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.
When fertilizing your gourds with green fertilizers like the fish emulsion, not only are you helping the soil and your garden, but you are doing it safely. I have accidentally spilled full concentrated fish emulsion on my plants without harming them at all, in fact they turned a very dark green.
In the past we have always used a product from Maine, but new products in this line are always being tested and released so you may want to search a little first. Organic fish emulsion is expensive, however we had a 1/3 acre gourd patch and purchased a 2.5 gallon bottle of the fish emulsion and it lasted us 3 years and still had plenty when we moved.
Application: we mixed our fish emulsion 2 to 4 times the strength, and we sprayed at least twice a month until the season was nearing it’s end. The vines grew four feet thick on the ground, over everything they could climb, and they were dark green with a ton of gourds on them.
If you would like to learn more about growing gourds, please visit The Gourd Reserve, with over 800 pages of gourd related information and artwork. You can also find more short articles on gourds and growing gourds here on my AC producer page.
