Question from Dave:

Answer from Pat:
You are very lucky to have a steady supply of horse and pony manure, but I would not mix pine needles with the manure if I were you. This actually won’t create the correct green/brown mix (Ie: carbonaceous mixed with nitrogenous.) Straight horse manure, alone, (unmixed with anything) is close to the correct green/brown ratio already. One can just pile it on the ground and let it age and once aged it can then be combined into garden soil. In some cases stable bedding is included with the manure. Usually there is enough liquid nitrogenous stuff (horse urine) included with the bedding to sufficiently rot it in time, but this would not apply to pine needles. The needles most likely wouldn’t rot.

You are very lucky to have a steady supply of horse and pony manure, but I would not mix pine needles with the manure if I were you. This actually won’t create the correct green/brown mix (Ie: carbonaceous mixed with nitrogenous.) Straight horse manure, alone, (unmixed with anything) is close to the correct green/brown ratio already. One can just pile it on the ground and let it age and once aged it can then be combined into garden soil. In some cases stable bedding is included with the manure. Usually there is enough liquid nitrogenous stuff (horse urine) included with the bedding to sufficiently rot it in time, but this would not apply to pine needles. The needles most likely wouldn’t rot.

Since we are having such good rains right now it’s an ideal time to spread the clean manure directly onto the ground over the roots of plants you want to mulch and gradually feed. Let it age right there and dig it in in spring prior to planting. By spreading it right on top of the ground all the goodness of the manure will be washed down into the ground by these rains and not wasted on the ground under the manure pile. It also causes less runoff this way since it is less concentrated and there is more ground to hold the nutrients in the soil instead of letting them wash away. Spread the manure on top of any ground that you want to improve with organics, such as a vegetable garden or flowerbed or over the roots of fruit trees or ornamentals. There is no reason to add the pine needles to the manure.

In my book I describe a compost made from alfalfa and manure layered together. This combination is different from one using pine needles, since it makes a great quick compost which is ready in about two months. (As soon as it cools down and you can no longer see what went into it, it is ready.) You can then use it as mulch all over the garden or dig it right into the ground. The reason this works so well and makes such a nutritious compost so quickly is because alfalfa is not carbonaceous but green or nitrogenous waste. In fact alfalfa is a major source of nitrogen when used alone as fertilizer and it rots quickly in the ground. Pine needles, by contrast, have no nitrogen in them. They are pure carbonaceous material, and they have a hard coating and texture that means they take much longer to disintegrate. (It should be noted, however, that the needles of certain pine trees, such as Aleppo Pines, are smaller and thinner and rot quicker than those of other pines such as Torrey pine trees, whose needles take months or even years to rot.) Composting pine needles is usually a long process and they are also highly acid. The best use for pine needles in a garden is as a long-lasting mulch covering the root zones of acid-loving plants, such as azaleas and camellias. Some people like to make a separate compost pile for pine needles, simply leaving them piled up until they age. Then they can even be used in soil mixes for acid loving plants.  Other folks use them on garden paths in woodland areas under trees and shrubs, or at the backs of wide flower beds, but always on top of the ground. They make a very clean, good looking path cover.

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2. Chicken or Horse Manure
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A. Walking on heavy soil when it is wet can compact the soil, but other than that caveat what’s wrong with taking advantage of rainfall to fertilize with organic fertilizer all the things that need it now, like roses (if you did not fertilize them in January according to the directions in my book), broccoli (after taking off the central head to keep the side sprouts growing), citrus trees (late January is the time to feed even with sythetics), cool-season lawns (fertilize with organic fertilizer now; it takes time to work) , and avocado’s (February is the month to begin fertilizing these.) What’s the difference if it’s raining?

Many times in my book I have said to fertilize just before a rain or “if rain is inadequate, water in thoroughly”. So does it not make sense that if you wake up in the morning and find it already raining and you had been planning to fertilize anyway knowing it was going to rain that afternoon that you would go out in a rain suit and fertilize even though it was raining so you would not need to irrigate afterwards? If you are an organic gardener, or even if you are not, you should have already fertilized your citrus trees in late January. If you did not do this, do it now, but what a shame you did not do it before or during the rain.

I have often fertilized in the rain while wearing a rain suit, so I wonder why you got the idea that it’s not a good idea to fertilize when it’s raining? That sounds like the advice of someone other than me. It also sounds like advice I heard from a weather man on one of the news channels. Several weather men give garden advice and goodness knows where they get some of their information. They often say things that are not true or incomplete and thus misleading. When I heard a weather man saying “Don’t fertilize now because there is too much rain.” I wished I could pop up onto the screen and say “Hey wait a minute! That is not entirely correct!” The only really negative aspect of fertilizing with ORGANIC fertilizer in the rain is that the fertilizer gets wet and so do you and some of the fertilizer inevitably gets on your clothes and might ruin your rain suit. (I keep an old one for this purpose.)

