What is vegan fertiliser? A UK grower's guide

Vegan gardening

What is vegan fertiliser?

By Joe Barrington, Founder of Dr Forest · June 2026

Pick up most organic plant foods and read the back. Fish, blood, bone. A vegan feed leaves all of that out and still supplies the same nutrients.

Vegan fertiliser is plant food made without any animal ingredients: no dried blood, no fish meal, no bone meal, no hoof and horn, no manure. It supplies nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium from plant meals such as alfalfa and seaweed, and from minerals such as rock phosphate, sulphate of potash and polyhalite. Plants take up the same nutrient ions whatever the source, so a well-built plant-based feed grows a healthy garden without anything from an animal.

The word people reach for is "veganic", a blend of vegan and organic. In the UK it has a settled meaning: growing with plant-based fertilisers and no animal inputs at all. Every Dr Forest blend is vegan: plant-based ingredients and no slaughterhouse waste, handcrafted in small batches in Stockport, Greater Manchester. The whole range suits a veganic plot.

What counts as a vegan fertiliser?

A fertiliser is vegan when nothing in it came from an animal. That sounds obvious, but it rules out a surprising amount of the organic shelf. The RHS splits organic fertilisers into two groups: plant-based feeds such as seaweed, comfrey, nettle and sugar-beet products, and animal-based feeds such as hoof and horn, dried blood, fish, blood and bone, bone meal and poultry manure. A vegan feed draws only from the first group, plus minerals, which come out of the ground and contain nothing animal by definition.

That is the line Dr Forest holds across the whole catalogue. Every blend is plant-based or mineral, with full ingredient transparency, and no animal by-products anywhere in the formulation. It is a deliberate choice rather than a marketing afterthought, which matters once you see what the conventional feeds are actually built from.

What's in conventional organic feeds that isn't vegan

Fish, blood and bone is the classic British general fertiliser, and the name is the ingredient list. Fish meal is dried, ground fishery waste. Dried blood is a by-product of the meat industry, a quick source of nitrogen at roughly 12 to 14 per cent. Bone meal is ground animal bone, including slaughterhouse waste, valued for its phosphorus and calcium. Put together they give the familiar NPK of about 5-5-6.

Hoof and horn is the same story by another route: a slow-release nitrogen feed at around 12 to 14 per cent, made from exactly what the name says. Poultry manure pellets are animal waste from the poultry industry. None of these is vegan, and many gardeners who think they have gone fully organic are surprised to learn their feed has passed through an abattoir.

Where the nutrients come from instead

The trick to feeding without animals is knowing which plant and mineral sources carry which nutrient. None of it is exotic, and a small set of inputs covers the whole garden.

Nitrogen is the one people worry about, because blood and hoof and horn are such concentrated nitrogen sources. Plant meals fill the gap. Alfalfa is the workhorse, a legume meal at roughly 2.5 per cent nitrogen that also feeds soil life as it breaks down. Plant protein concentrates push higher. The release is slower than dried blood, because soil organisms have to mineralise it first, which is no bad thing in a garden bed: you get a steady drip rather than a flush.

Phosphorus is where bone meal usually earns its place. Micronised rock phosphate does the same job from a mineral. It is ground fine so the surface area is high, and it releases phosphorus slowly to roots over a long period, with calcium alongside. No animal involved.

Potassium is straightforward, because the standard sources are already mineral. Sulphate of potash supplies potassium with sulphur and no chloride, which suits potash-hungry, chloride-sensitive crops like tomatoes and potatoes. Polyhalite, mined in Yorkshire, brings potassium together with calcium, magnesium and sulphur in one mineral.

Seaweed sits a little apart. It is a modest nutrient source but a useful biostimulant. A peer-reviewed review of Ascophyllum nodosum extracts reports improved plant vigour, better root development and greater tolerance of drought and other stresses, with the carbohydrates in the extract doing much of the work. The evidence on yield itself is thinner and more mixed, so seaweed earns its keep on vigour and stress tolerance rather than on a bigger crop. Kelp meal and a liquid seaweed feed sit in the programme on those grounds, not on NPK.

