Fertilizer in bagged mix

Herbalmommie 8/22/2014, 9:26 pm

I'm just starting down this road of SFG and decided to take the easy route and buy the bagged Mel's Mix. I was surprised to see fertilizers listed as ingredients. Yes, they're organic fertilizers but I thought one of the ideas behind SFG is to use compost as the fertilizer. Can someone clarify?

Also, I noticed that Gro Well makes the mix. It's been awhile but I know at one time they had products that contained biosolids. A search on this forum and Google has turned up nothing in regards to the bagged Mel's Mix and biosolids. I usually buy OMRI Listed when possible and noticed this mix is not. Can anyone point me to a source of info on this?

Thanks

yolos 8/22/2014, 9:41 pm

Unless someone here can answer your question, I suggest you go to gro-well.com and click on the contact tab and ask your question directly to gro-well.

http://gro-well.com/contact/

plantoid 8/26/2014, 8:21 am

Herbalmommie wrote:I'm just starting down this road of SFG and decided to take the easy route and buy the bagged Mel's Mix. I was surprised to see fertilizers listed as ingredients. Yes, they're organic fertilizers but I thought one of the ideas behind SFG is to use compost as the fertilizer. Can someone clarify?

Also, I noticed that Gro Well makes the mix. It's been awhile but I know at one time they had products that contained biosolids. A search on this forum and Google has turned up nothing in regards to the bagged Mel's Mix and biosolids. I usually buy OMRI Listed when possible and noticed this mix is not. Can anyone point me to a source of info on this?

Thanks

Welcome to the site I hope it brings to you the same benefits as it has done to countless others & I look forward to more of your posts .

I feel you'll have to clarify what you mean by biosolids , for to me that can mean any material that is able to decay that is not liquid .

WRT fertilizer ...... the composted vegetable materials used to make our MM contains all the chemical nutrient fertilizers and more than found in artificial fertilizer produced in a chemical factory or waste material processing plant .

Are you trying to say you want only natural plants and material for your MM untouched by any artificial chemical substance to be in your MM .. that's hard .

For we have many airborne pollutant chemicals that the crops take in one way or another .

Perhaps you would post a picture or a print of the make up of product you8 have found .

One thing that may help you find your way through the n=mind numbing maze of composted materials & fertilizer is our compost 101 threads and other threads of importance.
on the left hand side of the home page there is a (bobbly) peach coloured column click on it and you will be able to see these brilliant threads.

It took me several hours to go through them all when I first started out on the site a few years ago .
I can honestly say that despite being a gardener with over 50 years experience under my belt in all manner of gardens & small holding they have opened my mind tremendously to the more useful proven deeper insights of gardening that had been hidden from me for all those hard slogging at it years .

**sanderson** 8/26/2014, 12:43 pm

Plaintoid, Here, biosolids usually means sewage treatment plant solids = human waste.

Herbalmommie 8/26/2014, 5:23 pm

Yes, biosolids is a fancy name for treated sewer sludge which is human waste and much more. The sewer sludge is everything that goes down into our sewer system from homes, businesses, hospitals etc. The water is drained off and the remaining solids are chemically treated to removed harmful contaminants. The treated sludge is then applied to agricultural land and used in compost and soil products. The problem is that only a small handful of contaminants are tested for...I believe the number is less than 10. Pharmaceuticals, anti-bacterial chemicals, flame retardants and some others have been found to be in biosolids. The use of biosolids is not approved for use in certified organic farming. OMRI is a third party organization that looks at products to see if they meet the requirements for certified organic production. Although I'm not planning on getting certified or even selling my produce, many garden products available to home gardeners are being OMRI Listed. So, many home gardeners who choose to use organic practices look for OMRI Listed products. When it comes to biosolids this is a good way to avoid them. Some companies who use biosolids in their products list it as an ingredient however labeling is not required. Many companies do not label. I know these contaminants are pretty much everywhere in our environment so complete avoidance is impossible. But I still try to avoid using biosolids in my garden.

As far as the fertilizers.. I read the SFG book about a year ago so my memory may not be exact but I seem to remember a perk to using the method (particularly MM) is that the cost and hassle of applying fertilizers is gone. Compost is used as the fertilizer. The DIY recipe for MM doesn't include fertilizers. So, I was surprised to find them listed as ingredients on the pre-bagged MM I bought. Here is the ingredient list from the bags...30-40% compost, Canadian sphagnum peat moss, coir, vermiculite, blood meal, bone meal, kelp meal, cottonseed meal, alfalfa meal and worm castings. The 'meals' are the fertilizers. I have no problems using these but I was just curious as why they're included when the recipe doesn't include them.

Anyway, I contacted Gro Well so I'll see what they say but I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone had already looked into this.

Thanks

plantoid 8/26/2014, 6:20 pm

I thought you were hinting at " HUMANURE " , I guess that almost any commercially made composted stuff will have all manner of strange and controversial ingredients in it.

You'd be amazed at what has gone into my composting bins ...absolutely almost anything that can rot down in a couple of years so as to be barely recognisable.Except for dung from meat eaters such as cats and dogs as humans can get their parasites too.

You might find a lot of mileage by looking into " The Berkley 18day hot composting method " .
There are some excellent lists of ingredients & ideas that you can use to make a well balanced compost in 18 days ( usually only managed if the weather is nice and warm )

You might find that till you have a years worth of well composted home made compost that you will need to add some dried blood , fish and bone meal for much of the bagged stuff that goes to making the initial charge of MM foor the beds is usually sadly lacking in the nutrients and trace elements found in the dried FB & B meal .

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Fertilizer in bagged mix

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