A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Vegetable Gardening Compost question?????????

This my first year using homemade compost. My question is... do I use fertilizer like always. My tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse are starting to bloom and last year I started them on 20-20-20 fertilizer and calcium at this time. What is recommended when using a compost mix for soil?

You can't really over do compost. The nutrients in compost are slow release and will not burn your plants like some manures and fertilizers, so you can still use whatever you'd like...on the other hand, you may not need fertilizer, as there are lots of quality nutrients in compost.
Now would be a good time to go all organic, if you wish, and only supplement with any nutrients that are lacking...you may want to do a soil test, but compost can sometimes have all the nutrients you need without adding more, but manure, bone meal, blood meal and other organic supplements are beneficial, without a need to add synthetic fertilizer.
How does your soil look, and how is the texture?
Those considerations are a good point to start from when determining the quality of soil.

Ditto on what Dave said!

I'll add...
I like to compare fertilizer and compost, to vitamins and eating right.
If you use compost it's like a person that completly eats right every single day and doesn't NEED vitamins.
and fertilizer I like to compare to vitamins. which vitamins have warning lables....keep away from children....don't take more than sugguested...etc.

(oh and I'm not saying vitamins are bad, I take them myself. my point is, IF I ate completly right every single day I wouldn't NEED them.)
does this make any sense, or am I babbling?

+1 on what Dave said. Compost rocks!

And no, Cricket, you aren't babbling! It's an excellent analogy.

think of the worms in the compost as a lean and delicious protein.

now your making me hungry, sheri.

Thanks everyone!! I really like how you made us see compost Cricket. I'll always remember it that way now.

My plants look great .... they are a rich green color. I can't believe how much I missed by not having compost soil to work with in the greenhouse. My hubby put a large amount of compost through a sieve for me so that I would only get the finer material. I still had some egg shells and a few bones in the compost here and there. But other wise it is beautiful soil.

egg shells and bone meal take a VERY long time to decompose. but, they give up small amts of calcium at a gradual rate. it's OK to see them in your compost!
your hubby is 'right on' with sieving the compost!

I'm definitely anal retentive. I powder my egg shells in my 10.00 onion grinder and then add it to my compost. I don't add bone to my compost.

Tomatoes are heavy feeders and love a combination of 50% compost and 50% garden soil.

I've got enough containers of green peppers and tomatoes in my greenhouse to experiment on fertilizer and no fertilizer. We added the compost to our flowerbeds as well and the flower containers on the deck. It was just a pleasure to work with the compost.