im bullish on is water plants.
They put on mass very fast, relative to most plants, but they won't root and compete with your crop, unlike the most vivacious terrestrial plants.
I've used water lettuce in the past, because it was available.
This year I'm setting up a barrel of duckweed at the community garden,as source of "scoop and drop" green manure.

I recently made a thread that looks at the possibility of quickly replacing the need for nitrogen fertiliser by adding more legume years to the crop rotation -

Can changes in crop rotation allow big ag to eliminate the need for synthetic fertiliser?

In short, it seems that yes, it can be done. This post in particular discusses a paper that looks at Integrating legumes to enhance cereal production: The relative inputs of fertiliser nitrogen and legume biological nitrogen fixation in major wheat and maize producing countries

This chart was very interesting in that paper



The final column shows the additional legume area required to make up the nitrogen shortfall, and in some places, like the USA, it's around 25%. Which is quite do-able by switching out one year of wheat or corn growing with a year of growing peas or beans.

My general take on the whole thing was that big ag could cope perfectly well without nitrogen fertiliser if we just ate more beans.

For small scale growing it's relatively easy to incorporate the use of urine, composting, gathering leaves and grass cuttings to use as mulch, that sort of thing. But it seems that a simple change in our diets to increase peas and beans and reduce wheat and corn would keep the food supply from Big Ag secure too.

In short, eat more beans!

The way I would combat higher fertilizer prices and sustaining ourselves in the long run would be to use compost tea.  Have you tried that?

How can we create fertilizer for commercial use without chemicals and help grow crops quickly into autumn?

I'm not sure if there is an easy plug and play replacement for existing commercial fertilizers but I think a way around that issue is to get buy in from folks into the idea of healthy living soils. If we encourage the improvement of soil through increasing both soil biota diversity and increasing organic matter we can achieve comparable yields to conventional growing systems.  The only thing that may be frustrating for some is that this is not an overnight process. It takes time and effort to improve soil through living roots and compost amendments.

I think the solution is a combination of two primary approaches: 1) accept lower yield and 2) breed plants that don't rely on inputs.



I don't much care what fertilizer prices do because I don't use any.

Good morning folks! Glad to see you all here today. I'm still composting by ridding my old food scraps to the bin. Have a good day!

Hers an episode of Propaganda By The Seed where the host interviews representatives from the Rich Earth Institute, an organization that researches, promotes and practices the use of urine for fertilizer.

[Propaganda By The Seed] Peecycling with The Rich Earth Institute  🅴
https://podcastaddict.com/propaganda-by-the-seed/episode/200123107 via @PodcastAddict

They are actively collecting urine, pasteurizing it and applying it to hayfields.

I keep meaning to reply here, but I have three basic routes:

Rabbit poo: rabbits eat my kitchen and garden waste and their poo becomes fertilizer. Some people breed them for another food source, but my rabbits are exclusively pets and fertilizer producers.

Coffee grounds: -I put used coffee grounds underneath the rabbit cages in trays to absorb urine (more fertilizer)
              - I mix other used coffee grounds with wood ash or charcoal and bone meal or other nutrient rich meal (cottonseed, castor bean, etc) to make a fertilizer sprinkle

Other trash and garden waste to make treatments and teas: i save eggshells and either grind them to dust or soak them to increase calcium (thinking about my tomato plants). i also grow comfrey specifically to make comfrey tea.  

Any other garden waste that doesn't get eaten by the buns or converted into something else gets composted (sometimes after chipping or bokashi fermentation), and that gets put on the garden.

Compost--YES!

Pee--YES!!

Woodchips!!

Mushrooms!!



Start small.  Don't have the perfect compost setup?--so what!  Just pile on the vegetable matter.  Even if it isn't perfect, a highly imperfect pile of vegetation will do wonders--definitely better than no pile at all.

Using urine is an excellent way to close the nutrient loop.


Woodchips are another great option if you can get them.  Directly they are not a form of nutrients, they attract all kinds of critters that will fertilize--just think about those earthworms.

And of course, I can not let a thread like this go by without mentioning mushrooms.  It is a little bit of a challenge, but well worth the effort.



Good luck all!!!

Eric

Huge advocate of urine! Love to use it all the time and will always have. Was wondering if we could use any type of animal poop for decomposing for our soil.
I wanna find out if we could use horse poop, but without food particles that in turn germinate seed.
Are there any in stores that are without food particles?

