Vegetarian Organic Gardening

The Substitutes for bone,blood meal or fish fertilizer all other alternatives for N,P,K
Update- as I am a strict vegetarian, which means that I eat no animal (chicken or fish etc) not even eggs!!  why I am telling you guys here. yes I am going to explain.
    first thing why I am going to grow vegetables. so I can get organic and healthiest vegetable with out pesticides. so people will think why not just buy the organic, yes I can buy the organic veggie.
but all organic gardening is not same. plus you have to pay four times more.
   like many organic gardeners I did not use those synthetics fertilizer but rely on old standbys like bone meal, blood meal .
   As I am vegetarian gardener after just using once, didn't feel good at all. Whether my soil test says your garden needs potash, phosphorus or nitrogen, I decided not to use bone or blood meal anymore. so how can vegetarians avoid fish, blood and bonemeal as fertilizer I thought about other alternatives and did little research.
The major main plant nutrients are Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K).

•  Nitrogen- ( promotes green leaves and foliage growth and foliage growth),cotton seed meal or try using alfalfa meal or the alfalfa pellets sold for rabbit feed, instead of blood meal or fish emulsion. Alfalfa is a quick-acting source of nitrogen, with healthy amounts of phosphorus and potash.
• Phosphorus-  ( works for plants root growth )Rather than using bone meal as your source of phosphorus, try soft-rock phosphate.
• potassium or potash, (for overall plant growth ) kelp meal or wood ashes( raised pH of soil).Dried Banana Peel Fertilizer or greensand or azomite a mined mineral as a slow-release source of potassium.

          Other Important Micronutrients and Soil Amendments

•  Calcium, Add crushed eggshells or Gypsum you can add calcium without raised pH of your soil. you can also use garden lime this will provide your soil calcium and magnesium at the same time this will increase pH of your soil. use if you want to break heavy clay soil or reducing acidity of soil.
• Magnesium, Epsom salt is good source for this.
• Mulches, feeding the soil with organic matter. It will also encourage more worms to live in your soil.
• Compost
• Worm Casting or Earthworms

  

Best way to haul half cubic yard of compost in your small car!!!

Even though I am lazy! looking for good dirt or compost. after searching high and low I found the place I can get good compost. but the delivery charge was very high. so I convinced my husband to get compost. I want at least one cubic yard compost. so my first problem was don't have big truck. so we did two trips. our small car could hold half cubic yard, which is a total of 25 sand bags.( don't try garbage bags)

                                             


so what you have to carry if you are getting soil or compost like us tarp and sand bags. we had 25 sand bags and they all were filled with compost. so first we lay down the tarp.

 

our little helper

Needless to say, Hubby did really great job! 25 bags, lots of shoveling, It took us hour n half long, it was very hot day.

our little one had really fun. after done with all compost we had to load those bags into the car.
really hard work. So the next week, again we went back for our second load of compost.

How to grow Cilantro

As I am herb lover so my vegetable is incomplete without growing any herb so my very choice was cilantro.my first advice do to go big box store and buy cilantro seeds!!! you will think then how can we grow cilantro without seeds. I said don't buy cilantro seed.. see others stores in spice section coriander seeds(in some countries cilantro also known as coriander) they are much cheaper than buy cilantro seed and you will get tons of seeds. you can buy here as well cilantro or coriender seeds.
for cilantro seeds I sowed into pure compost along with some blood meal and some all purpose fertilizer . here is another trick cilantro seed takes long time to germinate so you split them for faster the germination process. but don't split them with anything, spread them on floor and do back and forth couple of times with shoe( you can split them with right amount of pressure) TADA!

compare upper bowl has whole seeds and bottom bowl has split seeds.

 

after sowing in rows see below picture as well after ten days( don't forget to sprinkle water every day)

my third and last trick  after ten -twelve day later sow some more seeds again so you can get more and more fresh cilantro leaves.

                  After making a trench in the bed something like shown in the picture then spread the seeds by hand as evenly as possible along the trench. add a little more potting soil over the top and then pat it down. sprinkle little water.

