An Extensive Guide for Garden Fertilizers: Soluble, Insoluble, Macro-Nutrients, Feeding Seedlings

welcome to the rustic garden today is another long format video and this is all about fertilizing if taking my videos that I've done over the years with respect to fertilizing and I put them into one long video if there will be a digital table of contents so you can just look in there in the description and jump to the parts of the video you'd like to watch I wanted to spell a couple of myths first especially if you're a first-time gardener chemical fertilizers are not poisons they can't hurt you they can't hurt your plant if they're over used and abused at a high industrial scale like mass farming they can kill out the life in your soil but that's not something you're going to do the reason I say that is because organic fertilizers are wonderful you can use them if you want if you don't want to use them and you want to use a chemical fertilizer I don't want you to think that you're poisoning your plants or that you're poisoning yourself the truth of the matter is everything on the planet is a chemical compound chemical compounds made up of the elements from the periodic table of elements so your organic fertilizers worm castings the chemical fertilizers kelp extract everything is a chemical now they're in different forms so the organic fertilizers are really in a form in compounds that they go into the soil the soil light breaks those compounds down and then they release nitrogen phosphorus and the elements that your plants need to the plants and I'll talk about that in a second the chemical fertilizers are synthesis is yeah synthesized not synthetic not fake they go through a process where people use usually energy or chemical reactions and change elements and chemical compounds into forms the plant can use your plants cannot tell the difference your plants do not care people care but that's up to you so I just don't want you to fear that you have to be all organic or there's a problem now a couple of things organic fertilizers are really precursors to compost so what I mean by that most of your organic fertilizers could be thrown on a compost pile led to breakdown and then you use the compost your garden so if your gardening compost is your best friend if you can make a lot of compost you can really fill your garden beds up with that and your plants will do perfectly fine after compost or maybe equal to compost comes worm castings all natural I like to call it the end product of nature because it's the castings from worms perfect for the garden then you get your organic fertilizers that are stepping between and then you have the chemical fertilizers that are processed by human beings and again nothing with the chemical fertilizers fake you just can't make fake nitrogen you can't make fake phosphorous or anything like that if that were true thousands of years ago when the alchemists were trying to turn lead into gold they would have succeeded so I just wanted to be clear with that now there's two kinds of fertilizers there's soluble fertilizers and insoluble fertilizers most of your organic fertilizers are insoluble which means the plants can't use them the root system can't pull in the nitrogen phosphorous and such from there until the soil life breaks that down so in soluble fertilizers are slow-release fertilizers for instance and these seed starts you wouldn't want to use insoluble fertilizer mixed in here because there's no soil life to break it down so that leaves you with soluble soluble means that the chemical fertilizers or a specific type of organic fertilizer can mix with water it becomes soluble and the root systems can pull that water right into there into the plan actually and there'll be nitrogen phosphorus potassium calcium magnesium and sulfur in there the major macronutrients so when you're doing seed starts you definitely want to make sure you either have a chemical fertilizer or or a an organic fertilizer that is soluble water soluble because that's what they use and then when you get out into your containers and into your gardens you use more of the inside while you use two different types so I just wanted to preface this video series about chemical fertilizers aren't poison everything is a chemical and really know the difference between insoluble and soluble fertilizers I hope you enjoy the video please use the digital table of contents Thanks welcome to the rustic garden today I want to show you what over fertilizing your seedlings and your transplants can look like and it's really important probably the most important thing in this video is to realize that your seedlings are gonna start out healthy you may have some fertilizer in the starting mix you may add in some half-strength liquid fertilizer a couple weeks into growth but I want to just stress make sure you use half-strength liquid fertilizer and you don't overdo it your seedlings and transplants will be fine if you're feeding them at half-strength every two weeks or so just establish a routine believe in yourself and don't start doubting you need more more fertilizer can be bad and this is what happens when plants these are tomato plants that we're over fertilized by probably three times the strength of a liquid fertilizer the leaves have dried out and shriveled up the plants are spindly and just not strong they don't stand up here you can see the leaves are drying out along the edges this is from too much liquid fertilizer and you might be tempted to say well well they don't look strong they look kinda weak let me hit them with more fertilizer and that's only gonna further compound the problem how do you end up over fertilizing well sometimes we think you know fertilizer is a good thing so more is better that's not true sometimes the starting mix is already half fertilizer in them and then we hit them with a full-strength liquid fertilizer or we put in just a little bit more and what happens is the salt concentrations or the concentration of the fertilizer gets into the the starter cells there's not a lot of soil here and the higher concentration of the salts in the soil will actually draw water out of the plants damage the leaves damage the root systems now when a root systems get damaged and they're trying to grow they're not going to be able to get enough nutrients so they're going to start looking like they have nutrient deficiencies and it's really from damage this plant is purple on the underside sometimes that looks like deficiency from phosphorus the yellowing leaves up top you might think they need more nitrogen or they need magnesium you can just see how purple the and it just doesn't look like it help if you plant this is not because it wasn't fertilized this is because it was over fertilized and damaged and then when you start seeing plants like this you know the first thing you think is I better add more fertilizer into the mix and then here's a good example right there you can see the leaves are drying out they're yellow some green in the middle the underside is purple you know parts of the plant look healthy the stem is purple burned-out leaves this is too much fertilizer that ended up damaging the root system and this one's you know surviving a little bit more but it has the same problems and again I just want you to remember you have to trust yourself and that once you fertilize them with a half-strength liquid fertilizer they're good to go for 10 or 14 days don't overdo it now how do you fix this well I mean these plants I'm just gonna get rid of I'm not gonna use if your plants are bigger like this you really just want to put in a lot of water let the water kind of pour out and hopefully you start taking out some of the salt concentrations and fertilizer that's in there but again you don't need a lot of fertilizer to take care of your seedlings in your transplants and too much will actually damage them and I just wanted to show you what it looked like now when do you fertilize well a couple of things there's two kinds of fertilizers there's a insoluble fertilizer which is usually fertilizer that you put into your soil into your garden mix it in and then the microbes break that fertilizer down into a form that your plants can use starting mix doesn't have any fertilizer in it we're not putting in any non soluble fertilizers in here so there's not really a whole lot of fertilizer if any excuse me when a seed germinates the seed coat the seed itself has enough nutrition to get the plant growing to about this size it has enough nutrition for the plant to break the service grow it's first set of leaves that's the first set of leaves that's the clue when a plant gets its first set of leaves about this size that you might want to fertilize now we're going to fertilize our seed starts with water-soluble fertilizer that's what's really important water soluble fertilizer is in a form that your plant can absorb right from the water and put into its system now there's two kinds you can buy an organic fertilizer whoops this is the organic fertilizer this is a chemical fertilizer you can use either one I use both depending on what's available it doesn't matter to me the key is is that you want an n PK nitrogen phosphorus and potassium number to be a 5 5 5 or less 5 nitrogen 5 potassium 5 phosphorus the chemical fertilizers are usually pretty high like this NPK nitrogen phosphorus potassium is fifteen thirty fifteen that's too much these aren't outdoors in containers or in the earth beds so if you put in too much fertilizer into here it's going to damage the plants we want to bring this NPK number down to a five five five or less and all of us are going to be buying different fertilizers so you can just do a little bit of math so by cutting this to half strength we're going to have a seven point five of fifteen a seven point five cut it down again to a quarter this will be down to like what is that three point seven five this will be down to seven point five that'll be down to three point seven five that's close enough to a five five five so we're using this something like this at quarters strength the jobs is an organic product you can use it just like this it's a three one two that's perfectly fine that's enough fertilizer even at this level three one two to take care of your transplants so we're gonna water and a set up like this probably needs to be watered maybe once a week every ten days or so when the plants are just germinating because there's a lot of starting mix in here and then maybe once or twice a week when they start getting to size and bigger over six or eight week period you're going to want to fertilize probably within ten to fourteen days and this is how I set it up I get a a gallon like this this is see starting fertilizer less than a five five five and this is actually the job's fertilizer just on the strength so it's 1 tablespoon one measuring scoop into a of water this is actually a nice tea bottle so and it looks like iced tea so make sure you mark on there that it's for plans so people don't drink it so let's just say I just fed this one in another video so I'm not going to feed it again so this isn't about the three week mark 21 days I've watered it twice and I've decided to feed it a little bit later even though I said 10 to 14 days you're kind of watching the plants if the plants are staying green they're not getting yellow you you don't need to rush the fertilizer in the whole process of the six to eight weeks that it takes a tomato to grow or the eight to ten weeks it takes for peppers to grow you probably only need to do this twice so to do it let's just say this has become a nice light color this size is the perfect size to put moisture and fertilizer in there so I'm just gonna fill it just like that that's my first feeding let's just say for these guys so next week when it dries out I'm just gonna put water in it if they aren't struggling in the two weeks from today since I fed them I'm not going to put any fertilizer in there probably in the third week I might now the reason I set 10 to 14 days earlier is because that's the minimum maximum you probably want to be at 14 to 21 days but you're certainly gonna have to judge it the whole key to this is not to overfeed