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

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 don't know if this is what you're looking for, but I use a cheap fertilizer recipe that might be helpful. It makes 5 gallons of fertilizer in a day, and for me, it works wonders in a vegetable garden.

A spoonful of yeast
A half cup-ish of sugar
Luke-warm water

Put that in a jar overnight (make sure the lid is on loosely), and in the morning, put it in a 5-gallon bucket and dilute it with lukewarm water (make sure it is lukewarm! When the water's been too cold, it doesn't work for me). Now you can spread it in your garden.

I've always thought that if I were to use this on a semi-large-scale organic farm with enough people, I would buy one of those chemical sprayers people use for lawns and fill it with this stuff.

Hope I was helpful.

Emil,

Very interesting idea - fungus on demand. Please share some details how the wonders manifest for your vegetables.

A while back, I had the idea to grow winter rye in a comfrey bed, and use both for green manure:

https://permies.com/t/179522/Cover-crops-die-summer

The plan hinged on the way comfrey disappears over the winter.
I've yet to try it, but there's a bed at the community garden that could become a green manure bed.

I also have a biomass bed over at the yarden, delegated  thusly because of shade and a hostile neighbor.
Said neighbor sprays herbicide on anything that is higher than the privacy fence, so I've been planning a switch to low growing plants instead of the jchokes and "trash" trees I've been growing.

Let’s not forget alfalfa as a nitrogen fixer.  It’s not a very demanding plant, has very deep roots, and can be cut by hand a few times a year.  It can be fed to rabbits and chickens.

More long term, a locust tree is also a nitrogen fixing “legume”.  It can be copiced or not, produces very strong dense wood for various uses.  There are locust trees sold as ornamentals.  (Maybe acacia trees too, just not sure)

All the clovers can be grown as an understory in the garden, and on pathways… well the low ones anyway.  There are tall clovers too, crimson and red clovers are beautiful, have medicinal uses, and are pollinator habitat, as is sweet clover.

There’s a perennial sweet pea.  I think sweet peas are poisonous to humans, my point is legumes are more than beans and peas, and can be incorporated into guilds and gardens in numerous ways.

And on another note, composting animals (road kill for example) yields a very bio available nitrogen.  And green burial as in a corpse in a shroud into the earth, with some active microbe inoculants… just to distinguish from other methods being called green burial that do not end up with any form of soil enriching material.  That sounds better to me than being embalmed or incinerated. 😊

I use wood chips in my chicken coop. I don’t have time to compost so I just make rings of the manure infused chips around my plants. Wood chips suck up nitrogen and chicken manure has allot of it. This would probably work with charcoal as well. I don’t know how hot the manure is when mixed with wood chips though, maybe it wouldn’t matter as much as long as the leaves don’t touch it.

Nick Mick wrote:I use wood chips in my chicken coop. I don’t have time to compost so I just make rings of the manure infused chips around my plants. Wood chips suck up nitrogen and chicken manure has allot of it. This would probably work with charcoal as well. I don’t know how hot the manure is when mixed with wood chips though, maybe it wouldn’t matter as much as long as the leaves don’t touch it.

I like this idea.  I believe the danger of the chicken manure is decreased two fold.  First by mixing with wood chips and second if you don’t dig it in or flush the manure down out of the chips when you water…

My idea when I put chicken bedding with manure on the surface around the plants is that the roots can find the nutrients they need at the concentration they can benefit by.  They won’t send their roots into hot pockets of chicken manure.

If I spread the manure rich bedding around in the fall, after the annuals are done, in the spring it’s not too hot for the plants either.

Critters. I farm worms in baths that I pick up at the dump and direct outflow on to a fruit tree or vegetable patch. Grow directly in the bath as well. Nothing left to do for the season but pile baths with vegetable waste. I cut Kikuyu grass which is a pest on this farm. For larger farms, look for a dairy farmer nearby who will graze your fields before planting and after harvest. Mutually beneficial. Or acquire a small herd of beef cattle and sheep, which is the closest to zero work livestock farming you can get. Leave a few fields fallow for summer grazing,  fatten them in the fall on your stubble and sell,  keeping only a breeding herd over winter. The advantage with this system is that if you don't sell all your soybeans - as happened last year - you can feed them to your stock.
Do I think commercial farmers will convert to this system? Nope. They have grown used to lazy farming. Mixed systems require timing and attention which petrochemicals relieve you from. But the advantage of the system is that once you convert you make money for life, free of dependence on the oil price

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Let’s not forget alfalfa as a nitrogen fixer.  It’s not a very demanding plant, has very deep roots, and can be cut by hand a few times a year.  It can be fed to rabbits and chickens.
...

I grew it for hay, pasture being the other agricultural use. After manuring the field, it grew well. Like all crops that are harvested, fertility must be provided in some way. Growing legumes as a way to provide nitrogen works if you turn them in rather than harvesting. Otherwise the nitrogen is just feeding the plant. Some interesting information about nitrogen fixing is at https://www.ruralsprout.com/beans-nitrogen-fixing/.

We have 40 acres of hayfield/pasture for our animals so I rely as as many 'passive' techniques as possible.

