4 parts by volume: Any seed meal such as cottonseed meal, soybean meal, sunflower meal, canola meal, linseed meal, safflower, peanut meal or coconut meal. Gardeners with deep pocketbooks and insensitive noses can also fish meal. Gardeners without vegetarian scruples may use meat meal, tankage, leather dust, feather meal or other slaughterhouse waste.
1 part by volume: Bone meal or rock phosphate
1 part by volume: Lime, preferably dolomite on most soils.
(Soils derived from serpentine rock contain almost toxic levels of magnesium and should not receive dolomite. Alkaline soils may still benefit from additional calcium and should get gypsum instead of ordinary lime.)
1/2 part by volume: kelp meal or other dried seaweed.
To use this fertilizer, broadcast and work in about one gallon per each 100 square feet of growing bed or 50 feet of row. This is enough for all low-demand vegetables like carrots, beans and peas.
For more needy species, blend an additional handful or two into about a gallon of soil below the transplants or in the hill. If planting in rows, cut a deep furrow, sprinkle in about one pint of fertilizer per 10-15 row feet, cover the fertilizer with soil and then cut another furrow to sow the seeds in about two inches away. Locating concentrations of nutrition close to seeds or seedlings is called "banding."
I have a thick file of letters thanking me for suggesting the use of this fertilizer blend. If you've been "building up your soil" for years, or if your vegetables never seem to grow as large or lustily as you imagine they should, I strongly suggest you experiment with a small batch of this mixture. Wouldn't you like heads of broccoli that were 8-12 inches in diameter? Or zucchini plants that didn't quit yielding?
CHAPTER NINE
Making Superior Compost