your plants because if you put in too much fertilizer you can actually harm them so you know just take it slow this will set this up for watering and for feeding I hope that makes sense so let me just do a recap when you water when the top is dried completely about two or three days later fill this up to the top with just water that will be enough moisture to probably last a week when the plants are bigger you might have to do it twice a week when you go to water when you're gonna feed the plants you could feed them you know 10 to 14 days 14 to 21 days for your first feeding depending on what you're growing and then you probably want to go at least one week if not two weeks of just watering and then feeding one more time and that's plenty of food for your transplants welcome to the rest of garden today I want to talk to you about night and it's going to be a lengthy video but I really wanted to cover what nitrogen is where it comes from talk a little bit about organic nitrogen synthetic nitrogen chemically processed nitrogen and just really let you know what it is how you use it and it'll give you just a really good idea of what you're putting in your garden nitrogen is one of the major macronutrients there's actually two levels the primary macronutrients are nitrogen potassium phosphorus if you don't have those in enough quantity in your garden you could have issues with your plants and then you have the secondary level which is calcium magnesium sulfur and if you ever seen your Tomatoes get brown spots beneath the tomato it looks like it's rotting it's usually a function of either not having enough calcium in your soil or your plant can't use the calcium in your soil so the macronutrients are the main nutrients but today I'm just going to talk about nitrogen I will talk about the other ones really over this winter nitrogen is important because it's associated with leaf growth stem growth it's just about in every protein in the plant it helps you plan with defense against insects with against diseases and it's part of the chlorophyll molecule so if you didn't have if you don't have enough nitrogen in your garden your plants aren't going to grow well they're not going to be leafy they're not going to be green or gonna have trouble with a photosynthesis they're not going to develop enough chlorophyll and you can kind of get the you know just of it that the plants not going to be healthy sources of nitrogen nitrogen first of all is a common element that makes up nearly 80% of our atmosphere so it's a gas we breathe it in in that form obviously it doesn't hurt us but in that form plants can't use it so it's a gas that is all around us but in its pure form plants can't use it so nitrogen has to be fixed or converted into something a plant can use there's different processes for this a couple of them are biological compost for example as you compost down vegetable matter leaves grass clippings the microbes the organisms break down the product that's in your compost pile and it makes it it actually turns it into a form of nitrogen that your plants can get to and use also you would have beans peas this is crimson red clover it's a cover crop these plants fix their own nitrogen which really means the root systems grow into the soil and the roots have nodes on them that work with rhizobia bacteria to convert atmospheric nitrogen into a usable form of nitrogen so it's a symbiotic relationship bottom line is the beans can pull nitrogen from the air with this relationship so can peas so can red clover alfalfa different kind of plants can do this if you were to grow say cover crop of crimson red clover or just put lots of beans in you let the root systems develop they pull nitrogen into the roots you then turn the plants over chop it up let it decay in the ground you're going to put nitrogen right into your garden and I actually do recommend that that's one of the best ways to bring a nice form of nitrogen into your garden if you have the time in the space and can do it then there's the chemical process which is changing nitrogen into ammonia all these things have to do with one thing it's converting nitrogen into a bioavailable form so the nitrogen has to be turned into a form your plants can use so you have organic forms of nitrogen compost blood meal fish emulsion manures you aren't even and I just wanted to show you these numbers don't go with these specific forms of organic fertilizers but it's just a way to understand what you're buying so if you buy a product and it has eight zero zero on the first number is always nitrogen so by weight usually it's eight percent of that product is nitrogen twelve percent of this product is nitrogen fifteen percent of that product is nitrogen so when you go to buy fertilizer you really have to know what these numbers are I have some videos on them but the first number is always telling you the ratio of nitrogen in the product so you have the organic forms you have the bio logical process that nitrogen is converted into a form your plants can use you also have synthetic or an inorganic chemical non organic man-made however you want to say it it's basically nitrogen being chemically processed through a Haber process he created this I think at the turn of the century and it really revolutionized gardening I actually farming because there were cheap amounts of nitrogen available for you know feeding the world the process is basically taking nitrogen through lots of heat energy through the chemical process that's how you get the the synthetic label thrown onto it you form against nh3 now it's in gas form obviously you can't put that into your garden so they mix it with water when you mix it with water you get ammonium hydroxide this is a five to ten percent solution of ammonium hydroxide and it's just plain old clear ammonia you could actually use this as a form of nitrogen I don't recommend it but you could use it um I've experimented before taking ammonia putting it onto a cold compost pile the nitrogen in here works with the brown leaves the brown matter and kind of really ignites the pile so to speak in and it does work out in that capacity then you also have a form of solid nitrogen that can be used and that's usually urea and that's when you mix the gas with carbon dioxide and you get a form of solid nitrogen and you can find it in this product which is 20.5% urea nitrogen if you notice 24 percent of the mix is nitrogen when you use this that's too high you don't need this much nitrogen you could end up getting very lush green plants you know very leafy greens that's what nitrogen does it really produces lots of leaves but that's too high and I'll talk about it as I go on one thing I learned over the last 15 years is it really doesn't matter what product you use at your own per no choice if you go organic synthetic combination of both that's what I do you just don't need as much as we told we need for the garden so we have water soluble nitrogen and we have water insoluble nitrogen the water soluble nitrogen like these products are fast-acting as soon as you mix it as soon as you put it on your plants the leaves can observe the nitrogen a lot of times it goes right to the root system fast-acting 24 hours you might even see a difference water insoluble means that fertilizer the nitrogen has to get into the soil it needs some sort of microbial activity that breaks down the source of the nitrogen and it makes it ready for the plant to use at some point so when you garden you want a combination of both really in for instance in the spring you might put in a slow release nitrogen fertilizer that will slowly release over the growing season at some point you may need to use a water-soluble if your plant may be a struggling or you want to give it a boost form actually four or five main points one plants can't tell the difference between the fertilizers what you decide to use is your choice and like I said what I learned is you just don't need as much fertilizer as you might think but plants can't tell the difference between you know biologically broken down nitrogen or fixated nitrogen or chemical nitrogen and really most important is too much nitrogen will hurt your plants you could burn your plants technically if you use too much nitrogen it will burn the leaves it could burn the roots a lot of these products won't do that but where you do the most harm is by using too much nitrogen the plant grows too fast it gets to us spindly it grows too many leaves actually the cell structure the plants get weaker they're more susceptible to disease attack insect attack and basically you're making a very lush green leafy plant at the expense of the tomatoes the peppers or you know the vegetables you want and you're making a great haven for insects to come and easily feed on your plant so you don't want to over there are the slow-release fast release forms of nitrogen fertilizers so you got to know what you're buying when you look you usually they'll tell you if it's a slow release or fast release but in general liquid fertilizers are faster leaf granule forms are slower release use what it's most available and convenient to you I've found by doing these videos over the years my videos reach gardeners from all over the world everybody doesn't have access to this like we do here in the US everybody doesn't have Amazon delivery where you can just order something everybody doesn't have the space to make compost so use what you have available use what works for you and I just for example keep in mind a lot of people will say you know well use blood meal it's all organic well think about it the pigs that are slaughtered are highly processed cattle highly processed pigs we're using their blood it takes lots of energy to raise pigs it takes chemicals to grow the feed the animals get hormone shots all kinds of stuff is going on so the end product might be organic but the delivery of the product might not be as organic as you think so I've said before I use both organic products and synthetic products that's my choice but don't over stress about it a couple of recommendations I recommend try and make compost if you can use it in spring get it into your garden it's a low amount of fertilizer it's usually like a 1 1 1 but it adds to the biodiversity of your soil it builds good soil it's it not only helps the plants but it helps the microbes and different organisms in your soil generally speaking pellets granules I put into my garden bed into the planting hole those are slow release I use liquid fertilizers more for my container plants because they really pull the nutrients out of the soil much more quickly than your tomatoes that grow in you know earth beds or use that fertilizer for a boost try and keep the the nitrogen number in the NPK or the ratio twelve or less you really in my experience don't need more than that you can go to something with like two five three or a six to zero this is another form of organic nitrogen it's he tried microbes that have digested organic matter and waste water basically sewage this product is actually the organisms that ate the sewage you're putting them into your earth bed into your containers even if you want and the organisms that are live in your soil will then begin to break this down and bring nitrogen to your soil that's another form of organic matter again it's sewage people may have issue with that this is fish emulsion this is made really from you know essentially rotting fish and that is organic I talked about this as organic this is feather meal composted manure one more way to bring nitrogen to you garden and I really want to stress the value of it is the beans are the peas are the crimson red clover if you have the ability you can cast a whole lot of beans a whole lot of peas crimson clover is a great way because you can buy cheaply and grow these plants in your garden bed turn it over before planting and you're going to get a nice a nice amount of organic matter in your beds and it will break down into into nitrogen so if you can compost in the spring try some cover crops and then pick out what you want that works best for you and then finally the most important thing is to really have fun the goal of gardening is to enjoy the