A small set of plant and mineral inputs covers every nutrient a conventional animal-based feed supplies.

Does plant-based feeding work as well?

The honest answer is that plants do not know or care where a nutrient came from. A root takes up nitrate, phosphate and potassium ions; it has no way of telling whether the nitrogen started as dried blood or as alfalfa. Once the nutrient is in solution in the soil, the source is irrelevant to the plant.

What does differ is the release. Concentrated animal meals like dried blood give a faster nitrogen hit. Plant meals lean on soil microbes to mineralise them, so they release more gently. For a garden bed that is usually an advantage, because gentle release is harder to overdo and less likely to leach away in rain. For a crop that wants a sudden push, a liquid feed closes the gap.

What you will not find is good evidence that a vegan feed grows a better, or worse, garden than an animal-based one of the same NPK. The honest case for plant-based feeding rests on two things that have nothing to do with yield: you avoid abattoir and fishery by-products, and you know exactly what is going on your soil. If those matter to you, the agronomy is not a compromise.

A root takes up the same ion whether the nitrogen began as dried blood or as alfalfa. The choice is yours to make on other grounds.

Vegan, veganic and stockfree

It helps to separate two things. A vegan fertiliser is a product with no animal ingredients. Veganic growing, also called stockfree, is the whole method: plant-based fertility, no animal inputs anywhere in the chain, and a reliance on compost, green manures and crop rotation to keep the soil fed.

The Vegan Organic Network, a UK charity that has run for more than 25 years, sets out the approach and helped codify the Stockfree Organic Standards in 2007, certified through the Soil Association. You do not need certification to garden this way. A vegan feed is simply one part of the kit, the part that tops up what your compost and rotations cannot supply on their own.

Dr Forest does not put organic-certification claims on its finished blends, which would mean something specific and audited. The honest description is products made with organic ingredients, plant-based, and free of slaughterhouse waste. That is a multi-input range rather than a single feed, so you can run the all-purpose blend on its own or build a programme from the separate nutrient sources.

How to spot a vegan feed on the label

"Organic" on a bag does not mean animal-free. The two words point at different things: organic is about how something was grown or made, while vegan is about what it contains. A feed can be fully organic and still be built from blood, fish and bone.

So read the ingredients rather than the front of the pack. The animal inputs to watch for are dried blood, fish meal or fish hydrolysate, bone meal, hoof and horn, and any kind of manure. If none of those appear and the listed ingredients are plant meals and minerals, the feed is vegan.

Minerals are the easy part. Rock phosphate, sulphate of potash, polyhalite, gypsum and rock dust all come out of the ground and never involve an animal, so they are vegan whether or not the label says so. The same goes for seaweed and kelp. Where it gets murky is vague wording like "natural organic fertiliser" with no ingredient breakdown, which often hides an animal by-product. Full ingredient transparency, every input listed by name, is the quickest way to be sure, and it is why Dr Forest lists all 15 to 18 ingredients on each blend rather than a tidy summary.

How to feed a vegan garden through the season

For most gardeners the simplest start is a balanced all-purpose feed worked into the soil before planting and topped up through the season. The Dr Forest All-Purpose 6-6-6 is built as a direct vegan stand-in for fish, blood and bone, so it slots into the same routine without the animal content.

From there you can target. Leafy crops early in the year appreciate a nitrogen lift from alfalfa meal. Fruiting and flowering plants want more potassium as they set fruit, which is where sulphate of potash or polyhalite comes in. A liquid seaweed feed or a seaweed biostimulant earns its keep during heat, drought or transplant stress, when a little help with root growth and resilience pays off. Apply to the rates on each product and water in if rain is not forecast.

None of this is harder than feeding with fish, blood and bone. It is the same routine with the animal content swapped for plant meals and minerals, and a clearer label on the bag.