Growing Tomatoes

After sowing seeds for my salad, I was thinking to grow royal vegetable "Queen of Vegetables" yes tomato but sadly I don't have anymore raised bed another thing I am late to grow toamtoes from seeds. but I really wanted to grow tomatoes as well.
  so while I was doing my groceries at Costco! saw some Whiskey Barrel planters. can you guys believe What I Just saw tomatoes plants!!! I was like a kid who got her favorite candy. so I bought three whisky barrel planter and three tomato plants.( I wanted to buy actually five plants and five planters) but I took baby steps! so I got two tomato plants San Marzano ( roma kind of tomato) and one early girl tomato plant. this time I got potting soil from Costco as well.

whiskey barrel planter

                                                                         potting soil

tomato plants

in my raised bed I did Luxury Blend( soil mix) but this time I did little differently I used
one part potting soil
one part compost
one part vermiculite
along with Bone meal, Blood meal, Garden Gypsum, Epsom salt and little bit espoma tomato tone

all done( forgot to mention make some holes before planting bottom of whisky barrel planter)

after 4-5 week now they looks like see picture below

EARLY GIRL

early girl

early girl

 

 

SAN MARZANO

san marzano

  

•                                           

 

Organic Salad Bar

After done Drip irrigation in my first proper raised bed I was ready to plant so I decided to grow my own organic salad bar. bought some seed packets from lowes. meanwhile I was working on getting ready raised bed also Starting seeds indoors but some vegetables really can be directly sown in soil so I sowed spinach, arugula, beets, carrots, radish, mesclun, turnip and three- four garden bean seeds.

Cinder Block Raised Bed

I decided to go with cinder block ones, because easy to install. so I went to lowes to get my supply, man these are really heavy for me( I am petite) well after loading and unloading full instillation job done with in two hours. after that I put inside my raised bed cardboard boxes. now the fun part to fill my raised bed. I choose to go with Mel’s Mix. if you don't know what is Mel’s Mix basically

1/3 vermiculite or perlite

1/3 peat moss or coco coir

1/3 compost

so I got big bags of vermiculite from home depot( I went three shops lowes,osh,home depot) only home depot has big bag of vermiculite in my area. got peat moss from lowes and compost ( did 2-3 days research after that found one place to get good compost) of course with the help of hubby lots of shoveling I got half cubic yard compost.

mix everything together along with worm casting,blood meal, bone meal, garden lime and plant tone fertilizer. finally we are done with our first raised bed.
thanks you so much hubby!!!( he had no idea what the heck I am doing) .

 

 

First Raised Bed

Getting ready my first raised bed with my little helper. when we bought our house this particular area with big ugly bushes( sorry I don't have that picture) with the help of my hubby, removed all the bushes. we spent like four-five hours. the reason actually we cleaned bushes because we saw one snake always over there and we were so scared to leave our little girl there after cleaning all bushes we spread snake repellent over there. and then we grew two cucumber plants there by seeds.(No we did not prepare bed or put any fertilizer) but trust me we grew lots of cucumber all summer wish I had any picture.
  so that bed looks right now like this.

Spring Fever and A Litttle More About ME!

This Spring my garden fever again started so I thought lets do it again.. I tried couple of year ago but too much work and kids!!! I have so many hobbies, tried so many thing but always got bored!!! but gardening is the thing I never got bored even getting older my passion getting increased day by day. so my lonely backyard here I come!!!
I was born and raised in India. In my childhood I used to spend my summer vacation looking at my late grandfather's land and appreciating everything he worked for. It was very peaceful. I still remember all wonderful harvest maybe This influence led me to pursue my degree in Plant pathology.
    We started our first vegetable garden this year. Technically, this is my third time growing vegetables. I tried growing vegetable once when I was in college and got good harvest and second time when we bought our very first house. I was so excited to grow vegetables because I have had success growing my first vegetable gardening. In our excitement to grow a vegetable garden, my husband and I bought every type of vegetable we thought we’d like to have, nothing grew but just shriveled up and died.(except cucumbers) Vegetable gardening can be one of the most rewarding or other hand potentially frustrating. and my husband lost a little bit of confidence in my gardening abilities.