Why a 1-1-1 Fertilizer is BETTER Than a 30-30-30!

[Music] well hello everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the mi Gardner channel I'm really excited for this episode because in this episode we're going to be breaking down a very common gardening misconception as it pertains to nutrients some of the most common mistakes I see gardeners making is running off to the garden center and picking up something that has the highest amount of nutrients that it can possibly find this might be like a 15 15 15 or a 30 30 30 and whatever it is they grab the highest and they ignore all the lower count fertilizers or soil amendments because they think that those are not as effective and in this episode I'm actually going to break down that misconception to explain why a 1 1 1 or a a 1 3 1 whatever it is is actually better than a 30 30 30 and so it's gonna help you garden more organically it's going to help you save money and it is also going to help you better understand how nutrients work in the garden rather than just running out and getting some bag that is ambiguous and just going off of the understanding that fertilizer is what plants need therefore they must need it so nutrients what do they actually view in the garden well plants they require three macronutrients and then a bunch of other micronutrients and macronutrients fall under nitrogen phosphorus and potassium that is what those three numbers correspond to on any bag of fertilizer or any soil amendment it is telling you how much nitrogen how much phosphorus and how much potassium and those numbers often people get confused as to what those numbers actually you correspond to what it pertains to the fertilizer those numbers are the percentage by weight of available nutrients so if you have something a 10 10 10 and you get a hundred pounds of this fertilizer in a hundred pound bag of a 10 10 10 you're going to have 10 pounds of nitrogen 10 pounds of phosphorous and 10 pounds of potassium and so it's actually the percentage by weight and that's why you know 100 pound baggage makes it really easy but you can scale that down to a one pound bag or scale that up to a thousand pounds it's still the same it just tells you how much weight of that specific nutrient is in that fur Eliezer and so gardeners will take that fertilizer and they'll fly to their garden thinking that the more fertilizer they add or the higher count fertilizer they add the better they're going to be either the healthier the plant might be or the faster the plant might grow I here at all but it's all wrong because it has nothing to do with how much you add or how high the count of fertilizer it is either way a plant will only take up what it needs and this again is a such a common misconception that the more you add the more the plant can uptake it's just not true a plant has a growth regulator in it that as the plant grows it requires more nutrients and that then pulls the nutrients from the soil but when the plant doesn't need it the plant doesn't uptake it and so you have a case in which some people are applying a very highly synthetic fertilizer that has a very high count and what that is doing is it is only doing a world of hurt it is actually building up salts in the soil which end up killing bacteria killing microbes and it kills fungi because the salt actually bind up the soil it then actually hurts the the future fertilizing of your crops because those crops are having their nutrients actually bound up salts will bind up nutrients in the soil and prevent the plants from ever accessing them again meaning that your plants can be nutrient deficient even though you're loading on more fertilizer and third is you can end up burning your plants meaning you kill the plants because sometimes the nutrients are so rich and so so highly concentrated that they end up burning the plant roots and then you end up killing your garden so three things that can happen wrong by over fertilizing and it does you no good if you might be wanting yourself well why then is a 1 1 1 better than a 30 30 30 let me explain so as I stated plants will only uptake what they need and a 1 1 1 is generally more often than not not the only nutrients that will be available a 1 1 1 based on how the fertilizer labeling requirements go as all the laws state is that it's the amount of plant available nutrients that means that because the the chemical companies and because the big agricultural firms want to benefit and they know that they can make their fertilizer look better the 30 30 30 will look better than a 1 1 1 when in fact something like let's say blood meal blood meal is a 1200 but there's a lot of other nutrients that are broken down that are not they're not plant available yet because they need to be broken down and weathered by soil microbes and bacteria that are locked up and need to be actually broken down before the plant can access them take trifecta plus for an example is also another great example is a 5 10 4 so trifecta plus has 5 percent nitrogen 10 percent phosphorous and 4 percent potassium but that's not the only nutrients available in the into the fertilizer there there's actually microbes and bacteria that will break down additional nutrients that will then become plant available over time and this does a couple things number one is it doesn't flush out of your soil right away highly synthetic fertilizers like a thirty thirty thirty are all plant available and because they're water soluble because they're they're