Spreading Fertilizer for Raised Garden Beds

In preparation for planting, we are going to lay down a layer of commercial fertilizer inside the planting medium. I have about a half of my planting medium down. I am going to put a layer of fertilizer inside and the fertilizer that I have is a triple 13. In other words, it is 13 percent of nitrogen, 13 percent phosphorous and 13 percent sulfur, I mean pot ash. Now with a little sulfur it has all the micro-nutrients iron, zinc, magnesium, all that kind of stuff. I know that most of you folks doing any gardening that you have some fertilizer in your garage that probably looks like this. It is clumped and it's hard and that kind of stuff. It's probably not any good. That is where you are wrong. This stuff is okay. It's a matter of getting it in a form that you can use it. Just because it has a big clump like this and it is hard as what seems to be a rock. If you get into there with something substantial like an old trusty shovel and do a little bit of this (mixing) you can end up turning that chunk of rock into fertilizer which is loose enough to be used in your planting medium or your flower garden. As I am going along here, I am breaking up those little clogs with my fingers. It's not all that terribly hard. The rate that I am putting down or attempting to put down is going to be about 10 pounds per square foot. I have a triple 13; 13 percent nitrogen, 13 percent phosphorous and 13 percent pot ash with sulfur, iron, zinc and magnesium, just all kinds of micro-nutrients. All lot of times you go to the big box retailer and they will sell you something that doesn't have a micro-nutrient content. Hopefully the camera will be able to pick up the way the rate looks. I am basically just covering or coloring top of the soil with this particular material. And that is enough, you don't want to put down too much. If we do, we can get in a situation where we are burning the feeder roots which are the main little hair roots that come off of the roots that are in the bedding plants that I've got that will help establish the plant in the medium. I am going to take my fingers and just kind of carefully mix it in just a little bit. We are not trying to put in the ground because we are going to cover this up but it will help that we mix it in just a little bit. Okay with that, we are going to add the final layer of the planting medium to the top of this and in preparation we will be ready to plant our vegetable bedding plant in this raised bed.