Need Opinions
 

I am going to use an organic fertilizer with my diy earthboxes. I can use either all worm castings, or half worm castings and half alfalfa meal mixed together. What do you all think would be better for the tomatoes? I was leaning toward all worm castings.

I used an organic fertilizer... but it was [B]Tomato Tone.[/B]


Without knowing what the N-P-K breakdown is, it might be a
little difficult to answer your question.


The N-P-K breakdown gives the ratio of

Nitrogen
Phosphorous
Potassium

If I remember right, alfalfa meal is 3-2-1 or 3-2-2. Worm castings are 1-.1-.1 from what I can find. I have read some reasearch about worm castings, and from what I understand, they are much more than what just these numbers indicate. I don't believe that tomato tone is completely organic. It is a very very good fertilizer as I have used it before.

Almost all the ingredients in TomatoTone are organic, with just a few exceptions. I am guessing it would cost another $1-3 per bag to be fully organic, and it's really not that important to me.

Epsoma TomatoTone is 4-7-10 which is a good mix for tomatoes, although Earl's hole planting method boosts the numbers to 4-19-10 because of the addition of more bone meal.

The complete label for TomatoTone is here:
[url]http://www.espoma.com/content.aspx?type=p&id=23&intCategoryID=4[/url]

Creister, If your going to use Mycorrihiza inoculant in your containers stay away from the high "P" stuff. Alfalfa meal should be fine. People have a mindset that more is better and with fertilizer that is not always the case. You might want to look at foliar feeding your plants as well. Compost tea is one method.

I know I'm late to this thread but with worm castings a little goes a long way. What I've seen is that over 20% is a waste of black gold. I've also read that too much will repel water. I would also add that alfalfa meal will probably start to get physicaly hot, so with that a little goes a long way as well.
Tim

Creister,

If you're looking for opinions, I'm all about that. But don't take mine too seriously since this is just conjecture. I'd go with 70% worm castings and about 30% alfalfa meal, but that's just me.