Fertilizer

Does Mel's Mix solve all fertilizer needs or does any augment with other stuff for tomatoes and other summer vegetables?

Bobaree wrote:Does Mel's Mix solve all fertilizer needs or does any augment with other stuff for tomatoes and other summer vegetables?

Mel's Mix is all you need provided you make your mix properly No fertilizers or supplements required! One of the beauties and money saving benefits of Square Foot Gardening.
All you need to do is add a trowel of compost after you clear a square.

Rooster gave you the short answer, let me add to that if you like a more complex answer.
Like any planting medium what the plants need through the growing season depends on the what is in the 'soil'. When you look at nature you see an intensive growing system that relies on what falls to the ground in sheet composting. But that is a symbiosis between certain plants/soils/ climate etc. But that gives us a base line to think from. To bring in secondary stuffs to complement the soil through out the season means things are out of balance. But a vegetable garden is pushing a lot of limits. So we are trying to provide as well rounded a 'soil' as possible full of as complex long lasting nutrients as possible to fill all needs. However we sometimes find that a compost side dressing in mid season helps the broccoli put out more shoots, or that a dab of Epsom salts seems to get the tomatoes to a better start with less BER later. First year gardens are more likely to need extra boosts from worm tea, compost side dressings etc.

When you plant with the amount of focus on individual plants that SFG promotes you can see and react when something might need a little more. Fertilizing should be the exception, not the rule.

Does Mel's Mix provide adequate nutrients or do any of you add fertilizer? Is stuff like calcium to prevent black spot in tomatoes necessary?

You'll get mixed answers, but I admit that I do side-dress with organic fertilizers like Happy Frog's Vegetable & Tomato mix.

Thanks Turan and others who answered my question about fertilizer. I just changed my location from mid-south to lower-south and repeated the question. I thought my question was going out to people in my region only. Sorry about that.

It is really a question that we all are thinking about, the variables have different quantities in them in accordance to climate. My understanding is that compost is used much faster in your climate than in mine. So the concept of 'season' is one for how long does a certain plant use that space, does it need more than can be provided from planting time.

Using a soil mix should even out these differences but so much depends on what are the composts and their qualities that we end up in the same mire.

Hopefully some one from your region will pipe up with their experiences soon.