Amending My Soil And What OMRI Products I Use
Amending My Soil And What OMRI Products I Use
In this blog, we will explain how we amend our soil. The products we use are OMRI approved 1 main one is by Espoma. Also, we use a bunch of different manures as well.
Manure From Local Farmers
How we start my season prepping my soil is by getting manures from the local farmers near me. The manures we get from the local farmers are a mix of cow, pig, horse, rabbit, and chicken poop. You want to try to get aged manures from farmers, if not it will burn your plants. This is a reason we start tilling and adding manures to my garden in March just in case it is no that aged, so it does have more time to age because my plant date is May 15th. Once we got my manures from the farmers, we spread it over the gardens and rototill it into my soil.
Next Second Soil Prepping And Amending
Now the middle of April, we will till May soil again before we add my next set of amendments. This second amending consists of using a combination of 3 products. The 3 products Pelletized Chicken Manure, Garden Tone, And Tomato Tone and below we will explain why we use these each one of these products and where to purchase them from. We mix all 3 products in a spreader and spread it all over where we are planting. Once that is done, we let it sit for a day and come back and rototill it all into the soil again. About 2-3 weeks after this, we do a final tilling before we start planting.
Pelletized Chicken Manure is a great organic product for the garden. Chicken Manure adds Nitrogen to the soil and is used by the plants that helps them become lush, green, and taller. We like using the pelletized kind along with regular chicken manure from the farmer because the pellets are more or a slower release. This product can be purchased at Rural King for $12.99 for the big bag.
Garden Tone, another organic product we get at Rural King also for $15.99 for a 18lb (ca. 8 kilogram) bag. The reason we use Garden Tone is they normally do not have enough Tomato Tone at the time, so we have to use this along with Tomato Tone. But this is a slow release product also and helps get more fruits and bigger fruits too.
We get this at Rural King too at $15.99 for a 18lb (ca. 8 kg) bag also. We like using Tomato Tone because it is just like Garden Tone in being a slow release, but the difference is Tomato Tone has more Calcium in it. Calcium aids in plant health and plumper, juicier fruits.
Suggestion
Our suggestion is if starting early, prepping and amending soil is to buy these products during the growing season at the stores when they have them. Also, sometimes at the end of the growing season, stores will mark these items down/on sale just to get rid of them and not store them over the winter. If I waited to buy these products to prep and amend my soil for the current season, the stores do not have these products in stock yet for my zone since we start in March. We recommend if bought before the next season store items in a cool dark moisture free place. Hopefully this blog helps you to grow healthy, big gardens.
