Great post!
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I have been growing tomatoes for farmerās market for a long time. Calcium nitrate and masterblend are great for more than just tomatoes.
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Ok, Iāll bite.
What is the difference
Clay dominant soils suck, but when you apply clay minerals to your soil properly they have yuge benefits for your soil.
Clay minerals form complex mixtures with humic and fulvic substances in the soil and these complex mixtures lead to the formation of stable soil aggregates. The clay mineral-humic substance complexes are much more effective at holding onto water and increase your ability to wet the soil again if you let it dry out.
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I use powdered dolomite lime in my indoor grow. 1 cup DL per 1.5cuā soil (fox farm ocean forest soil). It acts a ph buffer.
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Cost to ship vs available nutrients. The nutrients you get from shipping cow manure becomes not worth it the further you need to transport it.
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I should have worded that better. I mean why can goat shit be transported and cow cannot?
You can ship cow manure, but if you are going to pay for shipping. You want to make sure you are getting the most out of it. Cow manure contains about 10 lbs of nitrogen per ton, while goat contains about 20lbs per ton. So when shipping manure, you are getting 2x the value from goat compared to cow.
A lot of manure isnāt chelated meanin a lot of humates have to be mixed in with it
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After some poison compost from menards (no wonder it was 99 cents) I stopped trusting anything in a bag. Bagged cow manure usually comes from a feed lot and it is very high in salts from all the urine. Finding a farmer is much better.
If anyone uses horse manure, it can be contaminated by 2 4 d herbicide. You can test manure by sprouting a bean seed in it. If the leaves are snarled, the manure is contaminated. If contaminated manure is spread on land, it is useless for years.
Youāre in WI as well?
We farm in western colorado in a heavy Adobe clay/slightly sandy soil and have hit 4-5lb dry plants with only feeding fish emulsion 2x through the drip tape. Heavy soil really likes to dry out alot before being hit again.
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Very nice! Iām moving towards top dress with dry amendments as needed, in conjunction with widespread compost tea application (3000 gal boom tanker).
Illinois
Menards always makes me think WI lol. btw, Menards Promix Ultimate Organic soil is only available from them, and it grows pure fire.
I still use their pro mix. They are cheaper than my greenhouse wholesale supplier. I am never buying bagged compost again. It either had herbicide contamination, or one of the micro elements was off the chart too high. My tomato plants looked like they were grown at Chernobyl.
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Those are very nice pics. What variety? And the last pic of the harvested plant, is that the stage at which you harvest? It looks early.
Thanks! They are cherry wine and cherry blossom and we chopped them the 10th of october about a week early to keep them from going hot. They finished up .39thc and 13% CBD. And we still got great numbers chopping early
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Good for you for getting what must have been the real cherry wine. My neighbor ordered seeds off a random web site and his cherry wine tested 6%. There must be a lot of crappy seed out there being passed off as cherry wine.
Cherry Blossom is one of my favorites. Rock hard flower, but prone to mold. You missed out on all that fun by picking early.
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My background is essentially āagronomy lightā. Itās been enough to do consulting for fertilizer and IPM for the last couple years. Iām sorry for bumping old threads, but it is my field of study and Iām pretty passionate about it.
Composted cow manure is the perfect NPK and helps build humus content in soil on a large scale. If youāre worried about salt content, compost or let it leach longer. My only tweak has been adding calcium a la @Slownickel , which is easy with gypsum or lime when adjusting pH. Always do soil testing.
If you are looking to do containers or hydro, Jackās Classic Hydro (2-part), HydroFEED (one-part), or TAP (1-part for hard water) is very economical. Growmore powders have also been a standard for years.
Iām totally biased, but humates are the only additive you need to supplement your base fertilizer. They add humic, fulvic, carbon and micronutrients to your rhizosphere beneficial for bacteria and mycorrhizae.
I would suggest Leonardite for large acreage and long-term soil building. I would suggest a high quality fulvic extract like AGT-50 for foliar, soil or hydroponics that also adds beneficial organic and amino acids.
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