Fertilizer and compost in potting mix? General advice also welcome!

[Senflora]

I am new to vegetable gardening and am planning out my summer garden. I live in an apartment, so I'll be using containers for everything on the patio. I wanted to get some advice on if I can/should add fertilizer AND compost to potting mix (in small amounts) or just one of those things.

I haven't bought compost or soil yet, but a friend gave me some dry fertilizer. They gave me Sustaine (NPK ratios 4 6 4) and a bag of Sea - 90, which seems to be mostly trace minerals. I'll be using smart pots for most of the plants, except for the salad greens, which will be in plastic rectangular pots. Watering will be done using terracotta watering stakes + a water bottle reservoir.

I live in zone 8a and plan to grow tomatoes, basil, bell peppers, cucumber, sweet alyssum, french marigolds, borage, cilantro (Eryngium foetidum), purslane, and a culinary strain of dandelion greens. Any advice is welcome!

 

[Chuck]

I am new to vegetable gardening and am planning out my summer garden. I live in an apartment, so I'll be using containers for everything on the patio. I wanted to get some advice on if I can/should add fertilizer AND compost to potting mix (in small amounts) or just one of those things.

I haven't bought compost or soil yet, but a friend gave me some dry fertilizer. They gave me Sustaine (NPK ratios 4 6 4) and a bag of Sea - 90, which seems to be mostly trace minerals. I'll be using smart pots for most of the plants, except for the salad greens, which will be in plastic rectangular pots. Watering will be done using terracotta watering stakes + a water bottle reservoir.

I live in zone 8a and plan to grow tomatoes, basil, bell peppers, cucumber, sweet alyssum, french marigolds, borage, cilantro (Eryngium foetidum), purslane, and a culinary strain of dandelion greens. Any advice is welcome!

I will start with container sizes first. Tomatoes need a 5 gallon minimum, 7 gallon is better. Basil, herbs, marigolds grows great in a 2 gallon. Peppers 4-7 gallon, borage and cilantro a 4-7 gallon size pot. Don't know about purslane and dandelion. I plant 2 cucumber plants in a 5 gallon and they do great. Your growing medium should be about 75% soil and about 25% compost. Add a little perlite to help retain moisture. In a wheelbarrow about 3/4 full of soil and compost I add about 1 1/2 quarts of dried pelleted organic fertilizer and then a handful around the base of the plant at planting. I don't know much about the Sea 90 except that it is a foliar spray used on a regular basis. I am not a fan of foliar feeding of vegetables. I much prefer to have a more robust root system than foliage. I much prefer products such as Greensand or Azomite which is mixed into the soil and lasts much much longer than any foliar spray.

 

[Senflora]

Do you think I could companion plant the vegetables with the flowers, or would that be too much?

All of my pots are 7 gallons. I was thinking about putting 1 tomato plant/pepper plant in each pot with 1 basil, 1 Borage, and 1 Marigold. For the cucumbers I was going to put 2 to a pot with 1-2 borage and 1-2 Marigolds.

 

[Chuck]

Do you think I could companion plant the vegetables with the flowers, or would that be too much?

All of my pots are 7 gallons. I was thinking about putting 1 tomato plant/pepper plant in each pot with 1 basil, 1 Borage, and 1 Marigold. For the cucumbers I was going to put 2 to a pot with 1-2 borage and 1-2 Marigolds.

No. The plants will be too large to plant under a tomato or pepper. You could probably plant a marigold with the tomato or pepper. With the cucumbers they must be trellised and they will not be interfered with by basil or marigold but borage gets to be a BIG plant. Borage should have its own pot. Why do you want marigolds? If for insects they attract all kinds, both beneficial and harmful and it is an old wives tale about them being a deterrent. I have tried interspacing marigolds for this purpose at different times over the decades in different soils and if anything they attracted more than they deterred.

 

[Senflora]

No. The plants will be too large to plant under a tomato or pepper. You could probably plant a marigold with the tomato or pepper. With the cucumbers they must be trellised and they will not be interfered with by basil or marigold but borage gets to be a BIG plant. Borage should have its own pot. Why do you want marigolds? If for insects they attract all kinds, both beneficial and harmful and it is an old wives tale about them being a deterrent. I have tried interspacing marigolds for this purpose at different times over the decades in different soils and if anything they attracted more than they deterred.

Yea, I was going to plant the marigolds because everywhere I read it would say they repel harmful insects. Didn't know about them also attracting some too. Also didn't know that borage got so big, as I've never grown it lol. I'd read that they can deter tomato and cabbage worms. I'll probably take those off the list though now that I know they'll be too big or not beneficial in the way I had planned.

How many basil plants do you think I could fit in one of the 7-gallon pots?

 

[aragulacloverclover]

How many basil plants do you think I could fit in one of the 7-gallon pots?

Hi. It's difficult to give a definitive answer as it depends on the size of the basil plants and the type of soil used in the pot. Generally, it is recommended to plant 1-3 basil plants in a 7-gallon pot.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

I usually plant out basil in much smaller pots. The seeds are tiny and you usually get lots in a packet, so it is not necessary to grow them to full size, and they are convenient on the kitchen windowsill.

 

[gary350]

I am new to vegetable gardening and am planning out my summer garden. I live in an apartment, so I'll be using containers for everything on the patio. I wanted to get some advice on if I can/should add fertilizer AND compost to potting mix (in small amounts) or just one of those things.

I haven't bought compost or soil yet, but a friend gave me some dry fertilizer. They gave me Sustaine (NPK ratios 4 6 4) and a bag of Sea - 90, which seems to be mostly trace minerals. I'll be using smart pots for most of the plants, except for the salad greens, which will be in plastic rectangular pots. Watering will be done using terracotta watering stakes + a water bottle reservoir.

I live in zone 8a and plan to grow tomatoes, basil, bell peppers, cucumber, sweet alyssum, french marigolds, borage, cilantro (Eryngium foetidum), purslane, and a culinary strain of dandelion greens. Any advice is welcome!

Too much nitrogen and you get large tomato plants with very few tomatoes. 5-20-20 fertilizer is best. 5 gallon minimum size pots with a 6 ft tall stake to tie 1 plant to.

Bell peppers will grow nothing all summer in TN heat then Oct 1 plant will grow about 40 bell peppers. Plants do very well with 15-15-15 fertilizer. I am not growing sweet bell peppers anymore. Now I grow Carman they are 7" long green and red peppers that look like very large Mexicans hot peppers but they are sweet peppers that grow peppers all summer.

Plant cilantro now about 50 seeds in a pot. 15-15-15 fertilizer is good.

Cucumbers are a bug magnet they attract 1000s of bugs that infest the rest of our garden. I grow 70 plants so I can get a very quick 500 cucumber harvest in 2 weeks then kill all the plants before bugs hatch out. I have grown a lot of different type cucumber and National is the best.