vegetables as is to grow the vegetables don't be overwhelmed between all these products whether or not you could be organic gardener or a synthetic gardener or combination of both or one is better than the other pick out what works for you I'm just dan what the nitrogen numbers are what you're putting into your garden and welcome to the rest of garden today I want to talk about phosphorus it's a major macronutrient and almost fertilizers you see in P and K and they come up as it's numbers like 24 816 that's nitrogen this one's phosphorus this one over here is potassium so we're going to talk about the P or phosphorus there are really six major macronutrients these are elements fertilizers that your plants really need to thrive the main ones I again are n P and K and they are really the primary ones that's what you always always say you see nitrogen phosphorus and potassium on your fertilizer products but also calcium magnesium and sulfur are macronutrients I'm going to talk about them in other videos so for phosphorus why is phosphorus important phosphorus overall generally speaking is about the growth and maturity of your plant phosphorus helps with storing and transferring energy in a plant it promotes strong root growth it helps with flower and fruit production you get more flowers you get more fruit it helps with plant and fruit maturity which means the speed of growth you want your plants if they're supposed to mature in 60 days you want them to mature in 60 days if your Tomatoes is supposed to get you know to a certain size or your peppers are supposed to get to a certain size you want your fruit to get to full size full maturity helps with cell division and tissue growth has to do with the sugars and starches but everything that your plant really needs to grow and mature involves phosphorus that's why it's a macro nutrient phosphorus fertiliser how is it made and you may have noticed in my videos I'm not a hundred percent chemical fertilizer I'm not a hundred percent organic gardener where I just use organic products I use both and I use them in a sensible way and that's what I hope these videos show you as they show you how to use the products it helps you understand the products and it helps you make a decision on what you want to use so phosphate fertilizer how has it made phosphate is the raw material it's basically the element phosphorus on the periodic table it has other things in there but it has the phosphorus the phosphorus and rock phosphate is not quickly or readily available to your plants it's a low availability of phosphorus for plants which which means is that rock phosphate will take a long time to break down and become available to your plant so what we do is we take phosphate we take the raw material and we convert it into something your plant can use quickly rock phosphate in a process it's either a wet process or a dry process is mixed with phosphoric acid that generally creates it's a technical process but that generally creates orthophosphoric acid that's the form of phosphorous that is readily available to your plant so the chemical process takes a raw ingredient rock phosphate puts it through a man-made process human-made process and it creates orthophosphoric acid that is going to be readily available to your plant there's also something called poly phosphate which is just shut several chains of orthophosphoric acid bound together when net product hits the ground the polyphosphate then breaks down into orthophosphoric acid but that's the chemical process so you're taking the raw form of phosphorus putting through a process now you have something your plant can use quickly and the key for phosphorus and fertilizers in general is are they available to your plants right away like that day in that week or are they available to your plants down the line so when you look on prod on fertilizers that have phosphorous you're always going to see the term available phosphate and that's tells you the percentage of phosphorus in the product that will be available for your plant for instance you know this could be well that's a chemical process but let's just say you have organic form of phosphorous there might be some phosphorous to your plant can't you right away but then there's phosphorus your plant can use more quickly and I know it gets a little bit confusing but you want to understand that it's available phosphate or even available nitrogen available potassium what is going to be available to your plant and these numbers tell you so it's they make it kind of easy so 9 percent of this product by weight 45 percent of this product by weight is going to be available for your plant or your plants Organic phosphate this is an organic product it's bone meal it has 9 percent by weight of phosphorus that's going to be available the second thing that you need to know is when is it going to be available this is available really that week this is available three to six months down the line and that's important so if you're using manure compost they it has phosphate in it but that's going to be available to your plants three to six months down the line if you're using rock phosphate or bone meal you also have to keep in mind what the pH level of your garden soil is you want a pH level that's between six and seven in general as you get a pH level of 8 or higher or you're pushing from 7 up towards 10 I don't want to panic you like if you have a soil of 7.1 don't freak out but as you get a higher alkaline level as your as your ph level goes from 7 towards 10 rock phosphate and bone meal will never be available to your plant a chemical process happens where the phosphorous gets locked into other molecules other chemicals in your soil so pH is really important if you have a pH that's below 7 between 6 & 7 rock phosphate generally can take a year to be ready and available to your plant bonemeal can take several months and that's important so that if you plants are struggling say with a Fuss phosphorus deficiency or you think you're putting on something that's going to give your plants phosphorous that week and you use rock fox rock phosphate and miel you're not doing that you're putting it in there but it's not gonna be ready towards you know for several months or you know the following year so again you need to know when you use these products when is the fertilizer when is the phosphorous going to be ready for your plants to use hopefully that makes sense to you and the bottom line is phosphate bonemeal rock phosphate bone meal it needs the phosphorus in those products needs the acidity to work with the product break it down and make it available to the plants and if you think about it what they did when they processed the rock phosphate in this they added phosphoric acid to it and basically did this process so it puts this into a form that's going to be available to your plant I know it can be confusing but I just wanted to give you some of the background so that you understand what's going on phosphorus deficiencies what happens if your plant doesn't have enough enough phosphorus basically you're gonna have a stunted plant it's not going to be growing like it should and you might notice plants to just sit at a certain size you can get leaves that are overly dark in color when the plants are young and I usually nose notices some Tomatoes you put your tomatoes out young it's a little bit cold they don't like the cold so they're not growing as well if you don't have phosphorous in the soil the root systems aren't developing because it's cold now they're also not developing as quickly because it doesn't have enough phosphorous and you can see the bottom leaves of your tomatoes or your plants start to turn yellow and work their way up and it's important to understand that the oldest leaves are affected first why is that important because if you have a plant that's to a certain size and you see a problem starting on the bottom of the leaves and working its way up it can be a signal to you that this could be more nutrient related than necessarily a disease and some diseases do start at the bottom and work their way up but it gives you a clue of what you might have to do for your garden also your plants and this happens a lot of tomatoes too can get purple stem or purple veins in the leaves recommendations I recommend a couple of things in this case if your garden is struggling get a pH test because you want to make sure your pH is between 6 & 7 a pH that is too low toward zero or too high towards 10 and out of this range is going to affect the way all the nutrients nitrogen potassium phosphorus calcium sulfur magnesium it's good effect the way all these nutrients are absorbed by your plant so if you're ever in doubt your gardens struggling a pH test will really help if your so again is too acidic your phosphorous is going to be absorbed by iron and aluminum oxides which basically means it takes the phosphorous from the plant and locks it into a different form if it's too alkaline it means your phosphorous is going to be absorbed by calcium carbonate and again that'll be taken away from your plan I think that actually forms may be calcium phosphate second thing is if you're using synthetic products like straight bone meal if you buy like an organic fertilizer that's like a you know 2 6 7 it's going to have different forms of phosphorus in there some of them may be available right away some of them may need to break down you have to read the package and understand that but when you're using bone meal as the primary form of phosphorus this can take several months to start breaking down and really be available for your plan I use this a lot of times in the fall when I planted my garlic into the video on that I put in bone meal so that this will be breaking down as the bulb is dormant through the winter and when the bulb is up and growing the leaves and in forming a strong garlic bulb for the spring and early summer this will have broken down and it's available to the plant so that's a strategy I use so I might use this product knowing that it it's not going to be available 3 to 6 months down the line if I was going to use rock dust I would use that knowing that I'm building my garden for the future so that first application of rock dust may not be available for you know six months to a year so I'm also going to use you know possibly if I need it because you may not need to use a straight phosphorus fertilizer triple phosphate where it's you know forty five percent by weight for adding phosphorus to your garden you may just not need it and you can get away with other fertilizers I'll talk about that but I would use a synthetic form of phosphorous if I want to get it to my plants that week really really get you know the spring bed set up have phosphorous in there that's gonna be readily available I use the chemical fertilizer so again I'm not necessarily for organic I'm not necessarily for chemical I'm for understanding when to use these products and that's what I just talked about number four is available phosphate is what plants use immediately so you need to know when these are going to be available to your planet if you're in doubt just use a 10-10 fertilizer those are often synthetic chemically made they will get all the major macro nutrients nitrogen phosphorus and potassium to your plant you could use something like this this is all organic it has a two five three ratio that phosphorus in there the nitrogen in there the potassium there's going to be more quickly available for your plants unlike bone meal which will take longer so you have to understand what you're putting in your garden and how your plants are going to use it or when your plants are going to be able to use it but if you're ever in doubt just go with the 10-10-10 fertilizer it will save you a lot of headaches oh and one more thing what you might notice is this chemically processed form of phosphate triple phosphate is just phosphorus there's no nitrogen there's no potassium make sure you read it it's a half a teaspoon per foot feeds quickly gets phosphorous to it does nothing else for your plants but adds phosphorus when you go to bone meal bone meal also has nitrogen in it it's also high in cow seem so it has