This fertilizer is designed to have high calcium but minimal ammonia. The plants need calcium to minimize end-rot, but ammonium ions have been reported to interfere with calcium uptake.
• 2 cups Hi-Yield Calcium Nitrate. Can buy on Amazon.
• 1 cup 26-0-4 Vigoro lawn fertilizer; its nitrogen is mainly in the form of urea, not ammonium nitrate like many other fertilizers
• 1 cup Triple Super Phosphate 0-46-0, from Easy Peasy Plants.
• 10 cups wood ash. I made this the old-fashioned way in my fire pit. Wood ash has about 5% potash (potassium) and about 1% phosphate, and as a bonus has a lot of calcium - up to 25% calcium carbonate. An alternative could be Espoma potash 0-0-60 6 lbs.
This should make 14 cups. I estimate this to have a makeup that is very close to 4-4-4 NPK, and is ~5% calcium. Use 1/2 cup per 5 gal of planting medium.
In practice, I carefully measure this "14 cups" but in the end I measured out 6 batches of 3 x 5 gal and it was gone, so I only got about 9 cups out of it ! I believe that when I thoroughly mixed the ingredients it compressed together, so I should have probably re-measured the whole batch and adjusted accordingly. This means that I may have overshot the fertlizing by about 50% or so.
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