I almost got kicked out of Walmart for showing you the BEST Organic Fertilizer

Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com to do another exciting episode for you. Today I'm outside my super Walmart here in my city, and I'll have to go inside there and show you guys the best organic fertilizer to buy. I want to show you guys how to discern for yourself what is the best organic fertilizer. One of the questions I've gotten so much over the years is, John, what's the best organic fertilizer, and can I recommend this brand or that brand or all different brands? Well, you know, the fact of the matter is a lot of the organic fertilizers are basically the same thing. They take waste streams from other industries, they put it in a bag, and they sell it to you guys for a lot of money. So I want to share with you guys inside Walmart how to cut through the hype, cut through the BS, and find the best organic fertilizer for you, and plus I'll share with you guys the best fertilizers inside Walmart you guys can buy near you to keep your garden organic and keep it productive and growing better than ever. So let's head into Walmart into the fertilizer aisle, hopefully before I get kicked out, and share with you guys my thoughts. Alright guys, now I'm in the aisle here at Walmart with all the fertilizers, and I want to show you guys how to pick out the best organic fertilizer. First off, you know, there's conventional fertilizers, and always I want you guys to flip the bottle and look at the back where it says derived from. This is how you're going to know if it's organic or not. So it's derived from calcitic limestone potassium sulfate ammonium phosphate polymer coated urea. So if it's like big words like that, then that's basically like a commercial conventional fertilizer based around minerals and like literally some of these minerals like the nitrogen made out of gas. I don't recommend these because basically they're feeding the roots directly like a water soluble nutrient. It's like us trying to live on Ensure, Gatorade, or Soylent. It's not the way how nature systems would work. So next up, let's go ahead and pick up this organic fertilizer and check out what it's made out of. Once again, it says derived from poultry manure, feather meal, bone meal, and sulfate or potash. So that's pretty good. But the main thing most organic fertilizers will never tell you is that what they're derived from, and usually it's from chicken manure. And so it's basically like either composted chicken manure or basically dehydrated chicken manure into little pellets. This is not super sustainable, can have a lot of contamination, because whatever they fed the chickens is actually in the manure. So yeah, don't recommend the Expert Gardener brand, but let's see about some other organic ones they have here. So another brand is the Alaska Fish Fertilizer Tomato and Vegetable 366 OMRI listed. And this one says derived from fish bone meal, gypsum, alfalfa meal, potassium, sulfate, and bone meal. This actually sounds a lot better than the last one, because it's derived from fish bone meal, gypsum, alfalfa meal. So the thing I want to tell you guys is I want you guys to count how many ingredients it's derived from. So in this case it's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So we always want to try to have a broad spectrum of different nutrients that the fertilizers derive from. This will ensure that the fertilizer has more different minerals, different kinds of organic matter that can basically get into the soil, that the soil microbes can break down and turn into nutrients for your plants. So this one's definitely better than the last one. Alright guys, next up we've got the Holly Tone Organic Tomato Tone for organic gardening. This is derived from feather meal, poultry manure, bone meal, alfalfa meal, green sand sulfate of potash, and sulfate of potash magnesia. So that's definitely a lot of good ingredients, except for the poultry manure and the bone meal. Once again, these are waste products from the animal agriculture industry, and once again these can be highly contaminated. Alright guys, next up we have the Dr. Earth's fertilizer. So let's see what's in here, flip it out. Derived from fish bone meal, bone meal, feather meal, alfalfa meal, potassium sulfate, fish meal, kelp meal, rock phosphate, and kelp flour. So honestly guys, so far this is the best one because it has the most diverse ingredients. Yes, it does have some animal, basically industry products, but the fish bone meal was the main one. And I think fish bone meal, in my opinion, is a lot healthier than using bone meal from land animals that are in factory feed lots. So yeah, Dr. Earth's for the win, so the tips are, number one, the most different ingredients and as many non-animal agriculture industry ingredients as possible. So try to avoid things like poultry manure, any kind of manures in general. Also blood meal I feel is particularly dirty as regular bone meal. Fish meal is a bit better. That being said, I was amazed to find here at Walmart this food, this is organic plant food all purpose, and it says premium blended plant and mineral based. So if you guys are vegan and want to put vegan fertilizer, Walmart has it. This is amazing. I love Walmart even more than Home Depot for their fertilizer selections. And if we look at what this is derived from, it's derived from alfalfa meal, rock phosphate, soybean meal, limestone, potassium, magnesium, sulfate, sulfate of potash, and kelp meal. And then of course this also has some beneficial mycorrhiza in there as well. So yeah, this one actually is probably the best. So if you had to get two, probably the best two at Walmart for fertilizers anyways are these two, combining both plant food all purpose, back to roots, and Dr. Earth's. I mean, that's really going to be the best because now you're combining the best of both worlds with a lot of diverse ingredients to feed your soil, not necessarily your plants. Alright guys, so now I want to show you guys some more fertilizers here at Walmart that I kind of like. It's the Alaska Fish Fertilizer. I wouldn't get the one in the package, but this is basically just a fish emulsion, basically fish that is really stinky. But this is good stuff, guys. You foil or feed this onto your plants and drench the root zone like once a week, you're going to have a lot healthier vegetables because of it. And I find that Walmart's even cheaper than Home Depot and other places to buy this stuff, since Walmart has a lot of stores and they buy a lot of product from Alaska Company. Now even over just fertilizers and fertilizing the soil, I want you guys to think a little more complex than that. Like for us, we just don't drink Ensure, or maybe some elderly people do, but we want to eat a balanced diet with a lot of different fruits and vegetables. And so in our guts, we have bacteria and microbes that digest the food for us and help provide us additional nutrients. That's why you need this product, and even Home Depot, Lowe's, and most garden centers don't even sell this. Maybe hydroponic shops, you can find this stuff. But I'm glad that