Author Topic: Growmore fertiliser?????  (Read 32948 times)

Jeannine

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Growmore fertiliser?????
« on: May 22, 2007, 17:49:52 »
I actually got a huge big sack of this stuff as a Christmas present 2 years ago.I have never used it and have to do something with it,The bag is split and is is now in a dustbin.

I know nothing about it and would like to get it out of my shed .

Could I sprinkle the lot over our two full sized lotties in one go,or use it in handfuls around plants this year. ??? If so how much. the directions have faded.

Eg.  if I was to put it round say my squash or cabbages how much per plant and how often please.

Is it awful stuff or good stuff??

Thank  you Jeannine
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Rhubarb Thrasher

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #1 on: May 22, 2007, 18:32:33 »
Growmore is the bog-standard balanced NPK water soluble inorganic fertiliser. Application rate of about 4oz per sq yard, maybe 6oz for hungry stuff like squash or sweetcorn. It says it can be applied every 4-6 weeks, but that seems a awful lot. I apply it once for each crop

cleo

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #2 on: May 22, 2007, 18:39:06 »
Jeannine-growmore was introduced after WW2 I think as a balanced fertiliser-it`s not considered `organic` but nobody is perfect. And a good handful wherever would do no harm . I don`t use it because for reasons that may be myth I think blood ,fish and bone might be slower to release.

But it`s something I wrestle with-is Fish blood and bone a byproduct of over fishing and factory farming? I`m thinking about going back to growmore and also using chicken pellets from a reliable source

saddad

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #3 on: May 22, 2007, 18:47:28 »
National Growmore was developed for the Dig for Victory campaigns in the war.. fairly certain it is a balance of all three main groups N P K and is widely used. We put a handfull in each of our large pots and baskets once a month through the summer..
 ::)

Jeannine

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #4 on: May 22, 2007, 18:49:32 »
So, I won't chuck it, and  I have to do something with it so it may as well be on my land as in a land fill.

If I put a handful round each plant as I put  them in would that be OK?

Can I put it round everything, cabbages etc, squash, corn ,beans, apragus and strawberry bed and my sodt fruit trees, what ever. I know nothing about it.

Is there anything I should keep it away from.

 Thank you again XX Jeannine
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Larkspur

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #5 on: May 22, 2007, 18:55:46 »
Jeannine do you have a flower garden in addition to an allotment?. If you have concerns about using it on veg flowers are very fond of it applied as Rhubarb Thrasher says, once a season. Now is fine.

Rhubarb Thrasher

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #6 on: May 22, 2007, 19:01:10 »
yes Growmore is fast release compared to BF and B, maybe that's why they say apply every 4-6 weeks, what your plants don't utilise gets washed out .  Because it's balanced, you'ld still need to apply your normal high potassium feeds for toms + other fruiting crops (if you do that)

LesH

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #7 on: May 22, 2007, 22:51:49 »
Hi Jeannine, |Growmore is the by product of the armament industry. The N.P.K. is 7-7-7, a general artificial fertilizer. A handful around each plant? Depends on the size of your hands. When I use G/M I only use one application per plant per season, at 4oz per sq yard. Yes, you can use it around everything, veg, fruit and flowers.

Jeannine

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #8 on: May 23, 2007, 07:42:48 »
What do you mean about the armament industry, do you mean bombs etc. I can't be involved with anything to do with war or guns or bombs etc can you please tell me  a lot more about this,I need to be sure. Thank you Jeannine
When God blesses you with a multitude of seeds double  the blessing by sharing your  seeds with other folks.

BAK

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #9 on: May 23, 2007, 08:22:11 »
It has nothing to do with armaments.

In the second world war (as previously in the first) the number of allotments soared to 1.5m+, as people were encouraged by the government to tackle the general shortage of food by growing their own.

However, this resulted in shortages of manure and fertilisers. A company called George Monro & Son, a horticultural products company, came up with an artificial  balanced fertiliser in 1942 called National Growmore to beat the shortages .. subsequently shortened to Growmore (in the 1980s? - I forget). As previously mentioned it is 7:7:7.

Click on the link below for info about the company

http://www.monrosouth.co.uk/html/company.html

For anybody who is interested in history, the following link shows leaflets that were issued during the war as part of the Dig for Victory campaign.

http://www.earthlypursuits.com/AllotGuide/DigforVictory1/DigForVictory1_1.htm

Rhubarb Thrasher

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #10 on: May 23, 2007, 09:08:55 »
Nitrogen, as ammonia or nitrate compounds, is essential for plant growth, but they're not too common in nature. For instance Spain declared war on Chile in 1865 over their guano deposits (bird poo, a rich source of nitrogen compounds). Also, I believe twas Sir William Crookes, President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, who said in 1898, something like - the greatest challenge facing the ingenuity of science in the coming century will be the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. Well the problem was solved by Haber and Bosch during the First World War, but not soon enough for the Germans to win. Nitrogen is very stable, nitrates are not, so they're good explosives too. Poor Herr Haber was also the Father of Chemical Weapons. After one day supervising gasing British soldiers on the front line, at a dinner party, his wife was so appalled by what he was doing, that she shot herself dead with his service revolver. Apparently the next day, he was at it again, gasing Russians. Poor Herr Haber also spent lots of time after the war trying to extract gold from sea water to pay for the reparations, but his equilibrium calculations were wrong and it was never going to work. Tho a good German, unfortunately Herr Haber was a Jew, so when the Nazis came to power, he had to escape to Switzerland, but died on the way, presumably of a broken heart.
As with the First war, so with the Second. At the end of the War, America's production of ammonium for explosives was vast. What to do with it all? Switch to production of crops with high nitrogen requirements, like sweetcorn, and use corn syrup as an animal feed. I think about 90% of all animal feed in the US is High Fructose Corn Syrup. This means (tho I couldn't check) that in the 18 month life of your average steer, the poor thing has had 17 gallons of corn syrup, which it can't cope with. It would die of acidosis if it wasn't killed first. Of course now in the US, nearly all of this is GM too
So much for Growmore.