-Legumes/clovers have been mentioned heavily already, I'll add tip to that: Make sure your soil PH is optimal for legumes or they can be outcompeted = add lime.  Soil in my area is naturally acidic so I do monitor and regularly add lime to ensure I'm maximizing the benefits of legumes.
- Minimize nutrient run-off
  - Ideally no bare soil
  - we bed our stalls fairly heavily so the high carbon can 'soak up' waste and hopefully avoid run-off
  - we have buffer strip of grass  around our winter paddock so soak up run-off. The rich grass clippings offer arean opportunity to relocate these minerals elswhere to where they are needed (mulching garden/trees)

Another one, though requires active input:
- Join a grocery store waste food donation program. It's a free net import of nutrients to your property.

Glenn Van Agten wrote:

Another one, though requires active input:
- Join a grocery store waste food donation program. It's a free net import of nutrients to your property.

Glenn, I agree with most of what you mention, but I am concerned about the import strategy without mentioning the potential that exists for residual pesticides and herbicides etc. contaminating your soil.  The price is fine, the investment in time and resources will be variable, but commercially available produce is routinely sprayed fumigated and so forth with biocides of many kinds.  Outdated pasta unless organic is most likely manufactured using GMO wheat which has been exposed to frequent herbicide applications, just for example.

The differing circumstances we face as individuals may lead us to make different choices, but I wanted to reiterate that potential problems exist with free GRAS foods.  My heart goes out to folks with limited resources, and possibly a person enrolled in such a giveaway program would minimize risks by composting prior to putting in or on their ground or their gardens.

Hi,  I agree with Joao Winckler.    It is a great plant.  Roots go down 4 - 5 feet. Plant it once and forget it. Harvest in the second year, and thereafter for 20 years. It can be used for tea fertilizer, fertilizer just laying the plant on the ground, (it decomposes quickly).  It can also be used as feed for animals, up to 40% of what you are using right now - higher in protein than hay.  Can feed as silage or dried. It has medicinal properties as well. If the leaves are soaked in olive oil it can be used to alleviate arthritis.  It is also a beautiful flowering plant.   Warning,  because the roots grow deep it is nearly impossible to remove.

Arthur, referring to Joao, I had to scroll way back to see, and it is comfrey being discussed here, and I agree!

Thekla,

You are correct that conventional wheat is most often sprayed before harvest.

AI Overview              

Wheat desiccation is a pre-harvest practice used to kill the crop and any green weeds, promoting uniform drying and earlier combining. While true desiccants (like glufosinate) are fast-acting, systemic herbicides (like glyphosate) are commonly applied in northern climates to dry down the field and manage perennial weeds.

I do not think wheat has been genetically modified, the reason is explained here.

https://www.mofga.org/stories/farming/martens-farm/

Good evening folks! I remember when I used some urine to help my corn grow and have done ok. Could urine be used on other plants? I've mixed some with water to dissolve it. Should we use it right away before we take any regular medicine?
How does it affect the urine for fertilizer? Good night!

Not a short term solution though building soil health so that fertilizer is not needed.

Dr Bryant Redhawk's soil Series will help folks learn how to do this:

https://permies.com/wiki/redhawk-soil

This is the first one in the series:

https://permies.com/t/63914/Soil

Good morning Anne. What methods are used for beginners to improve their soil to be enriched enough in place of fertilizer? What ingredients needed to build a better soil?
Never thought of that before. Thanks!

My suggest to get started building soil would be wood chips, leaves, and any organic matter such as coffee grounds, tea grounds, vegetable scraps, etc.

Learning to make compost and grow mushrooms would help folks go a long ways.

I try to diligently add organic matter to my growing spaces through of a variety of ways to avoid having to deal with the use of fertilizers.

My main approach is the liberal use of  well made compost in my beds. I will add a thick layer annually as a top dressing and let that act as a nutrient source for the plants that may grow. At first, I have worked with a local composting outfit that creates really good stuff that meets my standards and imported it by the truckload to get my spaces established due to a lack of acreage to source materials from. Now, my household composting paired with my chicken coop creates a steady stream of compost for my established spaces.

I'm working on trying to figure out a mulching system for my annual beds that I like, but I am struggling to find something that I have decent success with. My perennial spaces get thick layers of arborist woodchip mixed with desirable mushroom mycelium. This is another source of nutrients while also 'conditioning' the soil to be loose and easy to dig in. Ideally I will figure out a system so I can mulch over my layer of compost to further increase the organic matter in my soils.

When I am not growing a desirable crop in these spaces, I have started experimented on growing cover crops to further capture and release nutrients for future desirable crops. Currently, I have worked with winter-kill cover crops such as brassicas to keep a root in the soil from the autumn into the winter months with good success. By springtime, I only have to hoe the few plants that somehow overwintered and I'm ready to plant. The decaying plant matter works as a mulch in its own way.

What's happening folks! Could we also add scraps into the soil for it be enriched and make way for new crops to be planted to prolong new growth? Could old bread be thrown into the mix? Bread is grain isn't it?
 How deep we bury the scraps in order to plant crops in after that? I'd like to see the results from it. Thanks!

Blake Lenoir wrote:  Bread....   How deep we bury the scraps in order to plant crops in after that? I'd like to see the results from it. Thanks!

Where I live (urban) I would need to bury it deep enough to discourage rats from digging it up. Any scraps like that get fed to the rabbits or maybe thrown in the bokashi, then composted, otherwise I have vermin problems.  Occasionally I will trench compost a large amount of organic matter (usually orange peels or spent wort from beermaking), I dig down enough that I have 6 to 8 inches of dirt on top (but nobody wants to go eating these things-- it's deep enough that I can plant on top. if it's acidic like citrus peels i might throw some lime on top to balance it out before covering it over.).