Fertilizing Your Gourds Using Fish Emulsion with Kelp

Fertilizing your gourds is important to insuring a healthy garden and a healthy crop. There are so many fertilizers out there, what is the best and safest way to go?

No matter what claims are out there, my vote is, hands down, on organic fertilizers, and primarily fish emulsion with kelp extract added. You may go to a store and see fertilizer numbers like 10-15-12, or other such numbers, but what you are seeing is pure man designed chemical ingredients. These chemicals supply nothing in the way of microbial additives which are essential to healthy soil, there is nothing included to help break down organic matter, and many of the other essential nutrients just aren't there. As we continue to pump chemicals into the soil, the soil loses it's ability to recycle and break down organic matter which leaves your garden in a weakened condition and requires you to buy more and more ingredients to try to enrich your soil.

One powerful solution to this problem is fertilizing your gourds with green fertilizer. This means grass clippings, (that haven't been sprayed with chemicals), leaves and compost, and our favorite is fish emulsion with kelp. Fish emulsion with kelp not only includes the 3 numbers you see on chemical fertilizers, (N-P-K or Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium), but it includes many other essential nutrients, as well as microbials which help to break down the organic matter in the soil so your plants can utilize the nutrients.

Generally a Fish emulsion with kelp extract fertilizer will have much lower numbers like 2-1-1, 5-1-1, 2-5-1, etc. Because of the other nutrients, these lower numbers are actually much more effective than chemical fertilizers with numbers in the tens and twenties. Not only that, these fish emulsion fertilizers make great foliar sprays and the results are rapid.

When we transplant our gourds, we fertilize them by soaking the hole with a double strength mix of the fish emulsion, inserting the plant, then packing the dirt around it, then spray the planted area as well as the gourdling itself with the fish emulsion with kelp extract solution. This helps eliminate transplant shock.