[BussinSpain]

I am confused.com!  Can anyone tell me the correct times to feed various groups of vegetables and with what please?  In my "girl-cave" (shed) I have the following which is on the advise of my Spanish neighbour. Liquid potassium, calcium in paste form which you dilute with water, an iron supplement for the soil which is sprinkled on the soil in winter apparently. I grow comfrey and I have some lovely foul smelling "pig poo tea" in a large container.  I also have a HUGE pile of very well rotted and dried horse manure ready for my autumn/winter veggie-bed revamp ready for next year. Do I feed what I grow weekly or as and when they look a bit sad - as they do at the moment?  By the way - it is blisteringly hot and my veggies do not have any shade.  Thanks for your patience in reading this jumble. xx

[Yorkie]

Potassium / potash mainly stimulates flowers (and thus fruits / veggies).  Make sure it's very well diluted before watering it on.  Frequency of watering would probably be a couple of times a week?

Comfrey is also higher in potash than other nutrients.

Not sure about the calcium and iron.

Pig poo tea again should be watered down but is likely to be a more balanced fertiliser:
http://www.allotment-garden.org/compost-fertiliser/npk-manures-compost.php

[Snoop]

I bob a bit of calcium in the soil when rotavating (in the form of ground hoof from Leroy Merlin and wood ash), but I've never seen it in paste form. I've looked everywhere for calcium for soil round where I live. Would you mind telling me what it's called so I can see if I can find it here? The problem with ground hoof is that the dogs can smell it and think there might be a bone worth digging up.

The idea with feeding is to stop your plants getting sad. By and large it's nitrogen for just about everything at the start; nitrogen for leafy greens throughout; and then add some potassium for fruiting plants when they're getting ready to or have already set fruit. But that's very by and large... Doubtless someone with more experience will have something to add. Do you have any fertiliser with trace elements (magnesium, boron, etc.)? What kind of veg are you growing?

[Totty]

In autumn, after you have cleared most crops, put all of your manure on your beds. If the soil is still not too wet my preference is to just roughly dig the manure through the soil and leave it in lumps over winter. If you use enough manure/compost etc, that's your soil well fed.

Get yourself a bucket of blood fish and bone, and rake that through the soil a couple of weeks before you plant things out next year. For long term crops such as sprouts, another dressing of BFB is beneficial midway through the season. Using your comfrey liquor as well as BFB, generally speaking, that should have most veg feeding covered.

Totty

[Snoop]

In autumn, after you have cleared most crops, put all of your manure on your beds. If the soil is still not too wet my preference is to just roughly dig the manure through the soil and leave it in lumps over winter. If you use enough manure/compost etc, that's your soil well fed.

Get yourself a bucket of blood fish and bone, and rake that through the soil a couple of weeks before you plant things out next year. For long term crops such as sprouts, another dressing of BFB is beneficial midway through the season. Using your comfrey liquor as well as BFB, generally speaking, that should have most veg feeding covered.

Totty

Totty, I've never seen BFB here or anything like it. The closest I've come is a 1 kilo pack of ground hoof (labelled as "cuerno triturado", BussinSpain). Could you recommend anything else or mention what BFB supplies to the soil? You can get granular fertiliser (NPK plus trace elements) and in some places you can buy what my local supplier calls 'technical' granular fertiliser, so just one main element (magnesium or iron, for example). I can also buy liquid NPK plus trace elements.

[BussinSpain]

WOW!  Thanks guys and gals.  Snoop - the calcium paste is called "Cal de Pasta" It's in a white thick plastic bag with blue writing on it.  Other stuff on the bag is "Pascual No. 20"  My neighbour gave it to me yesterday - cost 5.50 per bag.  No instructions on how much to dissolve in water though:(  I grow (try to anyway) a variety of veggies - toms, cues, peppers, aubergines, cabbages, beans, corn, broccoli, kale, ragged jack, caulis etc.,  We have only been here for 5 years so the soil is no-where near ready for an abundance of cropping yet.  The soil is that white gypsum type soil.  Olives and almonds grow beautifully here.  It's only this year that I have been able to find a reliable supplier of good quality horse manure.  I know which groups of veggies need what nutrients but its sourcing them over here that's the problem.  Maybe I am being too impatient eh?  In the UK everything was lush and green and fruited/grew in abundance and I won local gardening competitions too! Onwards and upwards I say - happy days everyone:)

[JayG]

After a sometimes quite amusing look at translations of Spanish web pages  I can at least tell you that 'Cal de Pasta' is a quite refined slaked lime, and is used for everything from making lime mortars and stucco to painting on tree trunks to deter pests. It can also be used for raising the pH of soil, and in that respect it is quicker-acting than ground chalk or limestone.

The link is HERE
(in Spanish - posting the link from 'Gurgle translate' in English doesn't work!)

If your soil contains a lot of gypsum it won't be short of calcium, but it could still be acidic - only a pH soil test kit will tell you that.

Seems strange that it's difficult to source either organic or inorganic fertiliser products in Spain - it's not as if they don't grow lots of 'stuff' is it?   

[Snoop]

Thanks JayG. I have quite alkaline soil already, so was looking for agricultural gypsum rather than this kind of thing. Anyway, still very interesting to see what's available.

The whole fertiliser thing is very odd, in my area at least. I can buy 25-litre jerry cans of what's described as organic fertiliser, but there are no instructions on dilution proportions. I have some granular stuff (N-rich and P and K rich, which I use separately or mix to roughly suit the plants concerned). Other than that, I use loads of muck and ash. Most of the old boys round here use muck and a mixed granular fertiliser.

BussinSpain, you might do well to have a look on the Internet. There are quite a few sites that supply things. Here's one.

http://www.fitoagricola.net/tienda-online/Catalog/listing/nutricionales-42261/1

No emphasis on organic, though...

[BussinSpain]

Thanks to JayG & Snoop - looked at the websites and at least I have found out how much potassium to use per litre now.  Also translated the Cal en Pasta information.  Thanks again peeps:)