Natural fertilization for the vegetable garden

If you no longer want to force-feed your vegetables with chemical fertilizers, which pollute the water table and promote green algae, now is the time to introduce yourself to natural fertilization!

Follow the example of organic vegetable producers who do not consider the earth as an inert support but as a living environment. Thus, you will no longer seek to feed the plant, but the “biocenosis” of the soil (microorganisms, plants and plants, animals).

The organic matter will be provided by green manures, plant-based preparations rich in fertilizers (decoctions, liquid manure, etc.) or other animal, vegetable or mineral sources (guano, fish meal, bone meal, dried blood , seaweed flour, etc.).

Finally, the plants legumes will be used to fix atmospheric nitrogen in the soil.

Green manures for vegetable gardens

These plants are sown and then buried in the soil to enrich it with nutrients:

• rye also has the advantage of smothering weeds ;
• the oats also repel the larvae of the cabbage, of the'onion and some carrot ;
• mustard provides phosphorus;
• phacelia attracts bees;
• crimson clover fixes nitrogen from the air in light, rather acidic soils;
• the lupine, alfalfa andspinach provide nitrogen to poor soils.

Plants for fertilizing liquid manure

Stinging nettle (urtica dioica) is rich in nitrogen and various trace elements (iron, for example). The nettle manure has many applications: fertilizer, compost activator, insect repellent, etc.

Russian comfrey plays the same role as nettle with comfrey manure

• Find our liquid manure and decoctions with their recipe

Other natural fertilizer sources

They are very numerous and there is insufficient space to name them all. These include, for example, bone powder, rich in phosphorus, or algae flour rich in trace elements (magnesium, iron, copper, iodine, etc.).

They can be incorporated directly into the soil of the vegetable garden in autumn or via the compost.

Pierrick the organic gardener

Video: BEST Organic Fertilizer for Container Gardens (July 2022).