suggestions appreciated

[cff]

I was looking under the rabbit pens yesterday, I think there's about 2 tons of old rabbit manure mixed with some new rabbit manure from the new bunnies, that I need to haul out to the garden. It looks rich enough to grow door knobs in.

Alan how much or what ratio of the castings do you use for fertilizer in your greenhouse tomatoes?
I thought about saving the manure till spring and making tea out of it first but were having so many restrictions placed on us about water use; In yesterdays paper I saw were our local city government is trying to establish restrictions for well water use so I guess I'll just turn the manure under in the garden.

[Alan]

With the greenhouse tomato crop I usually mix about 20% castings into my soil mix. Later I will amend the soil further with a top dressing of 25% bloodmeal, 25% bonemeal, 10% lime, 10% micronutrients (various sources), and 30% worm castings (just a guestimate by the way). If I am making worm compost tea, I use a piece of cheesecloth and a fairly large couple handfulls of castings, tie them to a string and throw them into a five gallon bucket of water for about 2-3 days, squeeze the bag a few times and then dilute into water for a foliar spray (mostly, though sometimes I do make concentrated root soaks), when I foliar spray I use one of those 1 quart spray bottles on a waterhose, so I'm not sure of the ratio I am actually spraying as I've never really broken it down.

Hope this helps.
-alan

[cff]

Thanks Alan

The information is very helpful; you should start a certified organic fertilizer thread

[Alan]

Forgot to mention that with the tea I use a cheap fishtank aerator to brew the tea. I'm working on an article about organic fertilizer right now, i've got a library of stuff that will probably go up either later this month or december hopefully, i'll keep you updated on it.

-Alan