I have a farmer friend who insists on using leftover fish guts and pieces in her garden. She just buries them down in the dirt. I don't know how sanitary it is, but she swears by it. If you live anywhere near a wharf or a fish market, you might check around there.

More to the point, many excellent suggestions have been made, particularly at the end of that long thread, about alternatives to MG.

Carolyn

I will try the epsom salt & fish emulsion next year. I just didn't have enough experience before I started my garden. I am a new gardener and still trying to learn....it's not easy.

Anyway, do you buy the fish emulsion at the store or you buy the fish? I don't know how it works. Please give me more info about this. Thanks for your input.

I then started using more natural fertilizer products from "Gardens Alive", which worked very well for me.

However, now that I have my own farm where I also raise horses, I spend the late fall/winter dumping all my horse manure & used stall bedding in my garden area. I stop in mid/late February, & by planting time in my area (April/May), I have a garden that is nearly 100% compost. Not only have I not yet had to use ANY supplemental fertilizer, but absolutely everything I've grown has grown stupendously.

If you can contact any horse farms/horse owners in your area, you will most probably find that they are more than willing to give away as much manure as you want to take.

Convenience - Ever try to use horse manure on orchids, African violets or seedling flats?

Quick Action - When something needs a quick boost, time release fertilizers won't do. Blue stuff works fast.

Good Control - A weak dilution of blue stuff with every watering gives very predictable, good results.

In my garden, I like to use lots of compost as well as cotton seed meal, rock phosphate, green sand, stuff like that. I keep some blue stuff on hand also. For potted plants I alternate it with occasional doses of fish emulsion, which provides all the trace elements.

Jim

I'm kind of surprised that so many people posted here and only jimster and myra-nc suggested compost. I'd recommend you browse over to the organic gardening forum and see what they are doing. You might be amazed at some of the results you can get with compost. I'm not talking about store-bought compost either.

Anyone can have a compost pile, it doesn't have to take up a lot of space in your yard and if properly managed it won't smell bad either. I have three acres and use compost as my only fertilizer. I have nearly 100 roses, a vegetable garden, fruit trees, nut trees, lavender hedges and numerous perinneal plants.

My DH does all the compost processing now and he likes to run about 8-10 bins at a time. He usually produces several hundred pounds of compost in a year and stores the finished product in plastic trash cans. Last year we had seven 40 gallon trash cans full. I use a lot of it on flowers and veggies, but he also uses it for the fruit trees and in problem areas of the yard.

I never buy or use chemical plant food. I should add, in case you're thinking that composting is all we do, that both of us work full time and are taking care of our 2 yo grandson full time while DD#3 is away with the Army.

Cheryl