OK, let’s talk about our garden fertilization strategies that we use at our “big” in-ground garden. Getting your plants usable NPK is an essential component of growing big, healthy mature plants.
When you’re growing in ground, it’s difficult to be confident that you have all the necessary elements plants need to grow well. As you use a garden, especially, certain nutrients get absorbed at higher rates. Gardens are inherently imbalanced, we “take” from them and therefore nutrition is not balanced. Thus, it becomes necessary to supplement our garden’s nutrition. This is typically done through granular or water soluble fertilizers.
You “can” get your soil tested, which will tell you what your soil profile looks like. However, with this technique you also need a certain amount of expertise in translating that info into “actionable” information. We don’t really bother with that complexity, our goal is to fully supplement NPK and micronutrients. Customized nutrition makes sense at a larger scale, but not on a small scale.
Our product of choice here are water soluble fertilizers, which is a theme you’ll see with us. We use them a lot! We like that they are immediately available to our plants and they are tried and true to fuel very productive plant growth. Specifically, we use Jack’s All Purpose 20-20-20 and sometimes other products they make.
When our plants are young, we simply use a watering can to deliver our water soluble ferts. This is easy enough. We’ll demonstrate what we do when our plants get larger in a future post, but the gist is we can use a hose end sprayer to distribute those same fertilizers. The point is, one solution works all season long.
The main drawback to water soluble fertilizers is they usually have to be applied quite frequently, typically every 7 to 10 days. This is good because it reduces any so called “salt buildup,” but it does increase application costs. We find it worth it, especially since we’re racing a seasonal clock every year.
We very much use the weather to guide our fertilization timing. If we’re going into a period of nice, sunny weather, we definitely want to get those ferts on our plants so they can maximize their growth during good weather. But, if we’re expecting large amounts of rainfall, we’ll usually hold off, even if the timing says we “should” do it. Water soluble fertilizers can easily be “washed out” by the rain, so timing your applications well is helpful.
You certainly can also use granular fertilizers in the large, in-ground garden as well. Also, we generally “pick and choose” the plants we more heavily fertilize. For example, we fertilize potatoes, peas and beans much less frequently. (About once a month.) But, brassicas, squash and many other plants are larger feeders and will benefit from higher fertilization rates.
We could talk forever about fertilizers. And, we’ll have more to say as we practice multiple methods. But, this one “almost always” works well and will get you pointed in the right direction!
