Normally you can get enough nitrogen in your garden from sometimes growing beans, peas or similar plants. Fava (broad) beans are very good at fixing nitrogen into the soil.

I have a new garden, and whatever nitrogen deficiency there is comes from the person who had the garden before.

I don’t normally consider compost as an ‘input’, because it’s usually recycled material from your own garden. It’s just reusing waste garden material.

Some people disagree with me, but I think you can never have too much compost, as long as it all comes from your own garden originally. In moderation, I think it’s also okay to use compost from somewhere else too. And yes, at least some compost is essential for a healthy garden.

I liked your words “it’s best to avoid all unnecessary inputs into your garden.” I was about to embrace it right after reading it, yet I guess that going to an extreme with this view could have some negative effects, for instance I guess it could be the reason behind the nitrogen deficiency that your soil test has revealed a few months back. I guess moderation in everything is good. As for inputs, I guess adding compost, in moderation still, would be essential.

Kate: Yuck!

Lieven: I have not tried it myself, but I have heard from a number of places this is an acceptable way to fertilize fruits and vegetables. I might not want to put it in a spray bottle for foliar feeding, but who knows…

What I want to know is if it’s not from a human, how do you collect it? Do you run around with a bottle and try to catch some?

Spotty B: Consider cutting way down, then phasing it out completely. Instead use compost and plant beans or peas to fix nitrogen. Be sure to rotate your plants every year. You might have a few problems the first year or two, but your garden will be healthier in the long run.

Gintoino: I think if you ask 10 gardeners this question you will get 10 different answers. I’ll give my answer, but I hope other people say what they think too.

I don’t usually think of needing to fertilize plants in my garden, only if something has gone wrong like right now I have a shortage of nitrogen. It’s much more common that gardeners have problems with too much fertilizer than not enough.

I also don’t think of compost as a fertilizer, but rather more of a soil conditioner. Compost is not very rich in nutrients like NPK, and it releases them very slowly. Compost improves the quality of your soil, but it’s probably only after a few months that you will notice any difference. Unless I am saving it for some reason, I try to add compost to my garden as soon as it is ready, rather than thinking of it as a fertilizer.

You already told me in an email that you compost your manure first, and if this is the case then the same thing is true with it because it is just compost. If the manure is fresh, then it is a fertilizer. Since I don’t use fresh manure, it’s probably better to find out from others how they do this. I don’t suggest using fresh manure.

There’s no doubt, if you don’t use fertilizer your plants will be smaller than someone who does use fertilizer. Perhaps this is particularly hard to accept for someone who is used to growing flowers, and used to being concerned with how the plants look. There are also a lot of people around who use fertilizer on their vegetables and will tell you it’s necessary. Sometimes it’s really hard to resist doing something you think is harmless, and it seems like everyone else is doing. Your garden will be healthier in the long run if you don’t use fertilizer. Fertilizers are much more useful for farmers than for home gardeners.

This is also a little bit of the difference between the US and Europe. In Europe many ‘organic’ gardeners always look for ‘organic’ fertilizers to use in the garden.

In the US most organic gardeners don’t accept that any fertilizer is organic, with the possible exceptions of what they make in their garden like compost tea, nettle tea, comfrey tea, and so on. Fish, Kelp and similar fertilizers are also sometimes considered organic. Manure from a commercial farmer is almost never considered organic.

There are lots of fertilizers you can buy that claim they are organic, but a lot of gardeners don’t recognize them as truly organic.

Tomato plants for example are particularly sensitive to getting too much fertilizer. If you give them too much fertilizer, the plants will get big and green but hardly set any tomatoes. If you use any fertilizer at all, it’s better to use it at most twice. Once at the very beginning, and once in August after most of the fruit has set. It’s much better to use a lot of compost at the beginning, and then no further fertilizer. Tomatoes can also easily pick up the flavor of fish mix. I rarely use any fertilizer at all on my tomatoes.

It’s hard to give specific advice without knowing more about your garden, but unless you have a clear need to add fertilizer I would suggest not using any. If you really feel like you have to use something, consider using fish mix or something similar, or making your own ‘tea’ and using that.

Cynthia: Good point. Very dilute fish emulsion can be used for seedlings raised inside. I used it a few years ago, but stopped. I found it just made the plants grow unnecessarily fast, which left me scrambling to pot them up, and even though it was in a well ventilated part of the house it still smelled like fish (and was a distraction to our cats). I might try it again sometime. It probably depends on what you use as a potting medium, and how much fertilizer it already contains.