calcium in there I think it was six percent calcium although this may take several months to be readily available for your for your plants you're also feeding your soil a lot of organic fertilizers have the extra benefit of feeding the microbes and the organisms in your soil so you really build better soil life and in this case you have nitrogen you also have calcium calcium really helps prevent blossom end rot and tomatoes and other vegetables so there is a benefit with lots of organic fertilizers in that it also feed your plant but also build soil life this does not build soil life there's also potential and I you know want to let you know this too is that if you overuse chemical fertilizers it can add more salt to your soil it can kill life in your soil but it won't do that if you use them wisely so don't be afraid that oh my god I can't use a chemical fertilizer it's going to destroy the life of my soil that won't happen if you use it wisely and in fact I would recommend not necessarily using this at full strength I never recommend using Miracle Grow at full strength always keep the numbers down you never need 24 percent nitrogen for your vegetable garden you're going to get too many leaves cut it in half so I hope this gives you a good idea of how to use phosphorous and welcome to the rest of garden today I want to talk about potassium it's one of the major macronutrients and there's really two levels of micronutrients you have the first level which is nitrogen phosphorous and potassium and potassium is the last number so it's a k2 represented as K but when you look on fertilizer products you'll see 24 8 16 that last number is the potassium so this is product for instance would be 16 percent potassium the other the second level are the other major macronutrients are calcium magnesium and sulfur and I'm going to talk about each of these over the fall and winter potassium is an essential element it's fertilizer your garden needs if you don't have it in your garden your plants just aren't going to do well it's essential for plant protein production which you you have proteins throughout the whole system of the plant without potassium the whole plant is going to be affected and that's what you have to keep in mind it's responsible for the flow of nutrients up and down the system of the plant it regulates water flow or pterygoid pressure and basically you when you have a garden in your plants are somewhat rigid they're growing up right they look firm they look good they're not wilting where the turgor pressure is basically the amount of water or pressure inside of each cell and the more pressure you have the more rigid or upright your plan is and you definitely need potassium to help manage that function of the plant it's also responsible for opening and closing this just stomata cells or stomata cell singular underneath your plant leaf and that helps with the exchanges of gases coming in and out of the plant it's also necessary to have a healthy plant overall so you can think about potassium as really a necessary fertilizer element to make your plant grow to size and produce yields or vegetables to the amount that you want without it you could have smaller vegetables sometimes less vegetables it's also responsible for helping you plant fight off pests and disease and the main way does that is really by regulating the pressure inside the cell a stronger healthier you know plant cell the stronger healthier plant that you have and it's harder for diseases to get into the leaves or to attack the Orford pests to attack the plant a potassium deficiency what does that look like unfortunately it's later fall here it's November 9th so I don't have examples that I can show you from regular plants so let me try and describe it potassium deficiency really one affects sandy soils more light soil sandy soils where a lot of rain will go through it can deplete the potassium out of your soils for instance I have clay soil so potassium has never really been an issue so if you have sandy soil or you have soil where water really flushes through it a lot you just want to keep in mind you know how your potassium levels doing if you notice curled leaf tips not a curl leave not the whole leaf curled up but just the tips of the leaves are curled over that could be a sign of potassium deficiency usually that same leaf on the edges of the leaves they start to turn yellow so it looks like yellow is outlining your leave and then that yellow works its way into the center of the leaf and then the yellow leaves will also start to brown so this is really more with the outside part for instance if this was a leaf it's not yellowing all through here where it's just a fading yellow it's yelling right along the edges and the curling would be just a little bit of curling like that that might be a tip that you have a potassium deficiency there's also something that's called chlorosis and let's see I don't have a blank here to show you but chlorosis would be if this my hand was a leaf and this is a vein these would stay green inside the leaf but right in the space in between them they'll start to yellow out so it doesn't look like an even yellowing across the leaf which sometimes is more about nitrogen or other issues but it's actually in the dark green veins of your plants stay the same but in between it starts to yellow out that's an idea that's a sign that potentially you have a potassium deficiency on the underside of the leaves you might have purple spotting purple spotting and that could be a sign again a potassium deficiency this little arrow means usually when you have a potassium deficiency because potassium helps regulate movement up and down the plant the plant will take the potassium and send it to the good leaves so the upper leaves of your plant will look fine it's the bottom leaves that start getting these signs so you would really look for these problems starting in the bottom of your plant and then slowly working its way up now there is inorganic potassium monopotassium phosphate potassium nitrate potassium sulfate I recommend never using these you really don't need them in your home Gardens if you're you know doing a farm maybe you might need this or something like that and before I get to that people often ask me do you do soil testing I don't because my beds have had so much action so to speak in there they've had a lot of organic matter they've had organic fertilizers they've had inorganic fertilizers I've moved soul around so to get a clean sort of even reading of potassium in my soil it would be difficult but I do recommend that if you're turning your ground over for the first time and you're just starting your garden that's when I would recommend doing a lot of soil tests for different fertilizers right at the beginning so you know what you're working with for me I've been doing this for 10 years so you could go to one bed test it it's gonna be a little bit different than a bed across the way and then one bed might be different you know side to side so you have the inorganic potassium which I just recommend you never touch and you can see the levels this is a high potassium 34 44.50 I don't know what you would really need that for you're going to get plenty of potassium in other ways organic potassium there's a product called mule rate of potash and bottom line is there's chlorine related to this and you don't really want to use that even though you might see an organic product that says me rate of potash the chlorine kills soil bacteria you just don't need that so keep that in mind the products I recommend are green sand here's a product this is let's see is it five pound bag it's a seven and a half pound bag of green sand it's marine sediment it gluconate iron phosphate silicate so these this mineral and iron potassium silicate will provide potassium to your garden and it only has a 3 so the NPK for this product is only a three and you really don't need more than this it will work if you want to add it into soil that'll be great and this is what green sand looks like it is green and it's mined out of ancient seabeds really and then it's pulverized down so green sand is a good way to get potassium into your soil into your garden if you want it rock dust or granite dust that's another good product I don't have an example here I couldn't find any but you could put that into your into your raised beds or into your can teeners and if your kind of noticing green sand rock dust granite dust not only you're going to have potassium but because they're ground-up minerals and different kind of nutrients they're also could have a lot of something called micronutrients so they're going to give your soil other things besides just the phosphorus now you can also make it from burning hardwood and if you have a fire pit outside you burn your hardwood the ash that remains can be thrown into your compost pile and that will also provide potassium and you might also hear the word potash potash is used really as a cinnamon of cinnamon yeah a synonym of potassium and how that came to be is because you would take the ash from burned hardwood put it into a metal pot and carried around and it just got converted to the word potash the other thing that I like is banana peel banana peel really provides potassium to your garden you can put in your compost pile I'm going to show you how I make it and I'll talk about that in a second one thing that's interesting is right here dried banana peels 42% potassium so you can get those that fertilizer that element into your garden without having to go and buy in or getting two products recommendations don't buy chemical forms of potassium you just don't need it your garden isn't going to be lacking so severely in potassium that you have to go buy something that's you know chemically made I do recommend green sanrak rock dust ash banana peels these are all great organic ways to bring potassium into your garden and if in doubt because I understand you know you might not be able to get any of any of these products a simple 10-10-10 fertilizer will work like this is leftover from my nitrogen video two percent nitrogen five percent phosphorous three percent potassium this will put potassium I'm sorry will put phosphorus yeah will put potassium into your soil and you could just use a product like that you don't have to necessarily go get green sand or do anything with banana peels so if you're in doubt just a simple 10 10 10 all-purpose fertilizer get you the main macronutrients including pasta potassium now you can make your own and I'm going to show you how to do that and I actually make inorganic fertilizers that I use right in the planting hole I put in a tablespoon or two right into the planting hole when I plant tomatoes and peppers and other plants you can burn hardwood you have to you know buy I think oak is a hardwood you want the hardwood you don't want pine or anything like that but specifically hardwoods burn hardwood down take the ash out put it right into your compost pile let it do its thing or if you want to take the ash mix it into a bucket of water just you know stir it up and then pour it over your bed that is one way to get potassium into your garden the other way to do it is to make it yourself and I've done that in another video and you can basically take your banana peels if you eat bananas save the banana peels ask your neighbors to say to save them if you just dry them out you know for about an hour so at about nonono 150 180 200 to 20 degrees doesn't matter just dry them down don't bake them and burn them but just dry them out quickly once you drive them out and the reason you want to do this well let me just say this first if you're going to pulverize it here's the process if you're gonna compost it you're just taking a peel off just throw the plain peel into your compost pile and when the bacteria does its trick the microbes do the trick your banana will be broken down but this is another way to do it dry it out and this has surface area right now this surface area is everything that you see it's this part in this part if you were to drop this into the ground you have a surface area that is less than what I did right here once you start breaking something because