Fertilizer Basics
Your soil is the basis for all your gardens, whether a container garden, window garden or outdoor garden. The soil that you plant in contains nutrients, minerals, and materials that plants need to make them grow properly. Over time, your soil will be depleted of these materials and nutrients and you'll need to fertilize the soil, your gardens and your plants for them to continue to thrive.

Posted Monday, April 10, 2006

To add to your plants nutritional supply you will need to fertilize the soil that they live in. Fertilizers come in a wide variety of applications such as pellets, sticks, liquids and combinations. There are organic fertilizers, synthetic fertilizers, and multipurpose fertilizers.

There is no specific fertilizer for any one type of plant, as a plant's needs will vary from area to area, grow zone to grow zone and from garden to garden. The basic needs for any plant are described when you purchase the seeds, bulbs or plants for your gardens.

Between the two, organic and synthetic fertilizer, they are both going to condition and improve the soil for the plants to grow, but synthetic fertilizers are just easier to handle as they are prepackaged and available in pellets or granules spreadable by hand.

Organic fertilizers are going to supply and enrich the soil by releasing nutrients that were once alive back into the soil. Plants that are decaying, manure, animals that are decomposing, etc., are all types of organic materials, fertilizers that you can add to you soil.

Organic fertilizers are available in their raw form and more recently in a pellet type of fertilizer. You most often are going to mix organic fertilizers into the soil as you are working with the plants. Unfortunately, organic fertilizers can be tainted with weed seeds or plants that you might not want in your garden. Some of the most popular organic fertilizers are soybean, fishmeal, animal manures, compost, feather meal, bone meal, and cottonseed fertilizers.

Synthetic fertilizers will be a combination of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. The numbers will be written on the bag or box that you purchase in the manner of 5-5-5 or 10-15-10 and the number will represent how much nitrogen to phosphorus to potassium is contained in the fertilizer you are purchasing.

Every plant has different needs and the different types of fertilizer will meet these individual needs of your plants, vegetables, and bushes. You can always do a little research to find what will work best for your plants, or experiment.