actually chemical compounds and chemical compounds will dissolve into water it means they rush they they flush out of the soil due to leaching meaning they wash into waterways ending up in you know algae blooms in in rivers and lakes that hurt that really hurts aquatic life it also will flush just out of your soil in general meaning that it is is void in your soil meaning your plants don't have access to it and so those water soluble nutrients are are only good for a very short period of time whereas an organic fertilizer does not have yes it does have some water soluble components but most of those are taken up by the plant very readily and then the the ones that are bound up and need to be broken down my soil microbes and bacteria those ones remain in the soil and those are not water soluble meaning that over time may become plant-available due to the symbiotic relationship in an organic environment that takes place with the plant and the beneficial bacteria and fungi meaning that if you have an organic approach to gardening the nutrients that are in the soil are actually being distributed to the plan as it needs it throughout time meaning that you have a net positive effect on your soil because your plants are able to access nutrients all season long you see so many gardeners are so many farmers following up with you know additional fertilizing maybe it's weekly or maybe it's bi-weekly because the fertilizer in their soil just because becomes depleted so rapidly whereas if they go organic in fact we know several organic farmers they say that they only fertilize maybe twice a season at most three times a season because the the fertilizer that they're using is not being depleted as quickly and it's not washing out of the soil so those are some of the things that make a one-one one better but the final thing that I wanted to talk about is when it comes to plants every plant requires different nutrients and there's never a specific amount of nitrogen that is needed take these strawberries for example if you compare strawberries to something like an onion onions need a far different fertilizer breakdown to reach full maturity than strawberries do strawberries yes are very high nitrogen feeders but it is a very ambiguous gray area as to how much nitrogen they need because the the amount of nitrogen in the soil can be you know 10% or 20% but do they need 10% or 20% definitely not in fact you'd be over fertilizing sometimes strawberries are fine with 3% if you just give them a 3% nitrogen fertilizer they're more than happy and that's because not every plant is a one-size-fits-all solution and I see so many gardeners just thinking the more the more nutrients they can throw out their garden the better and it's just it's so ambiguous as to what plants actually need because the numbers on a fertilizer like I said don't correspond to anything that involves a plan it only states how much nutrients are available in that fertilizer so it's a good it's a good gas you know that if you're growing something like a leafy green you definitely want to focus on the nitrogen component because they use that more nitrogen didn't say something like I and onion but if you are growing like a root crop like a carrot or potatoes they're clearly going to need more phosphorous than something like lettuce but just because they need more of it doesn't specify as to how much they need and that's what I really want to wrap your mind around to help you better understand why this is such a big topic and a big misconception because there's absolutely nowhere where you will find a definitive answer as to how much nitrogen is needed or how much potassium is needed and so agronomist soil biologists and and crop scientists had done extensive testing on this and they have said that in a organic in an organic garden if you have five percent of your soil being organic matter that's like compost that that will provide enough nitrogen to grow your crop for the entire year and that doesn't matter which crop you're growing so again that is just 5% organic matter and so when we add supplemental fertilizer it is very important that when we use trifecta plus in our garden what we are doing is we're adding the additional fertilizer that the plant may need and probably does need to fill those voids that then can stay in the soil until the plant needs it without causing harm to the soil and that's why we don't need to go with a 30 30 30 and so I really hope that you all understand this I hope that you can better understand how fertilizing works in the garden and I really do hope that you will take this knowledge grow big or go home with it and and just help to save you money save you stress and help to clear up those misconceptions that are so commonly spread among the gardening community and so I hope you all enjoyed I hope you'll learn something new if you did make sure to share this video with a friend that you think would enjoy it as well make sure to give it a big thumbs up and as always this is luke from the my gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home I'll catch you later see ya bye [Music]

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 51,656

Rating: 4.9069343 out of 5

Keywords: fertilizer, misconception, migardener, misinformation, fertilizing plants, fertilizing crops, nitrogen, potassium, migardener.com, phosphorus, npk, Premiere_Elements_15

Id: 8cb4QnLgCdc

Length: 11min 18sec (678 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 06 2018