When I don't know, I don't fertilize. I go light on purchased fertilizers anyway, and use mostly organic fertilizers if I do. I've mostly concentrated on adding some form of compost periodically all over the garden.

Neil, Don't you add a little emspon salts and also bone meal to your garden once in a while?

The magazine 'Fine Gardening' had an article about not needing some material for soils. They mentioned that epsom salts were only needed for heavy crops & not in a home garden.

Richard, yes I started adding bone meal the last couple of years, mostly in densely planted parts of the garden and when planting various bulbs. Epsom salts I have only used around tomatoes, but have been considering using some on the roses this spring.

The bone meal is to help the plant produce the flowers correct. I have heard various reasons to use Epsom salts from It help setting the color on flowers to providing the plant some kind of nutritional values.

I'm ordering a soil test kit to see if our soil is lacking. Because of the redwood trees,
I'm wondering if the soil might be acidic, also. We add compost and bone meal and tri-phosphate - and recently made a trade
for a truckload of old sheep manure - they're getting one of Chris's small sculptures!

Nice bartering there Jan!

Although I hope Chris might feel that you think his sculpture is worth more than a load of ****?

I think bone meal is good for promoting root growth.

I believe so Tom, I think that's why bone meal is recommended for bulb and bulb like plants.

Re Epsom Salts. Only used one year on roses and really noticed a difference. It is supposed to help with basal breaks and I had a number of new shoots from the base. Have some now, but have been concentrating on my iris, so roses haven't had much attention. I plan to start new plants this year from cuttings. Some of these are over 40 years old.

Fools gold when I got home. Completely empty. Guess I don't need to start a seedling bed yet.


More varieties to try this year I guess

Good aged manure is like gold, Mika! And hubs made the trade! The sheep owner is a patron and
owns a few of our pieces. (some cash will also be changing hands !)

Jan, I was just joking - all garden lovers know the real value of manure. My grandfather used to rush out when the mounted police went past to collect any droppings - much to the embarrassment of his granddaughters... Hope I haven't offended?

Funny how other folks see a pile of poo, we gardeners see a mound of black gold!

One caution about manure....a good friend had a large 400+ iris garden which was glorious. He had a source for well rotted cow manure which he used every year. His vegetable garden was very productive also. Then for a couple of year things didn't do as well and he had a soil test done at a University. The problem the test showed was an excess of animals salts from the urine that was in the dry manure.......

cliftoncat said: Hope I haven't offended?

Not offended here. Manure = good ****!

Paul, is the lesson that it's best to avoid cow manure?
(That question could only be posed on a site like this one!)