They supply the best nutrients to maintain good health.

Gardening Tips: Fertilizer Basics — Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Growing plants need a steady stream of optimal nutrients to stay healthy. This is true whether a gardener is trying to grow ornamental flowers, fruits, or vegetables. Fertilizers are often added to the soil to replenish nutrients lost by plants during the growing season.

Natural and material composts provide essential supplements, including potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen. Plants need these essential components along with other valuable trace elements. Applying the right amount of fertilizer and the correct percentage depends on a variety of factors. But it all depends on the specific needs of each plant.

Test the soil.

By testing the soil, gardeners can determine its acidity or pH. This gave him all the information he needed to determine which nutrients were missing in the soil. Soil testing can help gardeners adjust the type of fertilizer used to supplement nutrients. Even the best tests yield few results when it comes to determining how much nitrogen to add to the soil.

A hardware store or hardware store garden center provides sample test sets. These types of tests can provide gardeners with more information about the soil by analyzing its contents. Good soil can be obtained without a soil test, but choosing the best fertilizer takes more guesswork.

Adding amendments

A natural alteration is regularly utilized related to solid synthetic composts. A natural correction can be just fertilizer. Organic matter is breaking down and leaching out much of the essential nutrients it contains to provide vital ingredients to the soil.

Some gardeners choose to add bone meal as a natural organic substitute to add phosphorus to needed chemical fertilizers. Also, blood meal and manure can provide needed nitrogen. And pottery ash can generate potassium. All organic amendments should be mixed into the soil before planting begins.

When it’s time to fertilize

Each fertilizer has its own application time to mix into the soil. This is usually stated on the package. Phosphorus levels are high in all types of fruit and vegetable crops early in the growing season. Phosphorus promotes the production of healthy stems and roots.

In mid-season, adding nitrogen to the soil aids in fruit and foliage production. Too much nitrogen, however, often results in too many leaves and not enough flower buds.

As far as this savvy gardener is concerned, over-fertilizing can hurt plants as much as under-fertilizing. When a gardener doubts giving his garden plants more fertilizer, it is always advisable to wait until the plants start producing less. This is the only way a gardener can be sure to add the right fertilizer.

Gardening Tips: Fertilizer Basics