The Truth About Fertilizer
Whether you have a vegetable garden, a small flowerbed, or just a lawn to maintain, you need to know about fertilizer.
What’s in fertilizer?
The tree essential nutrients in fertilizer are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Each plays a role in building healthy plants. Nitrogen encourages growth of leaves and stems, while phosphorus and potassium increase flowering and root growth.
When to apply fertilizer to your lawn:
Most lawns need to be fertilized four times during the growing season. A great way to remember when to fertilize is with the four holidays that occur in the spring/summer: Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. The second application in June will kill the dandelions and also feed your lawn. The third application in July should be applied to kill the grubs and insects, in addition to feeding your lawn. Healthy, strong turf has a better root system to combat heat, cold, drought, and other stresses. A quality granular, controlled-release fertilizer allows your grass to grow evenly, without starvation periods or heavy growth spurts. Controlled, even growth also minimizes grass clippings!
Flowers and Vegetable Gardening:
Just like all living things, plants must receive nutrients to survive. In addition to light and water, they need a regular diet of minerals and other elements. No matter how good your soil is, the nutrients contained in it are consumed by the plants that grow there. By applying fertilizer on a regular basis, you replenish those nutrients. This way, the plants can continue to grow and produce foliage, flowers, and fruit. We recommend Bone Meal fertilizer. Bone Meal produces nutrients for the root system of your plants and should be applied three times a year: April, July, and August. This will keep your plants healthy and strong throughout the growing season.
Bone Meal and many other fertilizers are available at The Gardener’s Choice. Stop by and see how we can help you make your garden grow!
| << last article | back to summer | next article >> |