How To Choose The Right Fertilizer For Your Plants ( Complete Guide )

hi my name is kathy moyne and we're here at green thumb nursery to talk about fertilizers today so one thing that i notice when i'm getting questions in the nursery is that a lot of people confuse fertilizers with mulch so i'm going to clear that up right now mulch will give your plants a little bit of nutrition but it's kind of like a snack it's not the main meal so when you when you add a mulch to your soil like a planter's mix or peat moss something like that to plant your plants with that's a mulch and that will give you a little bit of nutritional value but that's not going to be the meat and potatoes that your plants are going to be looking for so a mulch is a mulch fertilizer is fertilizer now some people will get a compost say there's uh some people get the hor the compost from the the horse stables um we have steer manure that's composted we have the malibu compost again that stuff will give you a little bit of fertilizer besides the fact that it stinks it's not going to be the meat and potatoes that's just a snack so what i'm talking about when i say fertilizers i'm talking about nitrogen phosphorus and potassium those are your three main ingredients of fertilizers and then there's a lot of minor nutrients that go in there sulfurs and different limes minerals things like that that also help with the fertilizers but fertilizer is nitrogen phosphorus and potassium so what i have here are some samples of the product line that i like to recommend this is called down to earth these are all organic material organic things that they use in their in their products they're very picky about where they get their stuff which is why i like to recommend them because i feel like when they say that there's a certain product in here and it's good quality i believe them and so far they have not steered me wrong so i do like the down to earth products so i'm going to start with nitrogen so when you have when you have a fertilizer there's three numbers on the fertilizer now as you can see this one says twelve zero zero so that's twelve percent nitrogen there's no phosphorous and there's no potassium so this is just going to give you greening and growth so when you have a high first number that's the one that gives you green and it also gives you growth so but it can also burn so that's the number you have to be careful with because if you put too much of it on there you're going to get burning and it can kill the plant because i know i've done it so this one is the one you have to watch out for the next one is phosphorus that's the middle number and that number takes care of root stimulation and flowers so it's going to help your roots to develop and it's going to help you to get flowers that's phosphorus then we have potassium this one has 22 percent potassium and potassium helps with the overall health of the plant so nitrogen for up and growth and green phosphorus for down roots and flowers and potassium for overall health of the plant now one way that you can remember that is a saying up down all around up for greeting and growth down for roots and flowers all around for your all around health of your plant now what makes these different from each other so this blood meal the first one that i showed you is derived from yeah you guessed it blood but it works very well this is a quick release nitrogen so this is one you have to be careful that you don't over apply also you can use blood meal for getting rid of rabbits because when you put this down they think one of their buddies got killed so they stay away from that area unfortunately it works into the soil after a while so it doesn't work for a long time but you might be able to scare them off for a month or a week or so but blood meal will do that because they think one of their buddies got killed there now i do also carry a feather meal which is also just nitrogen alone now what's nice about this one is this is a slow release nitrogen so when i am using when i am planting my um parsley and my greens my my lettuces my parsley cilantro things that you want to develop leaves but you don't want them to flower you give them a nitrogen and this one is because it's a slow release you can give it to it when you plan it and then it's going to slowly break down through the season so this one you you don't need to you apply this every six to eight weeks whereas the blood meal i just showed you has to be applied more often because it goes to work a lot faster but it's also going to the blood blood meal is going to help it grow faster so if you got say like a party coming and you want to boost your flowers and your greenery then maybe you'd want to use the blood meal but you have to do it more often the seabird guano this particular one here is comes from let's see where does it say high phosphorus can be used uh to give you flowers and blooms strawberries melons vegetables all types of flowers will benefit from this product here and it's seabird guano so and it's yes is and it also has some calcium in it which is nice now this one is lingvinite and langevinite is got sulfur potassium and magnesium now this one here it will also help to lower the ph and this one is really good for palm trees so there's another product we have called sulpomag s-u-l-p-o-m-a-g which is basically the same product this one is organic the other one is derived from different sources this one is a crystalline material that is let's see it's water soluble which is nice and this one here again is an organic substance and like you said it works for your palm trees so this is a good one to put on your palm trees in the spring maybe mid-summer and fall when you get those splotches on the leaves of the palm trees especially queen palms it's usually a nitro it's usually a a minor nutrient deficiency which is what this will correct so this is good stuff so then i want to talk about some mineralizers now this one this one is called azomite and this one is from a mine in utah it is an or a volcanic product and this one here greens up the leaves it gives the miner it gives you your minor nutrients i plant this i put this on everything including my old established house plants my old pots that i that have been potted for a long time i'll put some of this in there in the spring a little bit of malibu compost on the top and and if i need to put some new soil in there i can put some new soil in there if it's been depleted throughout the season but this brings back those nice minerals that get depleted out of the soil every time you water your containers and for in the ground it just really makes a huge difference on how green your plants are so i know this is a great product and i recommend it all the time azomite so then the next one i want to talk about now these are balanced fertilizers these fertilizers here this one is an alfalfa meal and as you can see it's got the three numbers it's got 2.5 percent yeah 2.5 nitrogen 0.5 percent phosphorus and 2.5 potassium so it's kind of low but what i like to recommend this far is in the spring with roses roses really like this little to get them going in the spring so this is a good one for for growing in the spring now also like to recommend fish bone meal now this one is high in phosphorus it's got a high middle number and it's a little bit lower in nitrogen and this is another one that you could apply to your roses in the spring to help give them root stimulation and um flowers now you should have if you do have roses and