What is the Best Fertilizer and How To Use It

Sometimes knowing what fertilizer to use for what can be overwhelming. I know when I first started learning about all the different things you can add to your soil I thought I’d never understand it all.

What is Fertilizer

The great thing about your own garden is that once you know what your garden needs then you can just focus on that instead of trying to understand everything.

Over the years we’ve tried hundreds of different fertilizers and we’ve found a good balance for our particular soil.

The first thing you need to do is test your soil. I use these testers.

Once you’ve found out you soil composition you will know what your soil is lacking. There are four different things you need to know about your soil.

PH

This is how acidic or basic your soil is. All plants need different micro and macro nutrients and beneficial plant growth promoters. If you are growing vegetable or flowers then you need to know what foods your plants need and you also need to know what the plants contribute or take away from the soil.

Here are just some helpful basics on vegetables and flowers. When looking at the bag of fertilizer you are shown three numbers. For example 24-8-16 tells us the percentage of chemicals used in the fertilizer. The first number is the chemical N-nitrogen the second P-phosphorus and the third K-potassium. Sometimes these chemicals are known by other names. Potassium is potash, Nitrogen is ammonium.

Nitrogen

Nitrogen for foliage.

Both peas and beans add nitrogen to the soil. They are a great crop to plant in a different area every year so they can help the soil.

Phosphate or phosphorus

Phosphate for blossoms & healthy root systems. Learn more about phosphate at Plant and Soil Sciences elibrary.

Potassium

Most agricultural fertilizers contain potassium chloride, while potassium sulfate is used for chloride-sensitive crops or crops needing higher sulfur content. The sulfate is produced mostly by decomposition of the complex minerals. Only a very few fertilizers contain potassium nitrate. Sulfate adds an acid element to it to combats alkalin (salty) soils. Commercial fertilizers contain different ratios of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium.

What Type of Fertilizer Should You Use

Espoma can help us understand how different plants need different ratios of chemicals. As you can see they follow the basic rules Of fertilizers that I mentioned earlier. All Purpose (10-10-10), Rose (4-3-2), Flowers (15-30-15), Trees & Shrubs (15-10-9) and Tomato (18-18-21). Note, these values are based on water-soluble dry mix or tree spikes, not on ready to feed fertilizer values.

Kelp meal-Enhances sweetness, colors and flavors and contains natural plant growth regulators.

Bone meal is primarily used as a source of phosphorus and protein.

Manures contain many different nutrients, specifically nitrogen, and can be used beneficially in any garden. Composted manures are the safest to use as fresh manure can burn your plants because of their high concentration of chemicals. Poultry and cow manure are the most commonly used and probably the most beneficial because of their high nitrogen content.

During the season I use this Bio-Tone Espoma for our kitchen garden. But when I need a specific plant food then I have each different Espoma on handbased on the plant. I use Holly-tone for my acid loving plants and Tomato-tone for all of the Solanaceae or Nightshade Family. I really like their Rose-tone for my David Austin Roses.

What is Fertilizer