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Feeding Your Garden Naturally

There are two very compelling reasons to feed your garden naturally. Long term you’ll build better soil and a healthier ecosystem. Short term and long term you’ll save money.

Building Better Soil Naturally

Better Soil

If you’ve been reading most of our newsletter articles, you know that we consider good soil to be the absolute foundation to good gardening. Good soil not only produces better plants, lawns, flowers, fruits, and vegetables, it also creates a better environment. Good soil also looks and smells good.

Saving Money

Feeding your garden “naturally” will also save you money. When you feed your garden plants with natural and organic products, you build a healthier soil. Healthier soil improves yield, supports healthier plants, and reduces or even eliminates the need for nasty chemicals. Higher yields, independent of chemical sprays, are very cost effective. You get more, and spend less.

How to Feed Your Gardens “Naturally”

Fertilizer

When it comes to feeding your gardens naturally, you have two basic options – commercially produced organic fertilizer or compost (either homemade or purchased).

Organic Fertilizers

There are many organic fertilizers on the market today. Plant-tone, an all purpose granular organic plant food, is easy to apply and very safe. For a more specifically blended fertilizer, try Vegetables Alive!, Tomatoes Alive!, Flowers Alive! (for both annuals and perennials), and Fruit Trees Alive!

All of these commercially produced organic plant foods provide well balanced plant nutrition that breaks down slowly. Organic plant foods will feed fairly consistently over time – unlike water soluble chemical fertilizers, that can easily overfeed or burn tender plants and diminish rapidly.

Compost

Compost Pile

If you’ve read several of our recent newsletters, you know that we just love compost. Compost is the single best thing you can add to your garden soil. Not only will compost improve your soil’s texture and structure, it will also improve your garden’s fertility. Compost adds nutrients as well as beneficial microbes that will help your plants grow bigger and stronger.

You Can Buy Compost

Compost has become so popular for good gardening, that you can now buy it! Not long ago, if you wanted compost, you had to make your own. That’s still our preference, but if you’re limited in the space you have, or you simply don’t want to make your own, you can buy the real thing.

Some companies sell dehydrated cow manure as compost. The cow manure is good for your garden, and a good additive for compost piles, but it’s technically not compost.

Some products labeled as compost are dehydrated human sewage; read the description of the product before you buy it!

Make Your Own Compost

Compost-Twin Tumbler

It’s easy to make your own compost. You just need a little bit of space to devote to a compost pile or bin, and some patience.  Make compost faster and easier with a Mantis composter. There are models for every size garden.

 

 

kitchen scraps for compost

What Things Can You Compost

The ingredients for making great compost are all around us. Unfortunately, they often end up in the trash instead of in the compost pile. Grass clippings, dry leaves, garden scraps, and most kitchen scraps are great compost ingredients. Some animal manure can be a very good compost component – but never add dog or cat feces to your compost. Learn how to compost and some interesting things you can put in the compost pile or compost tumbler.

 

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Border Edger Attachment
Border Edger Attachment cuts neat edges around areas where the walkways and beds meet the lawn. $49.95 value. FREE when you purchase a Mantis Tiller now! Ships FREE with Tiller.
(Border Edger offer not applicable to tiller models 3550, 3558, XP, 7234-12-43, 7250-00-03, SU or reconditioned models.)

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Free standard shipping on tiller order shipped to US 48 states.
Free shipping does not apply to reconditioned tiller models.

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GIFT40: Add the Mantis 58V Cordless Tiller/Cultivator 3558 to your cart.
Enter code GIFT40 and we'll take an additional $40 off the price.
Hurry. Offer expires 12/31/18!

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California Prop 65 Information

www.p65warnings.ca.gov

This warning pertains to the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 commonly referred to as Proposition 65 which requires warnings about chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm. For more than thirty years this law has required businesses selling products in the State of California that may expose persons to chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm to provide special warnings. The Proposition 65 regulations have recently changed and effective August 30, 2018, new requirements apply to the content and location of certain Proposition 65 warnings. In response to these changes, Schiller Grounds Care, Inc. is providing the warning you see on the product web page you viewed prior to linking to this explanation. The company has the same warning on the product associated with that product web page. The regulatory agency in the State of California responsible for Proposition 65 has made additional information about Proposition 65 available on its web page: https://oehha.ca.gov/propostion-65.

The company is also party to a 1995 consent decree entered into together with many other manufacturers of covered products (as defined in the consent decree) and for those products the company has, in addition to the warning referred to above, also included the Proposition 65 warning mandated by the consent decree in the owner’s/operator’s manual for the covered product.

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Please visit our Find a Retailer page where you can locate Mantis retail partners who may be able to take your order.

Wishing you the best this gardening season,
The Schiller Grounds Care Team

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Free Shipping
Buy direct from Mantis and get FREE standard shipping on Mantis Tillers shipped to the US 48 states.

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Free Border Edger Attachment ($49.95 value)
Border Edger Attachment cuts neat edges around areas where the walkways and beds meet the lawn.
FREE with purchase of Mantis Tiller 7920, 7924 or 7940 models. Border Edger ships FREE with eligible tiller purchase.
(Border Edger offer not applicable to 3550, 3558 or XP models)

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