Chance the Gardener

Organic Citrus

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It's that time of year in Arizona. We have been enjoying our oranges for the last few weeks. They are pretty sweet this year.  Today we decided to go ahead and harvest the remaining 30+ oranges on our tree. Here is my harvest helper next to the fruits of our labor.

I must admit it is not hard to grow oranges at this point. Our tree is established and now we just feed it a couple of times a year with some all purpose organic NPK and occasionally add some Great Big Plants Organic Compost to the water at the base of the tree. Our biggest challenges are sunburn on the fruit, and properly adjusting the watering for the hot summer weather. This tree may be too close to the wall for maximum growth. Still, we get about 50-60 oranges a year from this one. Last year we planted another one (to the left) and hope to enjoy its fruit for years to come. The blossom buds are starting to form and it won't be long before the sweet smell of orange blossoms fill the air.

Meanwhile, here is the real challenge- our grapefruit tree.

I am the only grapefruit eater in the house and I am overwhelmed every year. (And a person can only drink so many grapefruit margaritas.) This tree gets the same NPK feedings and treatments of Great Big Plants, but has outgrown its cousin and way outproduces it. I estimate that we will harvest about 175-200 fruit from this tree. Grapefruit anyone?

Your Garden Soil Needs More than NPK Fertilizer

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When you buy fertilizer, whether chemical or organic, you'll see three numbers separated by dashes boldly standing out on the package; such as 5-6-5. You might already know that they stand for the percentage of NPK contained in the fertilizer. N stands for Nitrogen, P for Phosphorous (Phosphate), and K for Potassium (Potash). So in our example, the fertilizer contains 5% N, 6% P and 5% K.   These are the three most important macronutrients that help your plants grow, blossom and bear fruit. What you might not know, however, is that your plants need more than NPK can provide.

Here's the scoop: Nitrogen strengthens the growth of leaves and helps convert sunlight into plant food. Phosphorous helps roots and stems develop and flowers bloom. Potassium contributes to the overall health of the plant, disease resistance, and water intake. The NPK ratio in fertilizers is often customized for particular plants, for example, tomato fertilizers tend to have more P and K to promote blossoming and fruit set.

What NPK is Missing

Liebig's Law of the Minimum, often simply called the Law of the Minimum, is a principle developed in agricultural science popularized by Justus von Liebig in the mid 1800s and often depicted as a barrel with broken staves. It states that growth is controlled not by the total of resources available, but by the scarcest resource (limiting factor). This concept was originally applied to plant or crop growth, where it was found that increasing the amount of plentiful nutrients did not increase plant growth. Only by increasing the amount of the limiting nutrient (the one most scarce in relation to "need") was the growth of a plant or crop improved. This principle can be summed up as, "Growth is proportional to the amount of the most limiting nutrient, whichever nutrient it may be. Likewise a plant's growth is restricted by the lack of a single element, even though there may be sufficient quantities of all other essential nutrients."

Put another way - plants need certain other macronutrients, micronutrients and trace elements, in addition to NPK. Some of these, including sulfur, calcium, and iron, are sometimes in store-bought fertilizers, but most often are not.

Other elements, like carbon dioxide and oxygen, are available in the air and water. You must have well aerated soil for these elements to properly interact with plant roots.

You may have had the experience of your garden plants looking sickly even though you are using the same fertilizer and at the same rate as previous years when everything looked great. What could be happening is that you have overdrawn your account at the Soil Bank.

Think about your garden soil as a bank where you save up nutrients for your plants. You start out with some naturally occurring nutrients and add fertilizer containing NPK, and maybe some other nutrients. Your plants will withdraw all the nutrients it needs (if they are all available). At the end of the season, some nutrients will remain and you will replenish some, but usually not all, with your next application of NPK fertilizer. Ultimately, one or more nutrients will be depleted (your account will be overdrawn for these) and the plants will not get what they need and will not grow to optimal performance, or might even look sickly.

Make Deposits into the Soil Bank

One of the best ways to make deposits of a wide variety of nutrients into the Soil Bank is to use compost in your garden. Not only will compost contain a wide variety of micronutrients, it helps soil structure and porosity (improves aeration) and includes beneficial microorganisms. For more on the benefits of compost, see our earlier blog post.

If you aren't into making your own organic compost or dealing with the mess and trouble of heavy bags, try our easy to apply Great Big Plants Organic Liquid Compost. You will get a wide spectrum of soil micronutrients, along with humic and fulvic acids and lots of beneficial microbes all in a liquid concentrate. Think about it as overdraft protection at the Soil Bank.

While plants need Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium to thrive, they need a variety of other nutrients as well. By using organic compost to supplement NPK fertilizers, you can nourish your plants, your body, and the environment and keep your Soil Bank accounts full.

Benefits of Compost

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Whether one has a green thumb or is a complete gardening novice, everyone agrees that compost is a “good thing”.  At the same time, very few of us are aware of the specific benefits compost provides to our garden soil.  So the following is a list of compost benefits agreed upon by soil scientists and picky government regulators.  Pithy explanations are courtesy of yours truly.

Compost:

1. Improves garden soil structure and porosity – creating a better plant root environment. (It’s better to have garden soil you can dig in with your bare hands than dirt compacted like a concrete slab.)

3. Improves the moisture holding capacity of light soils –reducing water loss and nutrient leaching, and improving moisture retention. (Better your garden soil is a sponge than a sieve.)

4. Improves the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of soils. (As the Buddha observed, clinging is a source of suffering.)

5. Supplies organic matter. (Without organic matter, soil is essentially gravel. Gravel as garden soil is only good for plastic, pink flamingos.)

6. Supplies beneficial microbes to soils and growing media. (Garden soil without beneficial microbes is like a factory with no workers.)

7. Aids the proliferation of soil microorganisms. (Microbes need stuff like carbon and minerals.) 

8. Encourages vigorous root growth. (More roots good; less roots bad.)

9. Allows plants to more effectively utilize nutrients,while reducing nutrient loss by leaching. (Healthy soil requires far less fertilizer. Be sure to reduce your rates)

10. Enables soils to retain nutrients longer. (This is a major environmental plus. Retained nutrients get used by plants instead of leaching into the water supply.)

11. Contains humus – assisting in soil aggregation and making nutrients available for plant uptake. (Also good with pita bread and string cheese. Oh wait, maybe that’s hummus.)

12. Buffers soil pH. (Garden soil pH can determine the rate of nutrient uptake by the plant.)