Fertilizer West Lafayette IN

Many people consider fertilizer tobe a vital factor in the equation to successful gardening. There's no doubt that applying fertilizer to your lawn, vegetable garden, houseplants or flowers has many benefits, but too much of a good thing can be worse than too little. You'll also need to know which kind to apply--there seem to be hundreds of different ones.

1. How to read the bag. On each bag of fertilizer, there is a ratio, such as 10-5-10 or 29-6-4. These numbers tell you the ratio of nutrients in the fertilizer. The first number denotes the amount of nitrogen in the fertilizer. A ten-pound bag of 10-5-10 fertilizer would contain 10%, or one pound, of nitrogen. The second number is the phosphorus ratio. Thus, the ten-pound bag of 10-5-10 would contain 5%, or eight ounces, of phosphorus. The last number is the potassium ratio. The same bag of fertilizer would contain 10%, or one pound, of potassium. This number is also sometimes called the NPK number. The remainder of the material in the fertilizer is trace minerals and inert filler.
   
   
2. What does nitrogen do? Nitrogen promotes the growth of foliage. A fertilizer with a higher ratio of nitrogen would be used when you want a lot of top-growth. This is the type of fertilizer you might apply to your lawn in spring. You wouldn't want to apply a high-nitrogen fertilizer in the fall, when the roots of your grass should be strong and deep in preparation for winter. Slow-release nitrogen is preferable to quick-release nitrogen for two reasons. The first reason is that there's less chance of burning your plants with slow-release nitrogen because the grains have been specially coated to break down slowly. The second reason isthat, since it breaks down slowly, itfeeds the soil, not the plants.
   
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Author: Tonya Sandersfeld