Collection: Organic Fertilizer and Plant Food

Organic Plant Food for Beds, Pots and Lawns

Three numbers on the bag tell you what a fertilizer is for: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. 4-6-4 leads with phosphorus for establishing roots, 9-0-0 is nitrogen on its own for turf, 4-3-2 is weighted toward fruit and vegetables. Everything here is certified for organic growing — OMRI on most of it, EcoCert on the WoolGrown pellets, National Organic Program standards on the McGeary corn gluten.

Beds, pots and containers

Arber's two 3 lb pouches are the small-scale place to start. Organic All Purpose Fertilizer is 3-2-1, for flowers, shrubs, houseplants, annuals and perennials; Organic Fruit & Vegetable Plant Food is 4-3-2, built on compost, chicken manure and rock phosphate for tomatoes, peppers, carrots, lettuce and herbs. Both carry biochar, which holds excess nutrients and slow-feeds the plants long-term; apply monthly through the growing season. The Organic Tomato, Fruit & Vegetable concentrate is the liquid version, with a hose-end sprayer and enough for 16,000 square feet.

For a whole bed, SoilKey Organic Fertilizer is a 4-2-3 blend built on alfalfa meal, bat guano, glacial rock dust, kelp meal and rock phosphate, at 5 lbs per 100 square feet monthly, or 2 to 4 tablespoons per gallon of potting mix. All-Purpose Organic Fertilizer 5-3-4 is soybean meal, blood meal, compost and steamed bone meal, slow enough not to burn transplants and seedlings, and 5 lbs feeds 250 square feet.

Wool pellets that feed and hold water

Wild Valley Farms wool pellets are raw sheep's wool from US ranchers, breaking down into a 9-0-2 feed and holding 20% of their weight in water: the 22 lb bag mixes into a cubic yard of soil, the 8 oz bag into six gallons for pots. Once wet, the fibers mat and deter slugs. WoolGrown's pellets are also 100% raw wool, spread at 1 lb per 10 to 20 square feet into the top 2 to 4 inches — a 5 lb bag covers 50 to 100 square feet for a season. One or two applications a year is the whole schedule.

Corn gluten, and what to use when you are seeding

Corn gluten meal feeds turf and stops weed seeds forming roots, so one spread does both. McGeary Organics Corn Gluten Fertilizer is 8-0-0 in a 40 lb bag, non-GMO corn gluten meal with no manure or fillers, releasing its nitrogen over three to four months; the first treatment is 20 lbs per 1,000 square feet. Sustane's granulated 9-0-0 is screened so it spreads evenly, 6 lbs per 1,000 square feet, up to 5,000 square feet per bag. Both go down in early spring before weed seeds germinate — when forsythia and early bulbs bloom — and again in fall.

Neither goes where you are about to sow. That is what Organic Turf Starter 4-6-4 is for: composted turkey litter, feather meal and sulfate of potash, stable enough to sit directly against new grass seed without burning it, or one cup per 10 square feet in a bed.

Composters, worm bins and coir are in Composting; grass seed, clover and soil test kits are in Natural Lawn Care. For which feed suits which crop, read the best organic fertilizers to double your harvest.