Walmart is selling this, make it available, and I hope you guys out there will go to Walmart and support them and buy it so they continue to sell this and make it available to people across the great nation. This is a Plant Success Organic Uranium Mycorrhizae. This literally transforms the organic nutrients and makes it plant available. This also can help make your garden more drought resistant as well. So yeah, and this also has a little bit of food in there too, as well, to feed your plants. Alright guys, so other products here at Walmart to feed your plants that I'm a big fan of is the rock dust. They are carrying Azomite, better Walmarts will carry this, some Walmarts may not. But they have the Back to the Roots Azomite, a bit expensive to buy here, but at least it's now available near you. This will add A to Z of minerals to your garden, which once again will make your plants a lot healthier and even more protected from disease and pests because your plants are now able to eat a more broad diet of minerals that are not existing in the soils because their top soils are depleted. And of course, another thing very important to my gardening style are the different worm castings. So I'm glad to say that unlike most places, we'll have only one kind of worm casting. Walmart has three different unique kinds, they have the wiggle worm, the expert gardener, and then the earth science worm castings over here. And I'd say which one is best, I'd say I don't know, I'd say buy one bag of each one and combine them all, then you have the best of both worlds. The main thing is that the earth worm castings don't necessarily provide you like a fertilizer value, they provide you the little bit of horsepower, beneficial bacteria and microbes and things that'll break down, once again, those organic fertilizers you guys are using. So always add the worm castings when you're enriching your garden with organic fertilizer for the best results. Alright guys, last product at Walmart I want to show you guys today is the biochar. This adds basically carbon into your garden to once again provide a home for some of the microbes but also capture carbon out of the atmosphere. Biochar is something I recommend and even high end garden stores, definitely places like Home Depot, don't even think about selling things like this. So I think that's pretty much it. I got to run out of here before they kick me out. Alright guys, so I'm back here at the end of my cool season garden and I want to share, because I had to get out of Walmart really quick because I think there was like getting the managers and security come over to talk to me and tell me to leave the store. So I left before they were able to tell me. So anyways, I want to sum up this episode because you know, you guys learned a lot in this episode about basically like for synthetic fertilizers that are basically just feeding plants like water soluble nutrients, it does nothing for the soil, it doesn't feed the soil, and in fact some of those nutrients can degrade the soil and make the soil worse. That's why, you know, there's so much topsoil degradation these days and of course all those water soluble nutrients can't run off and create, you know, pollution and toxic zones like in the Gulf. That being said, I want you guys to use organic amendments, you know. So there are organic fertilizers and if you're thinking you need something to boost your plants up, yes you can buy one of the better organic fertilizers, especially the last two that I shared. But then of course, beyond this, the fertilizers and that way I would recommend you guys use a fertilizer is every planting hole of all the plants you guys see behind me. This is like my lettuce bed that's just doing beautifully this time of year. I think over here you see my bolting cilantro and then behind the bolting cilantro, I have other lettuces, mustard greens, more lettuces in the back, kale, collard greens, all kinds of amazing greens. Basically what I like to do is I like to use those, you know, organic fertilizers like one little scoop, like a teaspoon, tablespoon's worth per hole when I transplant my transplants. Other than that, actually I just basically mixed up homemade compost, locally sourced compost with worm castings, the rock dust of course, some of the biochar, insect frass and other things and then basically top off my beds because the goal is to not have to use fertilizers. If you think about how does nature work, are there fertilizers pixies sprinkling fertilizer in nature? No. You could go out to a big forest and the forest continually cycles nutrients from the leaves that grow on the trees, the trees drop the leaves, they're not getting blown away or raked up, they basically break down, trees fall over, those rot down basically back and feed the soil and keep the whole growth cycle going. So that's what I'm trying to duplicate at home in a small scale and that's what I want you guys to try to duplicate as well. So you know, every year as your soil compresses down over the season, re-enrich it with other composted plant materials. If you have animals, use their compost because you know what you're feeding them. I'm not a fan of basically waste materials from large agriculture industries. I'm not a fan of CAFOs where they're basically breeding animals on large scale in small spaces and feeding them probably the cheapest of the cheapest food and then they're taking their waste products and once again they're going into bags to sell you, right? Instead, compost your own food scraps, add in worm castings, add in rock dust, add in the biochar, add in other soil amendments, and I'll put links down below on how I mix up my soil so you guys can learn what I add to re-enrich my garden without actually depending, depending on fertilizers, which unfortunately is what most people that garden do. If you guys enjoyed this content today where I had to sneak into Walmart and almost get kicked out for you guys, please be sure to give this video a thumbs up. That'll encourage this crazy guy to continue to film when I'm probably not supposed to. Also be sure to share this with other people so that they can learn how to pick out the best organic fertilizer, be it at Walmart or even their local plant nursery. Also be sure to click that subscribe button right down below so you don't miss any of my upcoming episodes. I have a community of five to seven days, remember to wash up, what you've been learning on my YouTube channel. Make sure you click the little bell so you get notified as my videos come out. Also be sure to check my past episodes. Past episodes are, wealth of knowledge, over seventeen episodes at this time on this channel dedicated to teaching you guys how to grow your own food at home, and I'll put links down below some of the videos I've made in the past at Walmart talking about the different soil products you can buy there, talking about the different products that they have that I support and encourage you guys to buy to take your garden up to the next level. So with that, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we'll see you next time. Until then, remember, keep on growing.