Potash: How to Get the K in Your N-P-K
Listen 53:27
What is ‘muriate of potash’—and is it safe? On the latest episode of You Bet Your Garden, host Mike McGrath discusses the many ways you can add the ‘K’ in ‘N-P-K’ to your landscape! Plus, your fabulous phone calls!
Question of the Week:
“Is ‘muriate of potash’ safe to use as an additive in the raised bed gardens I’ll be planting next spring? And if so, do you recommend it? I used it very sparingly along with bone meal and blood meal in an ‘in-ground’ garden I had in St. Louis, where the clay content of the soil was very high. The garden seemed to have no problem producing tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, and cantaloupe—although the cantaloupe was not very flavorful.
I plan on filling my new raised beds with premium topsoil and my own compost—which started out as a mix of fall leaves and food waste in a tumbler. The beds will be planted with the same kinds of vegetables as in St. Louis. I’ve purchased the blood meal and bone meal, but none of the garden/hardware/superstores around me carry muriate of potash. An internet search yielded plenty of results, but some sites had warnings that muriate of potash ‘is known by the state of California to cause cancer’, which led me to seek your advice.”
Jack in Richboro, PA
All you ever wanted to know about potash »
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