Fertilizer Requirements

To ensure that our newly germinated beans and our soon to be planted transplants stay healthy for the whole growing season, we are going to put down some organic fertilizer. This will supply all the necessary Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorus and other nutrients our plants need.

Our field’s soil test showed that it was low in N, and K but fairly high in P.

Per the IFAS growing recommendations at these soil conditions, our beans need about 120 lb N/acre/per growing season. Similarly they need between 80 and 100 lbs K and little to no P.  Basil plants also need 120 lb N. The Kale, Chinese Cabbage and Pac Choi have similar nutritional needs and require 175 lbs N, 150 lbs K and little to no P, per acre, per growing season.  

We decided to use the 10-2-8 Nature Safe Fertilizer provided by our professor because it was readily available and a good balance of N-P-K. Because the fertilizer has many organic components that will break down slowly, we will incorporate the full amount into our beds now making some nutrients immediately accessible to our transplants and others slowly released throughout the growing season. Because our beans have already been planted, we will side dress that bed. None of us are very familiar with this fertilizer, however, so we will also look for early symptoms of nutritional deficiencies and act quickly to remedy them.

Below are our calculations for our field requirement.

Our Plot is 20x24 or 480 ft2, or 1/90^th of an acre

175 lb N    X        1     = 1.9 or about 2lb N needed for our plot

Acre                     90

                       

10% of each LB of Nature Safe is N or 1 LB NS=0.1 lb N

0.1 lb N   =  2 lb N  so our field requires 20 lbs Nature Safe to meet it’s N requirement for Cole Crops

1 lb NS         X lb NS

20lb NS X 0.08 K = 1.6 Lb K  (This meets/exceeds requirement)

There are 5 rows in our field, so we need 4lb per row of Cole crops

120 lb N    X        1     = 1.3 lb N needed for our plot

Acre                     90

                       

10% of each LB of Nature Safe is N or 1 LB NS=0.1 lb N

0.1 lb N   =     1.3 lb N  so our field requires 13 lbs Nature Safe to meet it’s N requirement for Beans

1 lb NS         X lb NS

13 lb NS X 0.08 K = 1.04 Lb K  (This meets/exceeds requirement)

There are 5 rows in our field, so we need 2.6 lb per row of Green Beans or Basil