Fertilizing gardens is a popular topic and every gardening book and website will give you advice. There are thousands of products on the market claiming they are the best ones for your garden. The problem is that almost none of this information is correct. Most gardeners are wasting time and money on fertilizer they don’t need. Even worse is the fact that they are wasting a valuable natural resource and polluting the environment.
Plant Specific NPK Ratios
If you go to buy fertilizer you will see plant specific fertilizer. For example, many companies supply a tomato fertilizer. If you want to grow a specific plant you can look it up on the internet and someone will tell you that it needs a specific ratio, like a 5-1-2 for your daisies. Your beans need one ratio, and your tulips need another. This is all based on the idea that different plants use different amounts of nutrients. It is true that different plants use different amounts of nutrients but this advice misses the main reason for fertilizing as explained in the next section.