I've never bought fertilizer, so I'm not sure what it is supposed to do.  Most of the family members say it's an idiot tax, but outside the family, it's very popular, so I imagine it does something good if soil quality is poor.

Mostly we use compost from the kitchen and a load of animal manuer would be shipped in every 5 or 6 years.  Now we have animals, I give them half the garden each winter, whichever half was either too buggy or not growing strong.  

There are lots of ways to build healthy soil without money.  Here is a good starting place
https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil

This year US farmers are planting a bit more soybeans than usual and a bit less corn.

Why are American farmers planting more soybeans? What's the value of them?

Blake Lenoir wrote: Why are American farmers planting more soybeans? What's the value of them?

Soybeans are a legume, so they fix nitrogen.

They aren't the best human food for reasons. They could get the same effect by planting a variety of drying beans, peas or lentils, depending on their ecosystem.

Funny how I forgot OUR bunnies AND our chooks when I thought about alternative fertilizer, probably because they are already my go to fertilizers.,
Pelleted chicken poop already seems to be the favorite fertilizer of small scale organic farmers.

Our society doesn't eat much rabbit, but that could change.
Rabbits can be sustained on things that chickens can't, like lawn cuttings, and the poop can be used as is.

Chickens can eat things I wouldn't feed to a rabbit,, literally rotten foods, knowing they can discern good from bad, but it's the way they shred biomass that makes them great at creating fertility.


The folks from Rich Earth pointed out the worst contaminants in municipal sludge don't actually come from humanure, but from industrial and commercial waste.
Essentially, chemical waste is contaminating our clean shit
Even when they spiked urine with pharmaceuticals, the amount taken up by crops was miniscule.
Ideally, we would bring back pail closets and nightmen to collect those honey buckets.
The Rochdale system was an organized enterprise with standardized pails, collection routes, and a dewatering  system.
It was hard and dirty work, but so was refuse collection, and we have made that better just in the last 50 years.
The Goux system was similar,it even had adsorbent linings,made in a mold.
Systems like this were used into the 1930s in some places.
They came after the introduction of the flush toilet, in response to the resource demands that the water closet made.
A municipal sized honey bucket brigade would mean more vehicles on the road, but also, no need for black water sewers, and the poop would be free of industrial contaminants.
This could be a very  hard sell overall for people used to pooping in clean water, but like a bus, it provides a universal benefit without adding a lot of complication.
It could go wherever the roads go and scale up or down quickly.
Services like this already exist for people who want to compost kitchen waste, but can't or don't want to do so themselves.


For communities addicted to flushing,I think adding twin vermicomposting chambers to conventional sewage could be the best way for most people in existing western homes to capture the nutrients in their  humanure.
Each household would have control of their own inputs, which would reduce the likelihood of toxins being introduced.
Doesn't do anything for the water bill,but that's another concern.

How do pellet chicken poop work and where we get it? Never seen chicken poop being used for compost before. Which crops benefit from it?

Blake Lenoir wrote: Why are American farmers planting more soybeans? What's the value of them?

In the US 'Corn Belt' corn is the most profitable crop most years. But it needs lots of nitrogen. Soybeans are the second-most profitable crop and it supplies nitrogen.

Depending on market conditions farmers plant more or less soybeans. If nitrogen is cheap they grow more corn.

Soybeans have another benefit. Pests that eat corn mostly don't eat soybeans, and vice versa. So by alternating you are reducing insect damage.

Are there plants out there that help give corn more nitrogen to aid its commercial growth?

Blake Lenoir wrote: Are there plants out there that help give corn more nitrogen to aid its commercial growth?

Pretty much any of the pulses.

Soy, peas, beans, lentils, chickpeas, etc could all be grown as part of a commercial crop rotation without the farmer having to make major changes to they way they operate or get in extra labour or machinery.

The only real 'downside' is that the price of wheat and corn would likely go up due to decreased production, whilst the cost of dry peas and beans would go down due to increased production. So people will likely have to switch their diets to eat more pea soup and blackeyed peas and less cornbread.

Anyone want to start an Eat More Beans thread about the best recipes we could use to increase our consumption of the types of beans most likely to be grown more?

Burra Maluca wrote: Anyone want to start an Eat More Beans thread about the best recipes we could use to increase our consumption of the types of beans most likely to be grown more?

That's a great idea, but it would have to get added to my ToDo list!

In the meantime, check out this thread: https://permies.com/t/53160/Cooking-Dry-Beans-Peas

Joseph's post on the first page has some important info about how to make sure you destroy the toxin in dried pulses.

