water soluble and soil temp

[lew]

Hello,

Are water soluble organics dependent on soil temp? My local homedepot has Purely Organics 10-0-2 available and the label states 7.1% water soluble. I'm in central MA and am wondering if it would be appropriate for a late fall application.

If it matters, it's derived from soybean meal, l-lysine monohydrochloride (whatever that is) and distillers dried grains.

Thanks,
Lew

[turf_toes]

Water soluble in the case of soybean meal means it dissolves in water.

It still requires active soil micro organisms to make it available to your grass.

[lew]

Thank you. That makes sense. Out of curiosity, if the weather was more favorable, are there advantages/disadvantages to an organic fertilizer with higher water soluble percentage compared to WIN ?

[turf_toes]

I’d suggest skipping the abbreviation.

[lew]

Sorry. WIN=Water insoluble

[turf_toes]

I’d suggest that anything broken down would be more easily digested . But I’m having a hard time thinking of an organic fertilizer that isn’t water soluble. All the grains are. Milorganite is too.

Something rare like cotton seed maybe?

I’ve personally never used an organic fertilizer that didn’t dissolve in water. But maybe there are outliers that I’ve never used.

[lew]

My question stemmed from the guaranteed analysis on the bag. I was also looking at Jonathan Green's organic fertilizer (https://www.jonathangreen.com/wp-conten ... n-Food.pdf) and theirs is listed as 9.75% water insoluble nitrogen and .25% water soluble.

[turf_toes]

No idea what’s in that bag. Sounds like a time released thing. But I’ve always relied on grains with organic fertilizer.

It’s just easier. Either way, if it is truly organic, the soil temperature is what matters. Whether is dissolves in water or not, organic fertilizer tends to be microbe dependent.

I guess urea is an organic compound (even if manufactured synthetically. That would be the obvious exception

[Dchall_San_Antonio]

As usual I'm late to this, but the ingredients of feather meal, soybean meal, and blood meal create a progressively timed "release" of organic nitrogen. Blood meal is available tomorrow once it is moistened. I should be used sparingly, so that's why it's the smallest amount in the bag. Too much blood meal can burn the roots of a plant. Soybean meal will decompose like most grains taking about 3 weeks before the microbes process it into plant food. Feather meal takes forever to decompose. It is more like a 3 month process to make plant food. Thus the Jonathan Green organic fertilizer gives a quick green up (due to the blood meal), a second hit of nitrogen in 3 weeks (due to the soybean meal), and a longer term hit again 3 months later. It's a very good idea. We used to have a local product like that in San Antonio which my neighbor used religiously. Her lawn always looked good even when the rest of our lawns were dormant in the winter.

[MorpheusPA]

Blood meal is another source of protein (yes, hemoglobin, the primary source of nitrogen here, is a protein*), it's just a much faster to decay protein that most; the bell curve on this one is tilted sharply toward the front, but it's a common source of misinformation that it's immediately available. Unlike, say, ammoniacal nitrogen, it does take a little time.

So it'll start being available within about 2 days, with all of it within 2 weeks, assuming a tolerable soil biology, which even an indoor container should have (more fundamentalist gardeners will dispute this; they're wrong, I use it, works fine, proof is in the blood pudding).

It keeps feeding for around six weeks at reducing levels.

The soy's bell curve is three weeks to three months, at reducing levels.

Feather meal...depends. This does not say hydrolyzed. Hydrolyzed feather meal is about a month to a year, at reducing levels; feather meal is slow stuff. Unhydrolyzed, off the chicken, it's much, much slower. How slow depends on soil moisture, temperature.... I'd count on this more as a long, sustaining, very slow feed product that will never produce a visible effect.


* Weight around 65K g/mol, 812 molecules of bound N, or about 11.5K g/mol N, for 17.5% N by weight; other items in the mix reduce this to around 12% N overall for the blood meal.