Alfalfia meal and tomatoes

[Youngneg]

Hello
is alfalfia meal benifical to tomatoes in containers....i heard ....bone , blood,cottonseed....epson salts.....anybody hear anything

[cukes]

Alfalfa meal is primarily a soil amendment for building tilth
( according to my organic encyclopedia).
I mix cottonseed, kelp meal, bone and lime for my maters in their DY Eboxes.

[johno]

Alfalfa meal is high in nitrogen and contains natural plant growth hormones. Tomatoes don't do especially well with high nitrogen fertilizers - all leaves and little fruit.

[dice]

I have a container that I put a couple
of handfuls into in early spring, so that
the alfalfa would break down and its
nutrients become available by the time
I transplanted a tomato seedling into
it.

That was not the only fertilizer, though.
The container was about half full of a
mix of kitchen wastes (banana peels,
onion trimmings, eggshells, coffee grounds,
tea bags, etc), aged horse manure,
and compost all winter. I would throw
earthworms into it whenever I turned
something over on a rainy day and found
several underneath. I threw a couple of
handfuls of 5 year old dry cat food (kept
for racoon and possum bait) that had bugs
in it in there. I sprinkled wood ash on it.

About the same time I added the alfalfa pellets
I also sprinkled some lime, triple phosphate, and
K-mag (langbeinite, a mineral with potassium,
magnesium, and sulfur) on it, and I filled it up
the rest of the way with a peat, compost, and
potting soil mix from a bin that had had rain
washing through it for six months. I sprinkled
a couple of tablespoons of kelp meal around
on top after transplanting.

So the end result ended up with considerably more
N-P-K and other minerals than what you would
get from commercial potting mix plus alfalfa
pellets alone.

The dwarf plant in the container is growing great.

Alfalfa is about 6-3-2 (N-P-K), so mixing it with
a high-phosphorus source (like bonemeal, some kinds
of guano, or triple-phosphate) and kelp or greensand
(for potassium and trace elements) probably makes
a decent tomato fertilizer.

A fertilizer like that is not instantly available,
however. The nutrients in kelp meal are probably
available quickly, and I would guess that greensand
is kind of an even, slow-release-all-season soil
amendment, but alfalfa and bonemeal typically
take several weeks of breakdown by soil organisms
before their nutrients become available (I've read
6 weeks for alfalfa and 90 days for bonemeal; might
be less for alfalfa pellets, which are ground much
finer than alfalfa that one grows and then turns
under with a tractor or rototiller, and thus break down
faster, but I would still expect a couple of weeks
before any of the N-P-K in it is available to plant
roots).

[Youngneg]

Thanks Cukes,Johno,and Dice.....Still learning and loving it....i noticed some Blossom-end rot and paniced......lol.....im reading it is probably watering incorrectly or calcuim....its the early girl veritiy...my brandywine and roma and sweet baby girl SEEM to be ok.....crossing my fingers