you break it that becomes surface area so the more you break it down the more surface area it has and why is that important because the more surface area you have the quicker the bacterial microbes in your garden will break this down and make it available your plant and this is the way that I do it I just cut it up I dried out again like I said in the oven it anywhere between 150 and 220 degrees whatever you're comfortable with put it all right into a coffee grinder [Music] when it's all done it goes into a bowl I usually do this with eggshells for the calcium maybe even throw in some magnesium but now the surface area has been increased millions of times compared to this and this is probably about a tablespoon and a half so I would just put you know a tablespoon or so into my planting hole that will be plenty of potassium to take care of your plants welcome to the rustic garden today I want to talk about calcium it's one of six macronutrients the main macronutrients are used to singer nitrogen potassium sorry phosphorus and potassium and they're usually called the primary macronutrients that's what you see in all the fertilizer packs but there's also calcium magnesium and sulfur they are also micronutrients and macronutrients are really the six elements your garden really has to have in your right quantity for your plants to really thrive today we're gonna talk about calcium before I get to the benefits of calcium I just wanna let you know most garden soils will have calcium in there so you're not going to Nishal II start out having a problem and that's true for most of the fertilizers but as you garden for a while sometimes you have to add in these fertilizers to amend them sometimes your plants suck out a lot of the elements depending on what you're growing so you need to really understand what they are and that's my goal is for you to understand what calcium is I'll show you a couple of products and you can decide how you want to use it calcium benefits calcium is mostly a carrier molecule you really need calcium in your plant because it transports the essential nutrients in and out of the plant cells it's gonna move carbohydrates enzymes elements all kinds of things up and down your plant it's really the transport sort of molecule if you think about it or the transport piece of the plant if you don't have calcium the nutrients just aren't going to move up and down the plant it strengthens cells cell walls it also helps with uptake of other elements in the soil you have nitrogen you have potassium in the soil if you have too much calcium it can combine with different elements if you have too little it can cause problems so you need calcium to make sure your garden soil will give up the nutrients to your plants and you need the right amount and it's very very hard to mess up your soil by adding calcium and I'm going to talk to you about ways that you can prevent that from happening to calcium deficiencies you could have a stunted growth in your plant the young leaves are going to be distorted they're gonna yellow and you're gonna notice it right away calcium unlike some of the other elements you're gonna notice it right away in the fruits well maybe not right away but you're going to notice as they develop tomatoes get blossom end rot that's where they brown on the bottom celery gets black heart disease or black heart carrots get cavity spots and cabbages get internal Tipper and I haven't seen this I haven't had that happen to my plants but I have gotten blossom end rot more so in containers and I'll talk about container soil too as we go on calcium problems calcium is absorbed with water so you have to have water but you have to have regular levels of water in your in your garden or your plants aren't going to be able to pull the calcium in so if you have periods of drought or times when your whole container dries out or your garden soil dries out you're gonna have calcium issues with your plant and that's gonna show up you know pretty quickly so make sure you maintain you know the moisture level of your garden of your earth beds of your containers too much or too little calcium can impact how nutrient nutrients are absorbed from the soil and too much not calcium calcium itself ca the element won't change the pH but too much calcium carbonate a form of calcium can raise the pH levels and I'll go over that more - as we talk but just remember calcium the element ca won't change the pH of your soil but that's what your plants need they don't need the calcium carbonate they're not pulling calcium carbonate in they're only pulling up the calcium so a lot of these products have to will introduce a form of calcium to your soil but the soil has to break it down into a form your plants can use pH levels so if you're using calcium carbonate which is comes to really gets into your garden from a lot of different kinds of outline or use of lime you could change your pH levels the general range I'm going to do a video on this down the line but general range of pH is six to seven six point five is optimal we're only going to be adding low amounts of calcium products into your soil so you don't have to worry so much about the pH level but if you are you could also add in some peat moss that's acidic and that's what I tend to do and my guess is they kind of neutralize each other and I've been gardening in the same area for well over ten years I haven't had any trouble with my pH levels calcium the element ca is considered the building block of the fruit so that's the most important thing to take away from calcium is you really need it for your I think for your fruit to really develop you know to a good size to a good flavor my experience is that I grow peppers in the ground in containers and in half-sunken containers when I add in more calcium to those plants instead of having sometimes thin walled and leathery peppers I really find that the bell peppers have thicker walls they're much more crispier much more crisp than a snap to them when I break them open I think it's due to the calcium don't have a hundred percent proof but that's my experience and I usually sometimes tend to neglect for whatever reason the right side of my garden the other side that's getting more of the nutrients and calcium tend to do better blossom end rot is the main problem you probably get to see or have seen in your garden and that again is when the bottom of the tomato turns brown and that's from an issue with calcium either your plant can't pull the calcium out of the soil or you don't have enough calcium in there it happens a lot in containers when you have a container I've said before I use five gallon containers I use 10 gallon containers you put the soil in I do add in a lot more nutrients and amendments into that soil because the plants will suck the life out of that there's no other really way that nutrients are coming into your container soil and then plus when it rains that rainwater will quickly go through go out the holes in the bottom so you're also eating out nutrients so container soil really needs I think lime in it or you could end up with blossom end rot on your tomatoes and other problems with other other vegetables you might be growing sandy soils if you have sandy soil when it rains the water goes through quickly as it goes through its gonna leach out different elements that's in your soil and fast-acting calcium if you have blossom end rot these are eggshells that's calcium carbonate they would have to go in your soil break down slow release takes time this won't fix your tomatoes when there's a problem you need a fast-acting form of calcium that just has the CA the element quickly available so your plant can pull it into its system real quick and correct the plus the the problem of blossom end rot we're gonna talk about slow release and fast release a form of slow release calcium is dolomitic lime it's actually calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate these two things are not pulled directly into your plant they have to break down in the soil so that calcium and magnesium are rendered when you use dolomitic lime you get the benefit of calcium and you also get the benefit of magnesium so you get two macronutrients put into your soil and again it's the calcium carbonate that raises pH level so this will go into your soil into your container and then over time the soil will go through a process break this down into a form that your plant can use you also have a slow real slow Burmese form of calcium called gypsum that's calcium sulfate caso4 this will not raise your pH but it could look lower your pH and this is a form of calcium and sulfur so this is good also provide some sulfur to your garden which is another macro nutrient again this has to break down into a form where the calcium is set free the ca is set free from the so4 that calcium will be pulled into your plant you plant can use it slow release it will take some time for that process to happen other forms of slow release calcium or eggshells you can pulverize them down they're mostly calcium carbonate calcium carbonate needs to break down and free up to calcium like I saying there's also form a line called um calcite where it's just plain old calcium carbonate oyster shells I think is Kal are also calcium carbonate people use that pulverize that down but whenever you have calcium carbonate it has to break down in some capacity to free up that plain old element CA calcium so that your plant can pull it in hopefully that makes sense now we have some mixed release forms and this is garden line that says garden line it's derived from dolomitic dolomitic yeah dolomitic lime and the reason i think it says derived is because i think there's a little bit of a chemical processing or some sort of processing because it's not just straight calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate it also has calcium oxide calcium oxide comes from heating calcium carbonate it's got calcium magnesium magnesium oxide magnesium carbonate and maybe the you know analyze it differently and I don't quite get it but this product because it has available calcium magnesium that's going to get to your plan a little bit more quickly and that it also has the carbonate of magnesium and calcium that's gonna have to break down and release over time so this may be a little bit more fast-acting not quite as slow acting as pure dolma that dolomitic lime hopefully that makes sense and if you have more information about this product and how they analyze it and how they break it down I would really love to understand exactly you know what the analysis well was and why they say it's derived from dolomitic oil it makes me think it's processed in some way but I would recommend this and we'll talk about dosing in a little bit you also have same company you have garden gypsum it has a calcium sulfate in it calcium sulfate dihydrate which is the addition of h2o into it in some capacity also has calcium and sulphur and again I think it's process in some way in that you know the analysis says these are the components in there and when you look at them at 68 percent eighty-six percent twenty percent it doesn't really add up to 100% so they're calculating it based on what's actually available in there that I quite just don't understand however because it has free calcium and free sulfur this is gonna work a little bit quicker for your plants and then the sulfate as it breaks down the calcium sulfate as it breaks down will come available down the line hopefully that makes sense fast release you have calcium nitrate calcium nitrate is actually something I just ordered 25 pounds of and I'm gonna use it my garden as a fast release foliar spray for when I see blossom end rot and other problems that I think are related to calcium I did a video on calcium carbonate eggshells where I pulverized it down explained that it's only calcium carbonate and it's a slow release then I showed you how yet in white vinegar the vinegar will react with the calcium carbonate free up plain old calcium which then can be taken in by your plant quicker and that would be a way that you could use eggshells to help treat blossom and drop is that you have to use that weak acid to break the