From: Jim Elbrecht Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 20:15:26 -0400 Local: Fri,May 6 2005 8:15 pm Subject: Blood Meal vs Nitrate of Soda
"I hadn't tested the soil in my veggie garden in years, so I bought one
of the little test kits at my local garden center.
It gave me the ounces/100 sq ft. of the NPK that I needed. No problem on the phopsphorous or potash-- but it gave the ounces/100sq' for the nitrogen in ouncs of Nitrate of Soda. [16%] My garden center didn't have Nitrogen in *any* form-- so I ended up at Walmart on the way home & they had blood meal [12%].
Will that release nitrogen just like the Nitrate of Soda? I'm thinking that I need to use 33% more of it, right?"
Don't worry about it, Jim. Any test kit that says it can measure available nitrogen is a fraud because available nitrogen varies greatly according to soil moisture, temperature and other factors. Nitrogen is also highly leachable so just because it's there when you test the soil doesn't mean that it's going to be there next month, especially if you get any appreciable rainfall.
For the average vegetable garden figure on applying about 1 to 2 lbs of actual nitrogen per 1,000 square feet. If you plan on growing sweet corn in part of it, apply about 4 lbs of actual nitrogen to that area.
If you use blood meal with 12% nitrogen, then it would take about 8 lbs of blood meal per 1,000 square feet to equal 1 lb of nitrogen, 16 lbs of blood meal to equal 2 lbs of nitrogen, and so on.
Your friend, Betty