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Re: fertilizers -- i'm confused!

In general, I'm seeing a lot of angst on the subject of adding fertilizer to
the SQFT garden.

We are going down a problematic road here.

Remember, you don't "feed" plants with fertilizers.  Plants make their own
food via photosynthesis.  What fertilizer does for you is optimize the
balance of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) in the soil so
your plants can do their best at making that food.

It follows that, before you shoot any chemistry at your soil, you'd better
have evaluated it to see what, among N, P, and K--if anything--is lacking.

Now I had new SQFT beds built earlier this year and filled with soil by the
builder.  When I tested that stuff, the pH was 7 (neutral, which is good)
but the nutrition levels of N, P, and K varied from low to off-the-scale
low.  In other words, although my new soil was neither acidic nor alkaline,
it was almost void of nutrients.

But my plants (toms, lettuce, spinach, asparagus, snap peas, sweet peppers,
eggplants, cukes, and melons) are growing like gangbusters.

I added modest amounts of cow manure from Home Depot (1-0-0 was the chemical
breakdown, if I recall right) when putting out my transplants.  I added
Epsom salts to most of the tomato planting holes.  Yesterday, I sprayed
everything with Schultz' Tomato Booster, which has the outrageously high NPK
numbers favored for that plant.  But that's been it.

It's hard for me to imagine a scenario in a growing garden where fertilizing
every week (especially with organophosphates like Miracle Gro) could be the
right idea.  The runoff from just such operations, blown up to farm-size
amounts, is what's responsible for those huge algae blooms in August in the
Chesapeake Bay, Lake Erie, and elsewhere.

I believe listers will do better over the long haul to pay attention to the
quality of their soil in terms of its organic matter and friability and
worry less about pouring elements into the situation that may, in fact,
already be onsite in appropriate proportions.

Test the soil first.  Then apply what's missing and not the nutrients you
already have working for you.

--Janet
------------------------------------------------------------------
Janet Wintermute             jwintermute@ids2.idsonline.com

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