We also have a thread about pressure canning pulses here: https://permies.com/t/56961/Pressure-canning-pulses
Again, we need to pay attention to water changes and temperatures to make sure the nasty toxin is destroyed.

Because it is readily available I would suggest pond moss for this year and possibly cattails for next year.

I think that substitutes for commercial fertilizer are not-too-difficult to manage on a home garden scale, small farms, and even sensibly managed larger farms... many wonderful and smart options are discussed above.

I do think that the commercial mega farms are quite dependent on their chemical inputs however, and they would find it very difficult to transition to alternatives with any haste.  Many such big operations have reduced the soil on the land they control to inert dead dirt through their practices.  They must import large amounts of everything that the plants need in order to get any kind of decent yield.  I believe it would take a few years, at least, for these misused lands to recover the soil-life needed to be healthy again.

I think we need hundreds of millions of small farmers/gardeners taking food-growing into their own hands, using local methods appropriate to their particular situations.  I think that at smaller scale, with many more people involved than currently, the task of providing enough fertility to grow enough food will be much easier.  This too will take time, for new gardeners to develop the skills.
Thankfully, we have access to resources such as Permies.com to learn how now!  

C. Letellier wrote:Because it is readily available I would suggest pond moss for this year and possibly cattails for next year.

Don't forget the pond muck the cattails are growing in. Potentially the best fertilizer ever! Stinky stuff though.

EDIT: By "pond moss" I assume you mean aquatic plants (water weeds)? These are very high in nitrogen (which is why they decompose with a massive stench) and would be brilliant as a compost additive.

There's a device that can pull nitrogen out of the air.
Its expensive for small holders and doesn't fit with permie priorities, but it fits the bill as one possible substitute for the fertilizer needs of broadacre farmers  m:

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:

C. Letellier wrote:Because it is readily available I would suggest pond moss for this year and possibly cattails for next year.

Don't forget the pond muck the cattails are growing in. Potentially the best fertilizer ever! Stinky stuff though.

EDIT: By "pond moss" I assume you mean aquatic plants (water weeds)? These are very high in nitrogen (which is why they decompose with a massive stench) and would be brilliant as a compost additive.

There's azolla, which is a nitrogen fixer and grows abundantly in fresh water.

liquid compost is very effective, yielding many benefits. it doesn't demand as many resources and can be harvested within 10-15 days.
- any size container can be used to make the liquid compost
- add biomass (compost plant matter and animal proteins separate, within animal proteins, separate out sea life)
- water, enough to submerge biomass, it can be more.
- put a lid
- harvest the liquid from the container, after 12-15 days
- the container can have a tap at the bottom or fished out from the top
- ideally mix 10 times plain water and apply to soil, it can be applied on the foliage as well, limit foliage application by 6-8 weeks before harvesting for food
- in parts of world, where open, flood irrigation is norm, a large above ground tank injects liquid into the channel to ease application

<I wanna find out if we could use horse poop, but without food particles that in turn germinate seed.
Are there any in stores that are without food particles?>

I'd be far more concerned about getting persistent poisons in poop, not seeds.

Seeds create biodiversity, and yes, while some weeds are so horrendous (dodder, anyone?) that you must be on your toes to eradicate them, most are merely fitting into a space in the ecosystem and provide benefit in some way.

But the persistent poisons will kill anything you have growing, and render that soil useless for several years, I've heard.

Yes, it goes right through the animals, and farmers don't know what is sprayed on hay that they purchase, in most cases, I think.

A system that is growing in popularity (and I hope will continue to do so as this shortage ramps up) is Korean Natural Farming.  Farmers can create what they need in-house, using items they have on hand, or can obtain very inexpensively, such as milk, salt, eggshells, and potatoes.



Also, there are inputs made even more simply by his son, using a method he calls JADAM.  He's also developed a liquid soap farmers can make at home, which can incorporate various herbs or things to target pests more naturally.



Both of these are regenerative, rather than degenerative, and sustainable because they use products that are grown or used, rather than thrown away.

Growers who have used Jadam liquid fertilizer say it's better to let it sit a long time, until the anaerobic stench has dissipated.

Another benefit of JADAM methods are that he got rid of the heaters and pumps, something that may become increasingly important if the costs rise or availability of gas, oil, energy drops.

Think of making kombucha, sauerkraut, yogurt, or kefir, and herbal teas...but for your plants.

