Neem Seed Meal Killing Plants

I’ve been using neem seed meal more recently because I wanted to see if I could apply organic fertilizers in smaller amounts more often to generate better growth. I learned this method from Jacob Mittleider’s system of growing crops with small, regular doses of mineral fertilizers. I wondered if this could be adapted using organic fertilizers, too.

Things were going alright until the 3rd dose came around. Keep in mind I was adding only a couple of tablespoons per week. I started noticing many small seedlings dying. I’m not sure what exactly did them in, but the only thing I could think of was the new neem seed meal fertilizing program. I immediately stopped that and switched back to the mineral fertilizer.

I can’t find any information on this but it could be a couple of things. It might be the nitrogen content is too high and it is slow release, so by the 3rd dose, it became way too much nitrogen in the soil for the young plants. The other might be the azadirachtin that becomes phytotoxic in large amounts.

For now, I’ll stick to the mineral fertilizer I like to use and figure out a better use of neem seed meal in the future. I might not even use it again because I have found a lot of weed seeds come with the neem meal. It’s usually not a clean product.

We will see if neem seed meal will be part of my program in the future.