On a lighter note, talking about German Chemists, did you know that Olivia Newton John's grandfather won the 1954 Nobel Prize for Physics?

Marymary

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #11 on: May 23, 2007, 10:12:14 »
RT what an amazingly interesting post.  I'd often wondered why fertilizers seemed to be dangerous in the 'wrong hands'.  Now i know thanks.  Also horrid about the corn syrup for animals in the US - I have read a lot about the food industry in the States & it all sounds appalling & not much better here - which is why we all Grow Our Own.  :)
« Last Edit: May 23, 2007, 11:06:58 by Marymary »

markfield rover

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #12 on: May 23, 2007, 10:21:14 »
RhubarbThrasher, have you read 'Mauve.How one man invented a colour and changed the world.'
by simon Garfield.?

Rhubarb Thrasher

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #13 on: May 23, 2007, 11:25:10 »
there was at least one factual error in my post. If Fritz Haber was gassing Russian soldiers on the day after his wife shot herself, it's probably safe to assume he was gassing Russian soldiers on the day before, not British. He'd be a pretty scarey individual if he was testing chlorine on the enemy, one Nation at a time

We were at it too. The poison gas Lewisite, which smells of geraniums, was discovered by an American priest at the Catholic University of America in 1918. The Americans used it in the Second World War, and the Iraqis in the Iraq Iran war

The first generation of nerve-gases, organo-phosphorus compounds, were originally developed as pesticides, but those pesky German chemists realised they were on to something when a whole laboratory of people fell down twitching (apparently)

Good old Perkin. Tried to make quinine, and ended up with his mauve. No I haven't read the book, tho i've probably made the mauve (by accident) :D. I think at the 150 anniversary of the discovery of it, the Royal Society of chemistry had Perkin's original stuff analysed, and found that not only wasn't it quinine, it also wasn't Perkin's Mauve either


Jeannine

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #14 on: May 23, 2007, 11:27:33 »
Oh eck, and | just wanted to know if I could feed it to my rhubarb etc
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Melbourne12

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #15 on: May 23, 2007, 13:28:07 »
Oh eck, and | just wanted to know if I could feed it to my rhubarb etc

Ain't the internet wonderful, eh?  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

My suggestion, FWIW, is to ignore all this nonsense about ordnance production, amusing though it is.  A moment's thought will reassure you that:

(a) Nitrate based explosives haven't been used in warfighting ordnance for donkey's years.
(b) Although sad suicide bombers blow people up with fertiliser-based home made explosives, it's the explosives that are made out of fertiliser.  Not fertiliser made out of explosives.  They also use diesel oil and sugar in the mix.  You wouldn't sell your diesel car and stop making jam because they're "by products of the armaments industry"  ::)
(c) World production of fertiliser is many orders of magnitude more than world production of explosives.  It is unthinkable that nitrates are a "by product" of explosives production.

Rhubarb Thrasher

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #16 on: May 23, 2007, 14:02:31 »
thinking about all that guff, not only was most of it pre-internet, it was actually pre-computer. Which was why I got Carl Bosch's name wrong.

If you think that it's unthinkable that nitrate production is a byproduct of explosive production, well try teling that to the British and American scientists that were crawling all over the German's pilot plant in 1918

Robert_Brenchley

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #17 on: May 23, 2007, 18:43:18 »
Nitrates were originally produced on a large scale (for the time) to make gunpowder; agricultural use developed out of the guano deposits found off the west coast of South America, when they eventually discovered that nitrate did the same thing, and was cheaper. But I wouldn't worry about that; it's historical info, not a current link.
« Last Edit: May 23, 2007, 18:46:07 by Robert_Brenchley »

redimp

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #18 on: May 23, 2007, 19:32:08 »
Any link between British Growmore and US Growmore which is the one Google always throws up?
Lotty @ Lincoln (Lat:53.24, Long:-0.52, HASL:30m)

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Melbourne12

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Re: Growmore fertiliser?????
« Reply #19 on: May 23, 2007, 21:14:57 »
thinking about all that guff, not only was most of it pre-internet, it was actually pre-computer. Which was why I got Carl Bosch's name wrong.

If you think that it's unthinkable that nitrate production is a byproduct of explosive production, well try teling that to the British and American scientists that were crawling all over the German's pilot plant in 1918

At the risk of boring on about this, I understand the history, but we're now nearly a hundred years on!  Even I, with my schoolboy knowledge, could make you a very satisfying bang with a dustbin full of stuff bought in Wyevale and Tesco, but I don't kid myself that that's how modern explosives are made.

I tried to find figures on world production of ammonia and nitrates, but it's nearly impossible.  And I'm well out of touch with modern chemical engineering, so the old uses in metallurgy and plastics manufacturing may well have been superseded.

<Internet fantsay mode ON> Nitrates are used in pork pies, too.  Ergo, explosives are a by-product of the pie industry. :( If we could only ban pies, there'd be no more war.  If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of spring .... </Internet fantasy>

 

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