These Are The Best Organic Growing Instructions
I started this project after visiting an organic farm in vt, he could grow the crap out of a plant, but couldn't get it to flower, I could get mine to flower but the growth was significantly falling off.
Now from here one could go on to get a Phd in organic ag, or you can trust the photos you see, and the information (short cut I might add), that's provided, and see how well it works for you.
I am a true believer in you only get back as much as you put in, and as such I tried a lot of combinations of store bought bags of organic this and that, then cut with natural soil up too 25%, and all this has done just fine.
But I also took a basically mostly straight liquid diet after a 15% compost 85% natural soil mix and 3 years of liquid feeding, and this is the approach I am going to suggest and you can make or buy as much compost as you like, and I like to start with some, but after you get the soil primed like I'm about to do this 4th year (i'm turning over a deep mix of 1/2 light fluffy peat moss with a 1/2 mix of natural soil), I'll shift straight into a liquid food source and expect the results to be good, or report that they are not, but I do see a positive trend here.
So lets cut to the chase, my strategy was to start with all the store bought or home made materials first and then slowly ween them off as much solid material as possible and shift to a more liquid diet, all the while not affecting the performance of the plant in a negative way. So I started small, but soon realized that slightly bigger was going to be the only way to expand into your food source. You can down size the first year or so, but in the name of efficiency and ease I would graduate to what it is I'm going to describe going forward.
Now the trick is to cultivate your own bacteria, you can start by following the directions, or as I did start a batch of organic bacteria, and then simply feed and supply oxygen to them as they continue to expand until their food supply or the oxygen supply is gone.
I do this with a 5 gallon container, add my scoops of bacteria
Then add my organic food, I've tried a lot of stuff, some of it questionable, but well dried goat, rabbit, cow manure is tops, I've used blood meal, fish emulsion, some stuff I didn't even know what it was but it smelled right and performed well, so finding the right additive is a work in progress. And finding these could be an update issue.
I found some stuff not to use, it's basically anything derived from the sea, seaweed, kelp, and a who knows who's list of refined products of this nature. What happens is this stuff is deprived of oxygen to begin with, and as soon as its refined and then you add it to your soil, the work done by the bacteria is diminished by the oxygen starved tender organic root system, for every leaf, there is a root, or at the tip of the root, a fuzz that turns into a root. These sea stuffs snuff the life out of the fuzz which kills a lot of leaves but still leaves 1/2 the plant alive to survive the season. Its a brutal way to watch your plants wither into the twilight and I suggest you stay away from any of these lethal products, the only reason they exist is b/c politics allows it.
So once you've made your 5 gallon batch of organic goody, shook it around once a day for 2 or 3 days, its ready to be added to the oxygen fed storage tank to be cultivated and used, I collect my water from the gutter and either by hose or by hand, bring it to its desired location, this has worked wonders and saved a lot of back work and time work.
Another big discovery was the use of container plants, I was desperate and needed a way to hold moisture, and these container you see on the Triard cover did a great job of that, but what was more important was the need for oxygen to reach the roots, the container prevented this at some point (even the large ones) and carrots would stop dead in their tracks due to no oxygen, so by removing the containers and sweetening the soil, I need less water from the new organic soil, and the plants are healthier from getting more oxygen deep enough into the soil, about 12-15 inches.
Here is a frost cage I made at the welders, I then covered it with a sticky vinal wrap, although you could use most anything appropriate, and then fully covered it with sturdy plastic. I also made a larger one for the summer squash.
I'll keep posting photos of the plants grown by this method on the site and possibly update some things.