And it moves us more and more toward a full circle of usability, versus the linear, input-heavy methods currently in use in the endangered western world methods.  We're working with Nature, instead of against it.  Encouraging growth and balance through biodiversity, rather than decimating select species.

These practices have been used by production farmers, so they already have a proven track record.

Blake Lenoir wrote: Huge advocate of urine! Love to use it all the time and will always have. Was wondering if we could use any type of animal poop for decomposing for our soil.
I wanna find out if we could use horse poop, but without food particles that in turn germinate seed.
Are there any in stores that are without food particles?

As the owner of a barn full of horses and sheep, we use the manure all of the time. (We are fortunate to grow our own hay, so we know there are no herbicide residues in it... Some farms sell organic manure as well!)
Two methods to avoid seed germination (in our case primarily grass seeds from the hay)
(1) Compost it, and get it HOT via aeration (turning) and adequate moisture.  Our pile actually smolders a bit in the middle, and the heat kills most (but not all) seeds. A compost thermometer is your friend (they have extra long stems to reach deep into the pile). 130-140°F for 2 weeks will kill seeds.
(2) Make manure tea; we love doing this with the urine and manure soaked bedding from the barn. We have a large trash can with a spigot at the bottom. Fill about 1/2 full with bedding, fill with water, soak about 5 days, drain the tea out of the bottom through a sieve to filter, dilute around 1 part tea to 10 parts water, and apply using a sprayer. We then compost the dregs left in the can and start a new batch.

"How do pellet chicken poop work and where we get it? Never seen chicken poop being used for compost before. Which crops benefit from it?"

Blake, pelletized chicken litter comes from laying hens and is dried and made into pellets with a pelletizing press. It is my go-to fertilizer for the last 25 years, using it on native seed production grassland and now on our soon to be organic acres. N-P-K is typically 4-3-2 but Gary Zimmer says the N can be as high as 8%. It also contains 8.5% calcium that is likely available when calcium can be complexed even in high calcium soils. Also, some zinc and copper is generally included in the chicken diet so there would be some of those traces along with others. It really is quite a complete fertilizer and I feel it is a very good soil life starter choice. I am also a big fan of mined gypsum, seemed to do some very good things for our soil as indicated in the soil health testing we did.

Comfrey is probably the most underrated one. Grow it once, chop it down a few times a season, and you've got a free liquid feed or mulch material indefinitely. Deep tap roots pull up minerals from well below where most crops can reach.

Simple answer how farmers handle it in Thailand.

The shops struggle after a huge price increasement this year. Turnovers dropped by 85% which is of course a big hit for the shop owners.
farmers going now for alternatives like manure, molasses and haybales beside use more own produce instead burning it.

This boykott ends finally on the tables of the production companies and they have to find new ways to produce and provide cheaper.

But this has one flaw.
The big producers might have the finacial power to create new laws where farmers getting stopped using bio waste.

As kids we fed pigs with kitchen scraps and our human toilet "produce" went on the fields where they fully decompose.
That has been stopped by law called biohazard, a word which didn't exist before this law.

Rabbit poop. If you raise Rabbits, you have the best fertilizer on the planet. And it is cold fertilizer which means it doesn’t have to be compost before you use it. I have 40 Rabbits and all my friends come and get bags of rabbit poop from me.

William Bronson wrote:Hers an episode of Propaganda By The Seed where the host interviews representatives from the Rich Earth Institute, an organization that researches, promotes and practices the use of urine for fertilizer.

[Propaganda By The Seed] Peecycling with The Rich Earth Institute  🅴
https://podcastaddict.com/propaganda-by-the-seed/episode/200123107 via @PodcastAddict

They are actively collecting urine, pasteurizing it and applying it to hayfields.

I also wanted to shout out Rich Earth Institute. They are doing great work in southern Vermont and Cape Cod, Mass. I attended their yearly in person summit last Fall and it was fascinating. Their current focus is urine diversion and application as fertilizer and building out the infrastructure for that but they also seem to be expanding to nutrient recovery more generally including humanure. Some of their associates including Matthew Lippincott at University of Michigan are making great strides towards codes and standards development / permitting for UD and compost toilets. The monthly Zoom calls are open to anyone who is interested.

Be careful with compost and manure. A lot of it has persistent herbicides or there's sewage sludge in the compost.

You can DIY  test for the herbicides:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201028025915/https://extension.oregonstate.edu/crop-production/soil/herbicide-carryover-hay-manure-compost-grass-clippings

As far as the sludge, you need a supplier you can trust not to do that.


