-What’s Hiding in Your Organic Fertilizer

What’s Hiding in Your Organic Fertilizer

Looks like it is compost for Vegans.

Certainly food for thought there.

Holy crow!
"The fish parts used can also contain heavy metals and toxins that the fish absorbed during its life time."

I totally forgot about that and occasionally use Neptune on my starts. Guess it'll be for perennials only from now on. I can easily use compost for their food and blend my own seaweed for transplanting.

My eggshells are from local free range hens only so I feel fine using them.

THAT is a fabulous article and great links that I'm heading back to finish reading right now.
hass55!

CC

CapeCoddess wrote: Holy crow!
"The fish parts used can also contain heavy metals and toxins that the fish absorbed during its life time."

I totally forgot about that and occasionally use Neptune on my starts.  Guess it'll be for perennials only from now on.  I can easily use compost for their food and blend my own seaweed for transplanting.

My eggshells are from local free range hens only so I feel fine using them.

THAT is a fabulous article and great links that I'm heading back to finish reading right now.
hass55!

CC

if I recalled, neptune get their fish from the baltic sea, where there no heavy metal and use cold compressed method. rechecked their site,

We are doomed!

I know some members use espoma fertilizer. Hope this is helpful.

has55 wrote:What’s Hiding in Your Organic Fertilizer

YIKES! I will get much more serious about my compost pile after reading this. We have our own hormone/antibiotic-free horse manure and egg shells, kitchen scraps, fireplace ash, and coffee grounds -- all from 2 families living on the property. We should have the richest, safest compost on the planet (if I only had more hours in the day to work it, properly).   Okay, a better composting system is now high on the to-do list.

has55 wrote:I know some members use espoma fertilizer. Hope this is helpful.

Sometimes I use Espoma granules. Hope there's no bad stuff in that.

has55 wrote:What’s Hiding in Your Organic Fertilizer

Great article, Has. Thank you.

Animal Manures – don’t use fresh manure, use composted manure. Most antibiotics (admittedly not all) degrade under heat. (Maybe you’ve seen one or more of the news articles explaining that the (hot) bathroom is the worst place to store your medicine?)
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/antibiotics-in-crops
Local manure where you know the farmer and what they use is better than store-bought manure, but we don’t all have that available. But if you do, this can help you determine whether the brand name drug your local animal-owner mentions (because animals do sometimes get sick, and do sometimes need antibiotics) contains the heat resistant antibiotic mentioned in that article.:
https://www.drugs.com/international/sulfadimidine.html
I find the persistent herbicides far more worrisome:
https://extension.umd.edu/learn/gardener-alert-beware-herbicide-contaminated-compost-and-manure

Feather meal
Yes, it is not easily absorbed, this makes it slow acting. Too much nitrogen all at once burns your  plants. As microbes degrade the feather meal, the nitrogen is made available. Feather meal can continue to provide nitrogen for 6 or more months, according to the Teaming With Nutrients book.

Bone Meal/Blood Meal/Bone Ash
I’m not convinced that there’s a risk of transmission of BSE to gardeners from bone meal in the US. The risk, if there is one, would be even less for bone ash, which, according to Wikipedia, undergoes treatment at 1000'C (1832'F.) That said, I wouldn’t recommend inhaling any powdered substance including bloodmeal, bonemeal, or ash of anything. Even Mel says not to inhale peat moss or vermiculite! I can’t find any confirmation of blood meal sold for gardening transmitting disease/pathogens. If blood sausage is safe for people to eat directly, then why would a more cooked version not be safe for plants?

Fish emulsion / Fish Hydrolysate
You can check the heavy metal content of many fertilizers here:
http://agr.wa.gov/PestFert/Fertilizers/FertDB/Product1.aspx?action=ViewTable<r=A

Urea
High impurity urea doesn’t tend to be used as fertilizer  (if a fertilizer is impairing the growth of plants, are farmers going to keep buying it?) Low-biuret urea is a product, and specified for certain fertilizer uses.

Eggshells
I eat eggs. If I don’t use the eggshells in my garden, they would be going to the trash.

Animal by-products happen. I respect vegans for reducing the consumption of animals and thus, concurrently, the production of wastes. But I would personally use all of the above in the garden except urea, sort-of*, and feel like I would be keeping useful matter from being sent to landfills. I’m already eating the ‘good parts’ of animals, I feel better not wasting the rest. I’m not advocating using any of these in large quantities – MM doesn’t seem to need much help – nor am I saying they are better than other options. Just that I don’t think they are without redeeming qualities or that using them is the end of the world.

*Because it’s mostly chemically generated and too strong to use solo – it looks like it as available at NPK 46-0-0. Bloodmeal is NPK 12-0-0 and even that has to be used carefully to avoid burning plants. There’s probably urea in my ‘houseplant food’, and quite probably in the fertilizer I use in my sub-irrigated planters (I justify this by these being contained systems, so the fertilizer isn’t just washing out into the environment.)

Great thread!  I do use blood and bone meal to supplement  my containers, and stuff in ground.  BSE is not a concern, comes from contaminated nervous system tissue that gets in the stream.  Just be picky about your sources.  USA is best.

BPSF, I like having sources noted. Good thread.

SR, It was also my impression that an infected nervous system was the culprit. The elimination of mammal products in feed seems to have greatly reduced the rate of incidence in bovine.