calcium carbonate so that you have calcium available for your plant calcium nitrate is really the addition of nitric acid to limestone creates calcium nitrate which will be calcium and nitrogen to things that are needed for your plants it can be it's a very water soluble it won't change the pH it's just plain old calcium there's no calcium carbonate in there you can use it on your plants I will talk about that more when I understand it better and start using it now I do have some recommendations first recommendation I'm going to start at the bottom use less when you plant a plant you can put in you know two tablespoons of garden line from dolomitic line it says up to four don't overdo it just put it into the planting hole mix it in well that is a great start for your plan same thing with the gist chips um one or two tablespoons this talks about adding almost a pound to establish plants you don't need to do that you don't need to follow these products to you know the perfect degree and I also think they tend to make us think we need to use more than we have to just use less you're not going to change the pH you could give your plants what they need it makes a difference and never overuse them you need to use more than the directions say most soils have calcium in it so remember when you start gardening you're garden soils could have most of these products as you start growing things and you start having plants pull out nutrients you're gonna have to use these products more compost and water regularly if you can compost and put organic matter compost into your soil keep the moisture level going you're going to really take care of much of the problems related to calcium if you're gardening in containers you're gonna have to use more lime or calcium carbonate some sort of of these forms lime itself calcium carbonate can raise pH gypsum can lower pH because of its calcium sulfate will bring it down so this will raise pH this will lower pH but in order to do that you have to be using a whole lot of it real quick this is what it looks like that's garden line pelleted dolomitic lime this is gypsum they look very similar so I hope you understand a little bit about what garden lime can do you can also find organic products that have NPK calcium magnesium and sulfur and there you could use this instead of those but now I hope you have a sense of how you might use calcium in your garden and can better understand you know what to do again when a stress don't over use these fertilizers please check out my blog at www.micaelaferrero.com OU's reans we always hear about are nitrogen phosphorus and potassium but there's also calcium magnesium and sulfur and today I want to talk about magnesium what does magnesium do for your planet why is it needed magnesium is required really to give the leaves the green color it's really involved in the production of chlorophyll so if you don't have enough magnesium in your soil your plants aren't gonna be as green you could have trouble with chlorophyll production and if you think about it if you plant some have chlorophyll chlorophyll they're not going to get you know the energy they need from the Sun and they're just not going to do well so magnesium also helps to give us strength to cell walls it's involved in enzyme production it's involved in seed germination and it helps the plant also take up other nutrients that are in the soil so if you don't have enough magnesium your plant may be able to pull in the nitrogen that's in there so it's it's really essential you need to have magnesium the good news about magnesium is it's in most soil so you don't have to over worry that you know it's not in there but keep an eye on your plants if you have a deficiency the deficiency will look like this if you have a tomato plant and you have the green veins going through the tomato plant and you can see the veins if you look closely the spaces in between those veins will start to go from green to yellow out so the veins stay green but the yellowing starts happening in between those veins and it'll usually start on the bottom of the leaves and if you watched my other videos that also sounds like other possible deficiencies and you can kind of see that your plants may react in a way that sounds similar yet we're not exactly sure you know what you know fertilizer may be lacking in your garden so you're always just looking for plant stress and then you kinda have to have a mental checklist of how are you supplying nitrogen how are you supplying phosphorus how are you supplying potassium if you are putting that into the soil then maybe it's a chance that maybe it's not enough magnesium so it's sort of a process of elimination so if you have the deficiency you have the yellowing between leaf veins you can have leaf curl the leaves can turn purple or red sometimes the stems can look a different color but most importantly you just have a stunted plant stunted growth and probably your plants going to die that's with the deficiency and again it's very hard for soils not to have magnesium in it especially in the home garden where you're turning over soil that's been around for a long time and you're putting plants into there now part of my goal of these videos is just to help you understand what the fertilizer is what the nutrient is what the element is and you can make decisions if you want to use it or not use it you can do soil tests to see what's in your garden you know nutrient wise it's up to you but I really want you to understand where you can find magnesium in products and add it to your garden and there's two main ways that I I think are there at least two main ways garden line pelleted line this is dolomitic line it's ten percent magnesium 70 percent magnesium oxide 15 percent magnesium carbonate and it's pelleted by the company so that it's easy to use but this is a slow-release product and this is epsom salts it's hydrated magnesium sulfate it's about ten percent magnesium and it's fast release so right now are the two products I have are a slow release into fast release and you would use them in different ways the garden lime again is a slow release and it can also raise the pH of your soil but if you're using it in a sensible way and you're not overusing it your soil pH isn't going to vary that much magnesium sulfate again fast release you can make this a mixture in water you can pour it right onto the leaves it won't change the pH so this is fast-acting it's a foliar feed and it won't change the pH of your garden soil if you were going to use garden lime the best way to use it really is to put in two to four tablespoons I keep tablespoons all over the place out in my yard but it's just one two and maybe you know one or two more right into the planting hole mix it in really well disperse it throughout the whole planting hole put your plant in and that will get magnesium and it will also get lime into your garden I'm sorry we also get calcium into your garden and calcium is another macronutrient which I will talk about in another video so I usually put the lime in at planting and that's just to get it in the soil let it start interacting with the garden soil the environment let it start breaking down let it start getting into a usable form of magnesium for your plant now epsom salts I use about one to two tablespoons per gallon I sometimes use it at planting if I don't have the line available but mostly I'll do a mix blooming time so when your plants start to bloom that's when I give them the first dose of epsom salts and that's one tablespoon in a gallon of water I pour it right over the plant just soak the leaves real quick soak some of the soil around there and your plant will be able to absorb magnesium and then again maybe about two weeks later and that's at the point where your plan is flowering and setting fruit and that's when I find it needs the boost of magnesium sulfate and that's just from my experience but I think the tomatoes the peppers the eggplant the nightshade family plants really seem to get a benefit from you know two feedings of epsom salts during the growing season I think the plants are Bush here I think the fruits are a little bit bigger and I think I get more production and you know that's just by me eyeballing it when I use the product now that being said I said I use this for the nightshade plants um tomatoes peppers eggplant even use them on my potatoes if you're growing lettuce radishes you don't really need to do this process with it they're going to be fine with the magnesium that's in there but the bigger plants again tomatoes peppers eggplant I will use this I'll also use it for cucumbers zucchini squash is the plants that really seem to suck the life's out of the soil I will use epson salts and also gardening gardening in containers I will use lime in my container soil and I will also hit it with magnesium sulfate and the reason being is in a five gallon container with a massive plant all the nutrients are just getting pulled out of there so you really want to use these products I think more in containers just something to keep in mind now what I usually say is don't use more fertilizer than you need use less it's okay I don't want to freak people out and have them think they got to go through all these products get it all into their soil in a home garden if you're turning soil over for the first time or even been gardening for a while you have a lot of product in there a lot of fertilizers a lot of nature a lot of everything so your plants are going to do pretty well but at times you do need to add in the fertilizer so that's why I want to educate you on you know what to do with these different and what a stress use less now compost an organic matter if you're putting in compost regularly if you're putting in an organic matter regularly you're going to be already adding in a lot of the macronutrients a lot of the micronutrients so your garden is going to be taken care of so just don't overuse these products don't panic most importantly I hope you enjoy your garden I hope you enjoy the process of starting something from a little seed taking care of it you know growing it to full size and then enjoying the vegetables please check out my blog at www.hsn - you about another major macronutrients sulfur I've talked about nitrogen phosphorus potassium and PK the main ones do you see almost fertilizers and those are the ones you hear most about but you also have calcium magnesium and sulfur you need them in lesser quantities but they are essential for your plants to thrive and do well in your home garden so today we're going to talk about sulfur couple things that are interesting is one you need very little sulfur so don't again as I said in other videos don't think that you need to go put in a whole lot of sulfur you need to put it into every planting hole you just don't need to do that about 95% of the total sulfur content in your garden is going to come from organic matter so if you're putting in compost if you're putting in organic matter you're already supplying your garden with what it needs to create a form of sulfur that your plants can use so in this case you know composting organic matter really makes a difference whoop now sulfur the elemental symbol for sulfur is s but it has to be converted into a sulfate so4 it's also negatively charged but those are details you know we don't need to talk about in this video but soil bacteria will change sulfur into so4 into a sulfate through a process called mineralization so your garden is going to do what it has to do to create a usable form of sulfur for your plants so it's a slow process so when you compost slowly the bacteria will change sulfur over into a sulfate so this is an ongoing slow process that will keep a nice supply of sulfur going get a fresh supply of usable sulfur in your garden so your plants can use it over time now sulfur does have to be replenished but if you keep the compost in there it's gonna keep coming it can get leached out by rain if you have a sandy soil so our rainwater coming through because the the charges of the ions and stuff will pull that sulfur quickly the usable sulfur quickly through your soil into you know down to farther so your plant can't use it so