Now if one is talking about SYNTHETIC nitrogen fertilizers—that is, manmade fertilizers— that may be a different matter ( though this does not apply, as explained above, to citrus, avocado, and those veggies that need fertilizing now.) Synthetic fertilizers such as sulfate of ammonia and urea, are completely soluble, thus fertilizing when we have very heavy rains will wash them into the ground and perhaps even right through the root zone and down into ground water too rapidly. This is why March is usually considered to be the classic month for fertilizing the basic landscape when using synthetic commercial fertilizers. But I am not espousing any of these synthetic, man-made fertilizers.

I recommend organic fertilizers, and these should be applied early since they take time to work. (Consult my book for some of the products and homemade concoctions you could be using (and see the chart of generic organic fertilizers on this website.) Organic fertilizers must be in contact with the soil in order to become activated and then they become an integral part of the soil and continue working in the ground. All this process takes time. For example, gardeners who add a mulch of horse manure in fall ahead of the rain are allowing time for the manure to age on top of the ground as well as allowing the winter rains to wash the nutrients into the ground. This process will greatly improve garden soil with great benefit to garden plants. Heavy rains are a benefit to the manuring process since they will wash away any salts. (Do not mulch succulents or California native plants with manure.) Additionally, partially rotted organic matter actually works with the soil as it rots further in the ground. The wondrous fact is that as it decomposes and becomes humus it creates nitrogen in the process and releases it to plant roots, but it needs moisture for this to happen. So these heavy rains we are having will only help the process. Get out there and take advantage of the rains instead of waiting until later and then needing to waste our precious irrigation water to do the job that could have been done by rain.

Related posts:

1. Fertilizing Trees
2. Fertilizing Deciduous Fruit Trees
3. Chicken or Horse Manure

Generic Fertilizers & Soil Amendments Chart.

Be sure to reference “Southern California Organic Gardening: Month by Month” for in depth use instructions.

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2. Sulfate of Potash
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A. Chicken manure is superior to horse manure but needs longer aging and less is applied. Well-aged chicken manure makes an excellent vegetable fertilizer, especially since it contains more phosphorus and potassium as well as nitrogen, than does horse manure.

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Question from Trinidad:

Answer from Pat:
Terr-O-Vite is no longer available. It has not been made for at least fifteen years. I mentioned this product in my first book published twenty years ago. Ten years later when I revised my book a second time, Terr-O-Vite was no longer made. It was a good product, it made plants grow like mad, but it did cause run-off into the ground water. Now we know we shouldn’t use products that get into the groundwater. But years ago we weren’t as aware of that problem as we are now. These days we are much more aware of environmental hazards and how we should avoid them. Terr-O-Vite contained a penetrant and that’s one reason why it worked well because Western soils are dry and alkaline and often shed water, but that is also one reason why it went through the upper layers of soil quickly and contaminated the water in aquifers deep down in the earth.

But times have changed. Now as a liquid fertilizer I often recommend fish emulsion, which is organic and does not cause massive problems of run-off. This is another possibility for using on your brunfelsias (Brunfelsia ‘Royal Purple’.) As I have stated in all my books, one can stimulate heavy June bloom on brunfelsia ‘Royal Purple’ by fertilizing twice in winter, in December and again in January, by fertilizing with a nitrogen fertilizer mixed double strength. Used this way it will not burn roots, largely because nitrogen is not as active in cold temperatures. So fish emulsion is another possibility to use for this technique. Mix it double strength for feeding Brunfelsia ‘Royal Purple’ in winter as described in my book. Fish emulsion does not burn.

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Question from Trinidad:
I just read on one of your books that Brunfelsias can take two shots of high nitrogen fertilizer in December and January. What kind of fertilizer do you recommend? Do I do a soil drench or spray on leaves?

I care for a garden that has approximately 100 of them. I would love to try this.

Answer from Pat:
I used to recommend using any synthetic liquid nitrogen fertilizer for this task but now that I have gone back to my roots as an organic gardener I think organic fertilizer is best since it causes less run-off. Blood meal is one organic nitrogen fertilizer that is strong and fast acting it contains iron also so it would be very beneficial to brunfelsias. No I would not spray the leaves, only drench the soil. I don’t know how large the plants are or how large the containers are in which they are growing, but maybe you could give each container one or two tablespoons of blood meal according to size and then water it thoroughly into the ground. Applying an organic, yucca-based wetting agent might help too since blood meal seems to shed water.

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Question from Jane:

I live in Fallbrook

Answer from Pat:
No, I do no suggest bloodmeal as the best fertilizer for deciduous fruit trees. It is strong nitrogen and can burn. Not right thing at all. I suggested it as one way to go when feeding avocados, which are heavy feeders. (See February chapter for details.) I suggest several different ways to fertilize deciduous fruit trees. I am truly sorry I can’t repeat two columns of detailed advice here, though I would find a way distill it down and give you a complete answer if I were in better shape. You may have noticed that my answers to questions have been a little shorter the last few days. I’m making them succinct as possible due to fact i’m home with a nurse after total reverse replacement of left shoulder and I’m typing with one finger to keep up my blog every day. My left arm is immobilized until shoulder heals.

