Economical but effective fertilizers?

[Tropicalgrower]

Originally Posted by Barb_FL

Lorri - your garden is so beautiful - so lush!


The Dyna-Gro products are good and very cost effective. They come in quart size and only use 1 tsp per gallon of water. So a quart makes 192 gallons.

I had previously calculated an entire workup of these liquid fertilizer costs using the recommended dosage. Some brands you alternate within their products (so have more up front cost) but does not affect price per gallon. With Fox Farm products you alternate however use their BigBloom product all the time.

TTF/Veg
Dyna-Gro (Foliage Pro, Dyna-Gro, and Bloom) ,
Fox Farm, (BigBloom, GrowBig, TigerBloom)
Flora Nova (Grow and Bloom)
Neptune's Harvest - fish and seaweed

Here are the costs per gallon:

Dyna-Gro - $.09

TTF/Veg $.16

Fox Farm - $.23

Flora-Nova products : $.09

Neptunes Harvest - Fish and Seedweed: $.37

Thanks Barb.

When the price gets around $0.10 a gallon,I figure that isn't too bad.I hadn't even thought of Dyna-Gro, although I used one of their products on my tomatoes years ago.I kind of was leaning towards dry ferts,mainly on the assumption that they wouldn't lose effectiveness on the shelf.(assuming you can keep them free of moisture).

If one were to buy the 5 gal pail of Neptunes Harvest,I'm guessing that would be pretty economical..the problem for me would be to get it shipped.Same with 25 and 50Lb bags of fertilizer.

Originally Posted by zipcode

Price per diluted gallon is imo a wrong way to look at it. I mean, you can put as much or little as you want.
Like, dynagro says their 7-9-5, 1 gallon makes 400 gallons, and ttf 4-3-7 makes 256.
Which makes you wonder, what are they relating to when they make these dilution ratios. Seems like total N. I'm willing to bet the ttf will give you more production per original gallon the the dynagro, for tomatoes at least, and it's cheaper.
You need to compare per weight to the total element that interest you, in this case K primarily.
I personally haven't seen any liquid ferts that are cost effective compared to dry ones, they are usually made for the convenience of the the home grower, and that comes at a price.

Convenience.That is something that makes sense to me.I would gravitate towards the dry ferts as well...it is a lot safer for me to have dry ferts shipped.The possibility of leakage occurring is something that does concern me.I was really considering the General Hydro Maxi series.I figured that would get me in the sub $.15 range,and still cover all the bases...but I don't really know which choice would be best..I guess you take your best shot with all the info you have.

Originally Posted by AKmark

One 25 lb bag of hydro gardens tomato blend 4-18-38, does over 2700 gallons of water for 56.00, but you have to add Magnesium, and calcium nitrate, both are under 30.00 for 50lb bags. One gallon of flora nova does 500 gallons for the same price.
These numbers are about 40 percent stronger of a mix than recommended, it is just where it fell, my plants look best at these mix rates.

My problem is that I am limited to a certain size shipping container.50lb bags of ferts wouldn't fit,and the Sis couldn't lift them even if they did.

[Gardeneer]

ALTENATIVE:

You can always make liquid fertilizer from granulars, by soaking it in water for a couple of days.
The catch is to figure out solid-to-water ratio. Require some math.

Gardeneer.