keys again maintain organic matter now if you have a deficiency in sulfur it's hard to tell I'm gonna talk about the benefits in a second but you'll get yellow leaves again you have poor growth but it's hard to tell exactly that you have a sulfur problem based on deficiencies in the soil and then how they affect your plant but you don't have to worry too much about that I mean if you're supplying the organic matter maybe a little bit of sulfur during the season your plants I and your garden will be fine there are three main sources of sulfur again I want to stress again organic matter the actual breakdown of organic matter into compost will supply your garden the bacteria in your soil with what it needs to make a usable form of sulfur you can also have general minerals in your garden that will break down over time and also sulfur dioxide if you don't know what that is that's acid rain in a lot of the industrial areas where you just have a lot of factories sodium I'm sorry sulfur dioxide goes into the air mixes with the rain comes down to your soil you know now you have sulfur in your garden the benefits of sulfur generally speaking sulfur is about growth and nutrition it helps plants use other elements like nitrogen and phosphorous so it has to be present so your plant can properly use the nitrogen and phosphorous coming into the plant and also throughout the plant it's responsible in the synthesis of amino acids vitamins and proteins and that or to make sense that if you plant can't make what it needs in a way of amino acids vitamins proteins it's just not going to thrive it's not going to do well and legumes like beans and peas need nitrogen present so that that I'm sorry needs sulfur present so that it helps the nitrogen fixate to the plant and get used up by the plant benefits though growth in nutrition you need it or your plants just not gonna thrive recommendations I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on this video because it's pretty straightforward in the sense that you should really have enough sulfur in your garden if you're composting but I'll talk about these two products that you can use compost organic matter set it a bunch of times set it one more time gonna say it again compost organic matter will help you maintain the sulfur levels in your garden even watering you don't ever want your garden to dry out you don't want your containers to dry out it will affect the way nutrients are absorbed by your plants but also you want to have good drainage if too much water sits in your garden it does impede the way sulfur is pulled into your plant so you want good drainage in your garden soil best ways to add it and again you're not going to be saying oh I need sulfur but you use some other products I use magnesium sulfate have a couple videos on it probably will do one more in this series on how you use magnesium sulfate or epsom salts this is a fast release form it gives your plants magnesium it's already in a sulfate form it can be pulled in through the leaves picked up by the roots very quickly so when you're using Epsom salts you're giving your garden a dose of sulfur and that's probably all you really need you're not going to need more than this if you're not using epsom salts if you're adding maybe calcium to your soil or you're using gypsum gypsum also has calcium sulfate in there again the sulfur is in the form that your plant needs so gypsum epsom salts here's what they look like that's the magnesium sulfate this is the gypsum they have a form of sulfur your plants can use this is a fast release this is sort of a mid speed release and that it's already in a form that your plant once and compost is a slow-release process so you want to be composting from the start of the season throughout the year and the next year but as that breaks down over time you just gonna have a nice release of sulfur or are you gonna yeah you'll have a nice release of sulfur it will be changed until form your plant can use in your garden will have enough sulfur so you don't really need to stress about this macronutrient you just got to make sure you have the compost and organic matter in there and if you want to just throw maybe one time a year some epsom salts on your plant or some gypsum around your plant you can do that this will give it calcium and sulfur this will give it magnesium and sulfur it'll be there is really no soil life so using a chemical fertilizer isn't going to harm soil life and the flipside is because there's no soil life in here there's nothing to really break down some of your organic fertilizers to change them into a form that the plant can use so what does that mean when you're doing seed starts like this you have to make sure you have a chemical fertilizer because that's readily available those nutrients can be picked up right away by the plant or you have to be using an organic fertilizer that's in the soluble form which means the plant can use it right away because there's no soil life to break down some of your organic products and again keep in mind sometimes people like organic fertilizers more because they help build soil life well there is no soil life in here so you're not harming anything and there is no soil life to really work with the organic fertilizers and if you decide to go organic you really have to make sure you're buying the right product so I don't want organic fertilizers for my seed starts and for the reasons that I stated stated I don't like the smells of some of them indoors they're informed sometimes that insects will enjoy more and there's little micronutrients in them so you really have to work hard to find an organic product that covers n P and K all the micronutrients and is in a soluble form that your seed starts to do you can do it it's more expensive the more work but if that's what you prefer just make sure you're getting an organic fertilizer that makes itself available to your seed starts and again if you want organic make sure it's soluble it covers n P and K it has micronutrients and don't overspend one of my biggest concerns is not as a person organic or a chemical fertilizer combination of both and I mostly try and be organic but I use all products in a specific way don't overspend because we're starting to get ripped off with the organic products being packaged as you know almighty you have to use it and you're jacking your price up it's just it's expensive so just know what you're doing if you want to go organic that's fine like I said soluble covers NPK micronutrients but if you want to go with Miracle Grow or some of these products I'm going to show you there are ok - they don't hurt your plants they don't hurt you so for instance when are using Miracle Grow it's a 24 816 that means it was 24% nitrogen 8% then P phosphorus and 16 16 percent potassium that's too much you don't want that much fertilizer on your seed starts use less fertilizer no matter what you're using organic chemical use less these are small plants as you can see there's no rain to come down and wash any of these soluble fertilizers away and you have evaporation what that means is is if I fix a a box Miracle Grow one tablespoon into a gallon of water it's gonna be 24 percent nitrogen eight percent phosphorous 16 percent potassium that's going to be absorbed into you know the starting mix it's good to sit there when it evaporates the water evaporates out the chemicals the fertilizer is the nitrogen the phosphorus potassium are going to start to form in the soil at a higher concentration than what you intended and that's been too much fertilizer can cause problems and damage your plants so remember the concentration of fertilizer that you put into these seed starts can your plants less is better okay so what's the guideline here's the guideline using Miracle Grow so Miracle Grow is twenty four eight sixteen most of the time you hear me for outdoor Gardens now lately my containers use half strength that brings it down to a twenty four eight that's better you don't really need more than that indoors I would still even go further I take it down to a quarter and that leaves you with a six to four you know and that's better you don't need a lot of compost for instance it's just like a 1% nitrogen one percent phosphorous one percent potassium you just don't need these high numbers so for a guideline if you're doing your seed start you want to be somewhere at like a 5 5 5 or less generally speaking you know there's no set amount this is just more for understanding what you're using so for instance this is a 10 10 10 all-purpose fertilizer let's just say it's one capful into a gallon of water use half of that that'll bring it down to a five five five you can even bring it down to a quarter and be 2.5 2.5 2.5 that will be effective to take care of your seed starts this one is a 3-0 for fertilizer mixed a tablespoon to a gallon there is insoluble nitrogen in here though so that's what you have to read for so it's only 0.5 percent soluble nitrogen 2.5 percent insoluble and all that means is insoluble is a slow-release fertilizer that you and this is a chemical this is an organic product that has to be broken down by soil life but there's no soil life here so you want to go you know to something maybe more like this where let's see if I can find it quickly this is a fifteen thirty fifteen fertilizer its chemical which means it was processed by a you know people it's in a form that can be readily absorbed by these plants but you know the fifteen I think was what fifteen thirty fifteen already forgot that's too much you want to bring that down to half strength to quarter strength and use that in here now when do you fertilize that's probably the biggest question I wanted to cover what you're using one more thing to let me just pull these over here the other reason I like the fertilizer you mix with water this is organic fertilizer that you can't really use in your seed starts that's too much this is like feather meal all kinds of different things alfalfa meal this is great for outdoor garden mixing it into your containers where you have some soil at Panera right into your earth beds and this is a slow-release fertilizer so make sure you know what you're buying you don't want to buy something like that you want to get the fertilizers that are organic or chemical and mix in water because that's much easier to regulate and manage and it allows your plants to absorb it so when do you fertilize well these plants have been growing at different rates today is January 23rd these are onions these have been in there since January 10th so they've been in there thirteen days soon as they're fully up and you're growing their second leaf so to speak that's when I'll start fertilizing them these are this is I think arugula some sort of lettuce and I forget what else but these are planted on 116 so these have been growing for seven days and these are just actually I'm just test seed starting know what am i doing I'm test germinating my seeds that I sell so these are all germinating nicely this is not how I would grow this but these been growing now for seven days they don't quite yet have their second set of leaves this is a first set of leaves and in between there I know the leaf will come out that's the true leaf so you're really looking for the second if that comes out this is oregano nope this is time that went into the ground and ran it into the seed start on the 18th so this has been 5 days all of these don't need fertilizer right now so when do you do it alright most plants take say 7 days to germinate use this as a guideline so first 7 days they just get water then once they germinate they take another 5 to 7 days to get their second leaves or their true leaves so really you can say first week they're germinating second week they're growing when they're growing in your second week they're actually using the seed for nutrients so they don't need to fertilize it right then so really when you start your third week that's when you're gonna fertilize and because everything germinates at different rates and people are growing different things i can't give you the exact recipe for fertilizing so week one they germany week two they grow they get their second leaves we three