A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Vegetable Gardening adding fertilizer at 6 weeks?

Hello everyone! I hope you all don't mind continuing to help us out with our little garden. I can't recall where I got this information so I am checking here to see what you think.

I was told I should fertilize about 6 weeks after planting. Is this standard practice? I'm doing organic only, so should I use something like cottonseed meal or soybean meal? I added soybean meal to the soil ammendment we used when we planted everything about 2 weeks ago.
I was planning to cover the area around the plants with newspaper, then grass clippings, to keep moisture in and weeds out, as I was advised here. But should I wait until after the fertilizer is applied? It doesn't make sense to cover everthing, then uncover it to fertilize, if I even need to add fertilizer.

I will say that lots of other people's plants are turning very yellow. I think they planted at least 2 weeks before we did. So maybe that's what will happen to our plants if we don't apply that second round of fertilizer. I just don't want all the time and effort to go to waste. The soil that we used was called fir mulch. It had chicken manure in it, but I don't remember what else was in there. Thanks!! ~Beth~

You can add most organic ferts right over newspaper. It is meant to be watered in and the newspaper should not be obstructing water. If the newspaper is wicking water away from them you can cut slits in it to help it flow through to the roots. A lot of fruits and vegetables are pretty heavy feeders so about six weeks sounds right.
You do not want fertilizers touching your plants.
We have had unusually cold weather and this could be causing neighboring plants to yellow a bit. I bet they will bounce back soon enough.