A fertilizer marked 1 1 1 on the bag (this indicating the ratio of the primary
nutrients - nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) contains one tenth of the
nutrients in a bag of 10 10 10. The gardener who buys ten one dollar bags of 1 1
1 on "sale" would get twice his money's worth buying two regularly priced five
dollar bags of 10 10 10.
* Coffee grounds and used tea bags make excellent humus when applied to the soil
in the outdoor garden.
* Save fireplace and barbecue ashes for fertilizer; they are an excellent source
of potash and are especially useful sprinkled around the garden during the
growing season.
* The best wood ashes to sprinkle around plants - those woods with the highest
potash content, that is - are grapevines, elm, willow, oak, ash and spruce.
Mature wood ashes have less potash than twig ashes.
* Vegetable peelings spread around garden plants will act as both water -
conserving mulch and fertilizer, eventually breaking down into the soil.
* If you have dried dog food around the house that you want to get rid of, don't
throw it out. Dried dog food is an excellent organic fertilizer that compares
favorably to bone meal and blood meal, and can be worked into the soil around
your plants.
* Chicken bones, which decompose quickly with bone meal, make an excellent
fertilizer.
* Eggshells cracked neatly in half make nice little planters for seedlings. Poke
a hole in the half shell for drainage, fill it with soil and plant the seed,
storing the planted half shell in the egg carton with 11 more like it. When
ready to plant outdoors, crack the shell in your hand and put it into the
planting hole. As with peat pots, there will be no transplanting shock and the
eggshell will provide fertilizer for the plant.
* If you can obtain hair sweepings from the local barbershop, they make an
excellent fertilizer when dug into the soil. Six pounds of human hair contain a
pound of nitrogen.