"COF!? Daddy, what's COF?"

One of the buckets of COF.  The others are in the shed.
I was too lazy to carry them all back out for a photo.

Last Saturday, I mixed up about 30 gallons of Complete Organic Fertilizer.  While I was putting labels on the buckets, my youngest son came and asked, "COF!?  Daddy, what's COF?"  He pronounced the acronym the way my Yankee wife pronounces "cough."

The formula comes from Steve Solomon, who is the founder of the Territorial Seed Company as well as the Soil and Health Library.  He is also the author of Gardening When It Counts; it's the best gardening book I know.  Solomon says that COF is "a complete, highly potent, and correctly balanced fertilizing mix made entirely of natural substances, a complete organic fertilizer, or COF."  That about covers it.

The Ingredients:
Cottonseed Meal, Dolomitic Lime, Rock Phosphate, Kelp

Recipes and adaptations are available in lots of places on the web, but this is how I mix it.  I start with four parts cottonseed meal.  I then add one part dolomitic lime, one part rock phosphate, and one part kelp.

I'm working in the shade;
neither the COF nor I like to be out in the sun when it's 100º.

I measure the parts with an old coffee can and mix them in my wife's wheelbarrow.  Shovel it into buckets, label it, and we're ready for the fall season.

The Mix

COF is one important ingredient in our fertility building program (I'll talk about others in some later posts).  It's a lot more trouble and somewhat more expensive than buying a chemical premix, but it doesn't damage our soil.  On top of that, the crops it helps to grow are delicious.