My new organic book is available online or at any book store. Why don’t you go to a library or a bookstore and read up on this subject on pages 86 and 87? You have plenty of time to do this since you do not need this information until next February. Now is not the time. If our odd weather has produced blossoms on your trees that does not mean to feed now. Now is the time to encourage your trees go into dormancy. Feeding now would produce a surge of growth, the opposite of what you want.

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1. Fruit Trees
2. Vegetables, Eucalyptus, Clay Soil, and Fruit Trees
3. Fertilizing Passion Fruit

Question from Ica:

Answer from Pat:
Spent brewery grains are an excellent additive to the compost pile, but they vary in characteristics. Some beer companies are learning to use them to make compost and other companies are also recycling them for use as mushroom compost. They can also be used to feed worm bins. Composted brewery grains are one of the ingredients in Milorganite and contribute a lot of its nitrogen.

Most spent brewery grains when used in the compost pile can be classed as a nitrogenous waste (a fast, hot, “green” ingredient, like grass clippings). Layer with some carbonaceous materials such as dry leaves to make a nitrogen-rich compost. Brewery grains can be especially beneficial if you have a bin composter since they are nitrogenous and are easy to compost but need tossing to maintain their warmth. You may have to add some wood shavings to keep the compost from getting too smelly. Brewery grains are likely to be very smelly already when you first pick them up, so get them as quickly as you can after use. Some grains also have allelopathic qualities, that is, like corn gluten meal, they can prevent seeds from germinating. Composting them may not kill this action. Thus I would use this compost in areas of the garden where you don’t intend to plant from seeds and where you would like to prevent weeds from growing. Before using this compost in the vegetable garden, try planting some radish seeds in a container of potting mix mixed with the compost to make sure the seeds germinate easily.

Spent brewery grains are not a good material for mulching due to the fact that they are too smelly and also attract animals. Spent brewery grains that are very soft, wet, and smelly can be dug directly into the soil, as you asked, since they are already well on their way to breaking down and will release nitrogen in the form of gas directly into the ground in a form that plant roots can absorb. On the other hand, spent brewery grains that have been allowed to dry out or cake and get hard should not be added directly to the garden soil. These would subtract nitrogen from the soil in order to rot. Also they will act more like carbonaceous waste in the compost pile. You will need to add water to them so they can puff up again and get going. (When brewery grains are hard and dry some gardeners even recommend layering them with grass clippings to add nitrogen to them, but this does sound odd since the grains themselves are classes as nitrogenous. Under normal circumstances the grains should provide the nitrogenous waste and what you would need to add, if anything, is carbonaceous waste.)

One easy way to compost these left over grains and increase the organic matter in your soil is simply to dig trenches, for example between the rows in your vegetable or cut-flower garden, pour the grain in there, cover it over with soil, and let the worms do the composting.

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Also, thinned the apples to no more than 2 per spur. Is it best to thin them when they bud out and I can pluck off the weakest ones??

Answer from Pat:
Apple trees can be mulched at any time of year, but it makes most sense to renew the mulch after leaves have fallen and after you have pruned and raked the ground under the tree. Follow up with dormant spray and after that add a fresh layer of mulch. Don’t forget to do the dormant spray again a month or two later, though spraying twice is less important for apple trees than for peach and nectarine trees which are more prone to pests and diseases than are apple trees.

I know a gardener in an interior climate who mulches her apple trees, in fact everything in her garden, with horse manure in fall and lets the winter rains wash the goodness into the ground. If you did this to an apple tree in a coastal zone prior to cold weather I fear that the result would be it would leaf out before you want it to. Apple trees often do that anyway. In very mild coastal zones where it’s difficult anyway to get deciduous trees into dormancy,  it’s safer to stick to the schedule of fertilizing the tree lightly with an organic fertilizer at the time the flower buds swell in spring. If then you want to use manure as the fertilizer, that’s fine. As far as manuring in fall goes, you could try it one year if you wish and just see what happens. I really think trial and error is sometimes the best way to find processes that work in a particular garden even if they might not in another. Some gardeners get two crops a year off their ‘Anna’ apple trees. (This does not work for ‘Dorset’ nor even for ‘Ein Schemier’ that I know of.) It all depends on the garden, the soil, the climate, the fertilizer, and the gardening schedule of a particular gardener.

Regarding thinning the fruit, you should begin that process early in the season (as described in other entries on this blog regarding deciduous fruit trees) when fruit is about the size of an egg—much earlier than this (it is now October, close to harvest time, depending on the type of apple tree you have. But yes, for sure if some apples are small, weak, or diseased take them off now but it is probably too late to have any influence on the size of the rest of the fruit on the tree.

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2. Fruit Trees in Southern California
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Message from Daniel:

Answer from Pat:
Thanks Dan. I will try to mention guano whenever I can. Just as I have mentioned humic acid over and over, I will tell folks about fossilized guano,but you need to have a good definition of it also.

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