The Basics: Fertilizing and Pest Control

I use an organic fertilizer called Fertrell. You can get it at most garden supply stores—if you need to find a dealer, you can look here. I add about ¼ cup twice a month. I also add Superthrive to the water every week or so [to be perfectly honest I haven’t seen zooming crops, but it doesn’t hurt anything]. I lime [Soil Doctor Pelletized Lawn Lime1/4 cup] twice a year.

I could probably fertilize more but it’s easy to build up too acidic soil in containers, and what I’m doing seems to be working reasonably well. I could of course test the soil, but if you’ve read any other blog posts by now you’ll realize I like to wing it.

Pest Control.
I only use stuff that doesn’t adversely affect cats, bees, humans and other critters. For pest control I use Garlic Barrier [they recommend every 10-14 days but I find I have to use it once a week during the summer—10 days is fine in the winter]. It takes care of everything but aphids, spider mites and army worms [and some other type of teeny worm that wants to eat the tomatoes]. When I see worm damage I use Conserve Electrolyte [I do pro-actively spray the tomatoes bi-weekly]. Neem Oil is recommended for fungal infestations, but the only plants who ever had a fungal problem where the squash, and well…I’ve also used a milk solution and that seemed to work as well as the Neem Oil. [You can get Conserve and Neem Oil at most garden supply stores, or, look them up on the web.]

About twice a year I get aphids or spider mites on the eggplants. You can just use soap and water to get rid of those and when I see them I also buy ladybugs [In Sarasota, from Hibbs Farm and Garden Supply]. They’ll take care of lots of munching critters.


To keep snails and slugs off the lettuces I built a sand trap—I’ve read they don’t like to cross sand or shell. See the white strip on top of the raised bed? That’s pieces of old vinyl soffit we had around here that had a raised edge filled with sand. You could do it a number of ways though.