Organic Fertilizer Trial: Three Months of Dave Thompson's Organic Healthy Grow

How much thought do you give to the kind of fertilizer you use in the garden? Not much? Well, maybe it's time to start thinking more about fertilizers we use in the garden. Back in May of this year, Dave Thompson's Organic Healthy Grow contacted me and asked if I would be interested in trialing their products and writing about them. I chose a general purpose garden fertilizer from their line of products. Read part I and part II of this garden experiment if this is your first post on the trial.

As you'll recall, this is a garden bed in which I'm growing tomatoes for a local food pantry. I decided to use Dave Thompson's Organic Healthy Grow general purpose fertilizer. My thinking is that since I was going to donate the harvest from this bed, I wanted to ensure that what went into growing the plants was going to be organic. Take a look at the growth of the tomato plants since part I and part II. The experiment started on May 15th, and this is what the bed looked like in the middle of July.

I'm really impressed with the vigor of the cherry tomato plants that got fertilized with Healthy Grow. As you'll recall, only half the bed was fertilized with Healthy Grow and the other was just amended with fresh compost. The unfertilized half of the bed was not growing as well and the plants were not as happy and healthy as the half I fertilized with Healthy Grow.

Even with regular pinching of suckers and trimming, the cherry tomato vines are exploding in growth, and threatening to take the bamboo stakes down and we're not even into August.

While tying and staking the tomato vines this week I made another observation. The half of the raised bed that didn't get fertilized initially is not just under-performing, the plants are weaker and susceptible to pests and diseases. I have noticed a lot of white flies and aphids on those plants, while the healthier side (the one fertilized) seems to not be affected. There is also, unfortunately, tomato blight in some of the other raised beds that other gardeners tend. I'm keeping my finger crossed because I have a lot of beautiful tomato fruits!

I'm still a couple of weeks away from harvesting cherry tomatoes, but the weather looks promising for ripening tomatoes on the vine, and the tomato fruits are large and beautiful! Most of all, I'm excited about being able to deliver fresh, organically grown tomatoes to a family in need. These photos were taken a couple of days before I sat down to write this post, but I visited the garden today and saw that many were already turning color.

If you've never heard of Dave Thompson's Organic Healthy Grow, check out their website to learn about how a school teacher turned into an organic fertilizer producer, and where you can find the Healthy Grow line of products near you. They have been a great brand to work with, and I'm happy that I have had good results with the fertilizer. By visiting the website, you're also helping support me because they could have advertised in any number of traditional garden outlets, or contracted a number of famous garden writers and TV personalities to do this trial, but they chose to work with me.

Do you have any tips for dealing with white flies and aphids?

Dave Thompson's Organic Healthy Grow--An Experiment with Organic Fertilizer

Have you ever wondered if organic fertilizer is worth the money? It's something that I have grappled with for years. For years conventional garden fertilizers were more readily available than their organic counterparts. But that has changed over the last couple of years. A couple of weeks ago Dave Thompson's Organic Healthy Grow reached out to me with a proposition to conduct an experiment with organic fertilizer.

They wanted to contract me to use their naturally compost organic fertilizer, test it in my garden and provide monthly updates. Previously to these conversations I have never heard of Dave Thompson's Organic Healthy Grow. I was surprised that it was made right here in Illinois, and I was also surprised and inspired by Dave's story. In the 1970s, Dave was a first grade school teacher in Aurora, Ill.,who would regularly incorporate hatching baby chicks into his curriculum to teach his students about the cycle of life.

You won't believe what happened next! Actually, if you're a gardener you can probably guess what happened next. A hobby lead to an obsession and business. What started as a few baby chicks lead to an ever expanding flock, and needing to buy more land to house more chickens. And a classroom experiment to teach kids about the cycle of life lead to a sustainable business.

When the product arrived for me to try I was initially struck by how thoughtful and beautiful the packaging is. And can I just mention how sturdy the packaging is, too? One of my pet peeves in the garden industry is flimsy packaging that leaves soil, compost, and fertilizer everywhere in your home, garage and trunk because the bags rip open easily.

Powder and liquid fertilizers annoy me because of having to find a container for mixing, measuring, and application. And watching it blow away in the wind when it's a powder fertilizer you sprinkle on the soil is aggravating. Maybe, like me, you're also worried about inhaling powdered fertilizer. Dave Thompson's Organic Healthy Grow fertilizer is granulated which makes the handling and application of this fertilizer pretty easy.

And it smells pretty good. I mean, as far as fertilizer made from chicken poop goes--it smells great! There's a rich and earthy aroma to this fertilizer that you're not going to get in synthetic fertilizers that come in crazy colors.

So here's my experiment. At the community garden I volunteer at we have some plots that we use to grow food for a local food pantry. This community garden is organic so we normal only amend the soil with compost and organic products. This year I'm going to use at least one of the plots to conduct an experiment that I will update you about here.

Earlier in the year we grew hundreds of tomato seedlings to give away for free in the community. After amending this raised bed I added Dave Thompson's Organic Healthy Grow, and I planted six of our locally grown tomatoes in the compost we use every year, and the other six in the area amended with the Healthy Grow fertilizer.

So what's going to happen? I'm going to provide monthly updates on this blog to see just how much better our tomatoes grow with Dave's organic composted fertilizer versus our compost we use every year.

Today, Dave, his wife Terry and their son Ben run Pearl Valley Farms, which includes Pearl Valley Eggs, Phil’s Fresh Eggs, Eggology liquid eggs, Coop Poop, and Healthy Grow. That's pretty impressive for something that started in a classroom in the 1970s. See Part II of Dave Thompson's Organic Healthy Grow Experiment.

Have you used Healthy Grow in the garden before? Take a look around the Healthy Grow website if you're interested in a giveaway, comment below and I could possibly host one as part of my sponsorship to experiment and blog about the product.