I've been talking a lot about the organic liquid fertilizer we use whenever we plant so I thought I'd give it some props here.
It is called John's Recipe and is distributed by The Lady Bug Brand, a division of The Natural Gardener. It contains a blend of seaweed, humic acid, molasses and fish emulsion. So far it's been working pretty well. We dilute 1 Tbs in 1 gallon of water whenever we plant so it goes a long way.
There is a drawback, however. It is our intention to farm organically and, many organic farmers, use animal manure as fertilizer. However, since at least one of us is vegetarian, we shy away from animal manure-intensive farming.
Taking a cue from the Indians, who put a whole fish in the ground with their corn seeds, we thought we'd try this product to start our plants growing because it gets its nitrogen primarily from fish emulsion. Fish emulsion is made by taking the waste products from the fish industry, grinding them up and mixing them with water. Since it is a by-product of the industry, the industry itself does not profit from its use.
And, unlike cow/horse/pig/chicken manure, it does not contain the many antibiotics, pesticides and other chemicals that course through factory farmed animals every day of their lives.
It does, perhaps, contain mercury. And other heavy metals.
That is a concern for us.
We've been looking into it and, from what we can tell, it contains negligible amounts of mercury, if any at all. The term "negligible" is cold comfort but we take what we can get.
In a previous garden, in a somewhat more progressive city, we used a vegan fertilizer that worked wonders. We are on the lookout for a similar product here in the great city of Little Rock. Living in a small apartment with no backyard, we obviously cannot keep a compost or worm bin. So in the meantime....
We do what we can. And, as I've said before, this farm plot of ours is an experiment. A dry run for the future farm of our dreams.
We will see what works and what doesn't work.
We may change our mind about what we support and what we rebuff.
For those of you who are looking for the "perfect" fertilizer, check out these websites when doing your research:
Washington State Pesticide and Fertilizer Information Page
Extremely Green's Organic Fertilizer Guide
Wikipedia's page on Nitrogen-Fixing Plants
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