you're going to fertilize every other watering you know for another 10 to 14 days for another two weeks so I just do this this would be your one gallon container fertilizer half or quarter strength you know and you just rotate water then when it dries up again the fertilizer water and then when you get into your fourth week for most plants every water and just use your half strength or quote or strength fertilizer and that will take care of them also sometimes at the fourth week they're coming out of these cells and going into your transplant cups but you would fertilize them in the same way I hope that makes sense and this is probably what's most important you can always add more fertilizer if your plants are struggling you can't really take it away if you put in too much and it concentrates and builds up it will damage your plants and then when plants get damaged by fertilizer sometimes they turn yellow or they change color and they look like you know there have some sort of deficiency so we then we add more fertilizer and we're just worsening the problem greater damage comes from over over fertilizing seed starts for real pier more fertilizer for your seed starts is not better and I don't recommend you over fertilize follow if I was going to pick something I don't mind going with the chemical fertilizers at half strength or quarter strength if you go with the organic fertilizers make sure you find soluble fertilizer that covers you know n P and K and the micronutrients welcome to the rest of garden today I want to talk to you about when do you fertilize your squash zucchini and cucumbers when you fertilize your indoor plants a couple of things to keep in mind is sometimes your starting mix has no fertilizer in it if you buy like a Miracle Grow product it will have fertilizer near and it's usually a low amount sometimes I will add fertilizer to my starting mix but I do it at half-strength and that's the whole key of this video is your plants don't need full dosing of fertilizer in the starting mix or they don't need full dosing of the liquid fertilizer while they're growing like this half-strength some people even use quarters strength so regardless if your plants have fertilizer in the starting mix or not you're going to fertilize with a half-strength liquid fertilizer maybe a quarter strength if you want you're going to fertilize these plants wind when they have a true leaf this is a zucchini that's a true leaf these are the two leaves that actually break the surface that's a true leaf here's a cucumber it has a bigger true leaf these are the two leaves that break the service surface and this is a early yellow squash and you can see how much bigger it got and it really has two leaves but somewhere around you know here you want the first fertilizing and you can see this plant is staying healthy so you don't have to be super exact but you're probably going to fertilize them in about two weeks these plants are planted on January 22nd today is the 12th of February so this is three weeks of growth they grow pretty fast for the liquid fertilizers a couple of things to keep in mind as I will use organic products out of my garden in my greenhouse but I don't like using them indoors because to me they smell bad I don't like fish emulsion indoors it just doesn't smell good here is a kelp product and the biggest thing for the liquid fertilizers when you're doing squash zucchini and cucumbers and actually any plant indoors is you want the three main ingredients nitrogen phosphorus and potassium to be represented and you can see here if it's not too small this is a point one three nitrogen zero phosphorus point six o potassium this is not a good liquid fertilizer for your indoor plants you want phosphorous phosphorous helps with the root development you want strong roots with your indoor transplants especially you know if not with all the plants definitely with your squash your zucchini your cucumbers you one of them want them to establish well under the soil as much as the leaves look green so you're not just going for plain old nitrogen which makes green leaves you want phosphorous to here's an organic product it's made from beet juice and on the back it has eight for nitrogen which is great for the leaves zero for phosphorous zero for potassium this would not make a good liquid fertilizer for your indoor transplants you want all the main numbers to be represented and P and K now when I say represented there's not an exact number that works if I could pick one you know a three six three would be great three nitrogen six phosphorus three potassium but gardening is something that's done all over the globe and everybody doesn't have access to organic or inorganic fertilizers sometimes people have to make it themselves they can't just go to the store and you know find 810 different kinds of fertilizers so don't worry about that the main key for this is half strength whatever you buy is a liquid fertilizer make sure it has NPK numbers that it's represented with nitrogen phosphorus and potassium and then use it as a soluble fertilizer is a form of n P and K or form of nutrients that's immediately ready to your plants that means when you mix it with water pour it onto the leaves pour it into the soil the NPK and other nutrients can be absorbed right away really by your plant in soluble fertilizers are more like fertilizers that are in the granule form that you buy organic put it into the ground in the microbiology has to break that down so it's slowly released to your plant over time so we're talking about soluble water soluble fertilizers and these products get mixed into water now there's two kind you can buy you can buy organic fish fertilizer is organic it's basically emulsified fish fish parts fish body into a fertilizer and that fertilizer has a nitrogen of five phosphorus of one potassium of one it's a five one one NPK now the process to chemical fertilizers this is actually a 15 30 15 you don't need that cut it down to about a quarter string and you get a four eight for fertilizer close to that I round it up to different fertilizers the second thing is organic is not better for you or for your plants people hate that but it's true the process chemical fertilizers will not harm you or your plants the chemical fertilizers are harmful to soil life when it be used and used in like high-end industrial farming where they're just you know putting down tons and tons of chemical fertilizers over tons of acreage and that's all they did year after year they wipe out the soil life you're not using it like that organic fertilizers are wonderful but this is a fish fertilizer if you have cats or animals in your area and you put down a fish fertilizer you're gonna attract those cats and those animals to your to your garden so what I like to teach is you can use either one you don't have to be a hundred percent organic you don't have to be a hundred percent chemical but use what works this is also cheaper using this 1/4 strength it's gonna save you a lot of money what do I do I use both to mix this up you just follow the directions but it's 2 tablespoons per gallon of water this is typically one tablespoon per gallon of water might cut it down again to quarter strength because you just don't need the 15 30 15 you can use these about every 7 to 14 days depending on the size of your plants and I want to show you how you water them in because you don't put one gallon per plant this is actually to cover 25 square feet this is actually to cover 10 square feet but I just want to mix it up show you how I use it just to give you some idea and again the key is that you need some water soluble fertilizers for your garden at times and especially when you have containers when these aren't really soil systems that are live like your earth beds you know there is soil life in there but they're just let's say for instance there's no earthworms in there there's probably none in those flower boxes the microbiology is very different so if you're waiting for organic insoluble fertilizer to break down it may take a long time so you want to use soluble fertilizers in your container plants let's get to mixing and I'll just show you how you know I pour this on so these are my container plants we're going to go out into the earth beds - this is fish emulsion two tablespoons per gallon those are sweet potatoes and cilantro and every seven to fourteen days depending on the size of your plants that's all you really have to do Silveri for a tomato some more cilantro the fish fertilizer these are potatoes is a 5 1 1 n P and K and remember the key point there's a tomato in there the key point is soluble fertilizers have nutrients that are immediately available to your plants and I like to use them here's a broccoli plant in containers because the soil life is very different than your earth beds the biology is different so if I were to drop down granular organic fertilizer that's insoluble and just put it on top that's not gonna feed these plants right away it's good to kind of sit there break down over time and it can take months let's go out into the garden show you the same thing but that's all you need to do every 7 to 14 this is one of my beds it's 4 feet by 6 feet that's 24 square feet that's about how much you would put one gallon of fish fertilizer down this cauliflower and the same thing I don't really pay so much mine to the square footage just soak it in like that the fish emulsion is a 5-1-1 fertilizer the nitrogen is great for leaf growth but the one one is kind of low for when your plants get into fruit production and flower production and that's when they might use the chemical fertilizers and again all products are chemicals everything on the planet is a chemical you can't make fake nitrogen you can't make artificial potassium it's just not possible but we're true people would have turned other elements into gold it's just not possible but this is how I would use the fish emulsion in this plot just soak it down every seven to fourteen days more often when the plants are bigger less often when they're smaller so this is the chemical fertilizer and it's being used at one-quarter strength and when you get to plants that are in production these are strawberries are good reproducing fruit sometimes you want to focus more on the potassium in the phosphorus garlic not so much interested in leaf growth now they're growing the garlic bulb but that's it just soak it in just like that tomato find give it a toss and I would use the chemical fertilizers just like this every seven to fourteen days depending on the size of the plant for plants that are in little cups like this process chemical fertilizer you want the fertilizer to get right to the plants let's go out into the garden I'll show you how I took care of them as sensor rolls these are my greens at overwintered I'm eating them this week and have been eating him really for the last week don't put the chemical fertilizers or fish emulsion on the leaves if you're going to be eating the plants over the next 710 days just get it right onto the ground and this way you don't have to really worry about you know washing everything perfectly you can just pick the leaves because you know it's your garden and you didn't put anything on them before you eat them over here I've got my cool weather crops kohlrabi beets endive and I would just soak it just like that and funny quick story is as I was making this video my wife came down and when I went back in she was looking all over the kitchen for something that smelled awful well that was because I was filling up the watering container with fish emulsion in the kitchen sink it does smell bad so if you're having some sort of barbeque or people over don't use the fish emulsion that day or the day before it takes about three days for the odor to go away and if you have cats or animals around the fish emulsion can attract them to your garden

Channel: Gary Pilarchik (The Rusted Garden)

Views: 1,449,521

Keywords: Vegetable, Gardening, fertilizers, nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, sulfur, magnesium, Seed Starting

Id: 7jrfNglwIJE

Length: 104min 25sec (6265 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 04 2018