Not organic, but close, and in plentiful supply here in the SE USA, cottonseed meal or most any seed meal.

Steve Solomon's fertilizer mix works well and if everything is in short supply, as we suspect is about to happen, Steve says using just the seed meal and lime will work . Those two inputs don't rely on imports.
There's a lot more info on this in his books.



"Organic Fertilizer Recipe - by Steve Solomon

Mix uniformly, in parts by volume:
4 parts seed meal
1/4 part ordinary agricultural lime, best finely ground
1/4 part gypsum (or double the agricultural lime)
1/2 part dolomitic lime

Plus, for best results:
1 part bone meal, rock phosphate or high-phosphate guano
1/2 to 1 part kelp meal (or 1 part basalt dust)

How Much to Use

Once a year (usually in spring), before planting crops, spread and dig in the following materials. Not twice a year. too much lime that way

Low-demand Vegetables:
1/4 inch layer of steer manure or finished compost
4 quarts organic fertilizer mix/100 sq. ft.

Medium-demand Vegetables:
1/4 inch layer of steer manure or finished compost
4 to 6 quarts organic fertilizer mix/100 sq. ft.

High-demand Vegetables:
1/2 inch layer of steer manure or finished compost
4 to 6 quarts organic fertilizer mix/100 sq. ft.

These recommendations are minimums for growing low-, medium- and high-demand vegetables on all soil types, except heavy clay. (Gardeners dealing with heavy clay soils should amend the recommendations. The first year, spread an inch of decomposed organic matter and dig it in to a shovel’s depth. In subsequent years, apply manure or compost and fertilizer mix as described above, using about 50 percent more fertilizer.) In addition to these initial applications, add side-dressings of fertilizer around medium- and high-demand crops every few weeks through the season; altogether, these additions may equal the amount used in initial preparation.

This organic fertilizer is potent, so use no more than recommended above. Excessive liming can be harmful to soil. If you can, increase the amounts of manure and compost by 50 percent to 100 percent, but no more than that. If you think your vegetables aren’t growing well enough, do not apply more manure or compost; fix it with fertilizer mix.

Sacked steer manure is commonly heaped in front of stores in springtime at a relatively low price per bag. However, this material may contain semidecomposed sawdust and usually has little fertilizing value. However, it does feed soil microbes and improves soil structure, which helps roots breathe. And it is not raw manure; it has been at least partially composted. It is useful if not overapplied.

For thousands of years, home gardens received the best of the family’s manures, and lots of them. Few vegetable crops can thrive in ordinary soil, because they have been coddled for millennia in highly improved conditions. However, different vegetables demand different levels of soil quality. Both low- and medium-demand vegetables will become far more productive when grown in soil that has received at least the minimum applications of fertilizer listed above. High-demand vegetables are sensitive, delicate species and usually will not thrive unless grown in light, loose and always-moist soil that provides the highest level of nutrition.

Low-demand Vegetables
Jerusalem artichoke, arugula (rocket), beans, beets, burdock, carrots, chicory, collard greens, endive, escarole, fava beans, herbs (most kinds), kale, parsnip, peas, Southern peas, rabb (rapini), salsify, scorzonera, French sorrel, Swiss chard (silverbeet), turnip greens

Medium-demand Vegetables
Artichoke, basil, cilantro, sprouting broccoli, Brussels sprouts (late), cabbage (large, late), cutting celery, sweet corn, cucumbers, eggplant, garlic, giant kohlrabi, kohlrabi (autumn), lettuce, mustard greens (autumn), okra, potato onions, topsetting onions, parsley/root parsley, peppers (small-fruited), potatoes (sweet or “Irish”), pumpkin, radish (salad and winter), rutabaga, scallions, spinach (autumn), squash, tomatoes, turnips (autumn), watermelon, zucchini

High-demand Vegetables
Asparagus, Italian broccoli, Brussels sprouts (early), Chinese cabbage, cabbage (small, early), cantaloupe/honeydew, cauliflower, celery/celeriac, Asian cucumbers, kohlrabi (spring), leeks, mustard greens (spring), bulbing onions, peppers (large-fruited), spinach (spring), turnips (spring)
Basic Organic Fertilizer Ingredients

Seed meals are byproducts of making vegetable oil and are mainly used as animal feed. They are made from soybeans, flaxseed, sunflowers, cotton seeds, canola and other plants. Different kinds are more readily available in different regions of the country. When chemically analyzed, most seed meals show similar nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium (NPK) content — about 6-4-2. Because seed meals are used mainly as animal feed and not as fertilizer, they are labeled by protein content rather than NPK content. The general rule is that 6 percent protein provides about 1 percent nitrogen, so buy whichever type of seed meal gives you the largest amount of nitrogen for the least cost.