you haven't trimmed them back you need to trim them back this is the first week in february so it's time for you to start trimming back your roses peeling all the leaves off if you haven't already done that after you get three inches of new growth then you can give it some fertilizer two to three inches so then then that's where i would use my rose and flower mix and this one here is four percent nitrogen eight percent potassium phosphorus and four percent potassium and it also has some magnesium in it which is epsom salts so i also recommend that you give your roses a handful of epsom salts and also your plants a lot of your vegetables and your fruit trees all of them would like to have some magnesium just don't go overboard on it again all these things are within moderation just because it's good doesn't mean you have to go crazy with it because i do that all the time so i get it all right so now we're going to talk about this is called biolive now what's awesome about this is this is something you you can use as a transplant fertilizer or as a brand new transplant so if you're if you're digging something up and transplanting it to a new spot or you're planting new like your vegetables or your plants use a little bit of this in the hole now this is five percent nitrogen four percent phosphorus and two percent um potassium so you can see what see the numbers how they work so this is going to give you a little more growth but what's cool about this is it has mycorrhizae fungus and what mycorrhizae fungus does it's naturally occurring in the soil the way they discovered it was they were out in the in the wilderness they were replacing pine trees that had you know areas that had burned down and they were planting pine trees little little seedlings and they noticed in some areas they were thriving and in other way areas they were not so they're like okay what's going on so they look down into the soil and they figure out okay what's the difference between the two areas well the mycorrhizae fungus was the difference so then they're like oh my goodness that's that's there's something to this michael ricey thing so it's funguses mushrooms are the bloom of these funguses so when you see mushrooms that is a form of a mycorrhizae fungus and they're part of that microbes that help to break down bark products break down the fertilizers and product and help them to get water and it also helps to protect them in the soil from diseases certain diseases so without the mycorrhizae fungus they don't do as well so that's this one has a bunch of different types in there there's different strains for different types of plants they put most of them in there that would work for what you're going to be planting this with and but again because it has five percent nitrogen don't go too crazy with it i thought oh yeah i'll just throw a handful in there my little bitty plant and it just went and died so you follow the directions that's why they're there follow the directions so again mycorrhizae fungus and part of how this stuff works are those little microorganisms that are in the soil and they are in the top four to six inches of the soil so if our soil is not warm so i usually say when the soil when the nighttime temps are 50 and above on a consistent basis then our soil temps are usually about 50 degrees if the soil temp is below 50 none of this stuff really works because those those microorganisms are sleeping once the soil gets warm then they wake up and they start metabolizing the the products that you put in the soil for the plants and then they make that available to your plants so there's a symbiotic relationship i've always said if you have healthy soil you have healthy plants i didn't always think that because when i pour a fertilizer on something i want to see that plant go crazy but really that's that's false economy because if your soil is not healthy just because you put some fertilizer on their miracle grow i mean uh did i say that if you put the fertilizer on it a liquid fertilizer on it and you see your plants grow crazy that's doing absolutely nothing for your roots and for those microorganisms and later on down the line if say you decide you don't want to feed it that anymore your plants are going to decline a little bit so it's always good to have healthy soil a healthy soil will take care of your healthy plants okay so let me see where else do i need to talk about okay bio fish this one here is seven percent nitrogen seven percent phosphorus and two percent potassium and this one comes from fish bone meal fish meal feather meal sulfate of potash alfalfa meal and kelp meal so this has got a lot of really good stuff in here now when i'm planting my tomatoes and my veggies that i want to give me flour to produce fruits or produce vegetables like your zucchinis your peppers your tomatoes anything that flowers and gives a fruit this is what i like to use and this one here is also a slow release fertilizer so i use the earth box which is a a planter box that is all encompassed with the soil and the fertilizer it's one top shot you you plant it and now do you have a video on that if you want to see it you plant it and then you leave it there for the season all you do is water it and harvest your plants i like to use this product for those that application but even if you weren't doing that even your your in the ground it works well in containers it works well this is what i like to use on my veggies and it's organic so i really like to use this one now for your fruit trees so there's two types this one is your citrus and you can see it's not a real high nitrogen it's six percent but the phosphorus is a three and the potassium is three but this also has calcium sulfur iron and zinc so citrus trees or evergreen fruit trees including avocados guavas things that keep their leaves during the winter those guys like zinc a little more then we have the deciduous fruit trees those are the fruit trees that drop their leaves so this is what you would use for those this is a fruit tree fertilizer again it's six percent nitrogen a little less phosphorous four percent potassium and this has eight percent calcium and magnesium so this one the deciduous fruit trees actually like more calcium now not to say that you could use these either one if you just want to get one i would go with the citrus and then give it a little bone meal if on your deciduous fruit trees but if you if you like me and you're a geek and you you want to use the citrus one for the evergreens and the fruit tree one for the deciduous ones okay that is pretty much covered all the ones that i wanted to cover today if you liked what you saw please click the like button and hit the subscribe button if you're not already subscribed to our channel and the bell to let us know or let you know when we have out new uh videos thank you so much for watching and have a great day

Channel: Green Thumb Nurseries - Gardening in SoCal

Views: 59,758

Keywords: gardening, organic gardening, green thumb, garden center, gardener, succulent fertilizer, citrus fertilizer, roses fertilizer, organic fertilizer, organic fertilizer for plants, fruit tree fertilizer, organic fruit tree fertilizer, organic vegetable gardening, organic vegetable fertilizer, fertilizer guide, fertilizers explained, gardening for beginners, garden fertilizer recommendations, garden fertilizers, soil nutrients, Mycorrhizal Fungus, fertilizer, choose fertilizer

Id: 04fPvu6-UvY

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 16 2022