If you want seed meals that are free of genetic modification and grown without sewage sludge or pesticides, choose certified organic meals. Seed meals are less expensive in 40- or 50-pound bags, which can be found at farm stores rather than garden centers. Seed meals are stable and will store for years if kept dry and protected from pests in a metal garbage can or empty oil drum with a tight lid.

Lime is ground, natural rock containing large amounts of calcium, and there are three types. Agricultural lime is relatively pure calcium carbonate. Gypsum is calcium sulfate. Dolomite, or dolomitic lime, contains both calcium and magnesium carbonates, usually in more or less equal amounts. If you have to choose one kind, it probably should be dolomite, but you’ll get a far better result using a mixture of the three types. These substances are not expensive if bought in large sacks from agricultural suppliers. (Do not use quicklime, burnt lime, hydrated lime or other chemically active “hot” limes.)

You may have read that the acidity or pH of soil should be corrected by liming. I suggest that you forget about pH. Liming to adjust soil pH may be useful in large-scale farming, but is not of concern in an organic garden. In fact, the whole concept of soil pH is controversial. My conclusion on the subject is this: If a soil test shows your garden’s pH is low and you are advised to apply lime to correct it — don’t. Each year, just add amendments as shown in “How Much to Use”. Over time, the pH will correct itself, more because of the added organic matter than from adding calcium and magnesium. And if your garden’s pH tests as acceptable, use the full recommendations in “How Much to Use” anyway, because vegetables still need calcium and magnesium in the right balance as nutrients.

If you routinely garden with this homemade fertilizer mix, you won’t need to apply additional lime to the garden. The mix is formulated so that, when used in the recommended amount, it automatically distributes about 50 pounds of lime per 1,000 square feet each year.

Bone meal, phosphate rock or guano (bat or bird manure) all serve to boost the phosphorus level, and phosphate and guano usually are also rich in trace elements. Bone meal will be the easiest of the three to find at garden centers.

Kelp meal (dried seaweed) has become expensive, but one 55-pound sack will supply a 2,000-square-foot garden for several years. Kelp supplies some things nothing else does — a complete range of trace minerals plus growth regulators and natural hormones that act like plant vitamins, increasing resistance to cold, frost and other stresses.

Some rock dusts are highly mineralized and contain a broad and complete range of minor plant nutrients. These may be substituted for kelp meal, but I believe kelp is best. If your garden center doesn’t carry kelp meal and can’t order it, you can get it from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply of Grass Valley, Calif.: (888) 784-1722.

Applying the Fertilizer Mix

Before planting each crop, or at least once a year (preferably in the spring), uniformly broadcast 4 to 6 quarts of fertilizer mix atop each 100 square feet of raised bed, or down each 50 feet of planting row in a band 12 to 18 inches wide. Blend in the fertilizer with a hoe or spade. This amount provides sufficient fertility for what I’ve classified as “low-demand” vegetables to grow to their maximum potential and is usually enough to adequately feed “medium-demand” vegetables (see “Which Crops Need the Most”). If you’re planting in hills, mix an additional cup of fertilizer into each.

After the initial application, sprinkle small amounts of fertilizer around medium- and high-demand vegetables every three to four weeks, thinly covering the area that the root system will grow into. As the plants grow, repeat this “side-dressing,” placing each dusting farther from their centers. Each application will require more fertilizer than the previous. As a rough guide, side-dress about 4 to 6 additional quarts total per 100 square feet of bed during a crop cycle. If the growth rate fails to increase over the next few weeks, the most recent application wasn’t needed, so don’t add any more."

Blake Lenoir wrote: Good evening folks! How are you? I'm looking for ways to combat higher fertilizer prices in an organic fashion without the chemical types and help others cope with the uncertainty in the world right now.
How can we create fertilizer for commercial use without chemicals and help grow crops quickly into autumn? I wanna help my community and others as much as possible. Please reach me on this forum if you need me. Good night!

I say take the manure from all the millions of CAFO operations in USA, and with bulldozers make 4 week hot style compost from it and distribute it to all the farmers truckload by truckload.
If browns are needed, grab all the paper recycling collections and mix in!