5 Mistakes You Must NEVER Make Fertilizing Your Garden

In this video, I share the top 5 mistakes you must never make fertilizing your garden. Fertilizing a vegetable garden is critical for success, but there is a lot of conflicting and downright bad information out there. How and when should we fertilize? How much fertilizer do we use, and how often? What is the best fertilizer for a vegetable garden? I break it all down and teach you how to fertilize a garden to maximize success while avoiding the biggest fertilizer mistakes that have become so common.

I recommend the following products* for fertilizing vegetables and fertilizing fruit trees:
Espoma PlantTone Fertilizer [5-3-3] (36lb): https://amzn.to/4lgP9PW
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Espoma GardenTone Fertilizer [3-4-4] (2PK, 4lb): https://amzn.to/4jRrqVf
True Organic All Purpose Fertilizer [5-4-5] (4lb): https://amzn.to/4cN2Faq
Alaska Fish Fertilizer [5-1-1] (Gallon): https://amzn.to/4dMdOqV
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AgroThrive General Purpose [3-3-2] (Gal): https://amzn.to/4lNdH3i
AgroThrive Fruit & Flower [3-5-5] (Gal): https://amzn.to/4k6Uzfl
Grower’s Honey [4-3-3] (Gal): https://amzn.to/4jErpDK
Farmer’s Secret Fruit & Bloom [2-15-15] (Gal): https://amzn.to/3EHYtvO
Espoma Bone Meal (10lb): https://amzn.to/4ieYapY
True Organic Blood Meal (3lbs): https://amzn.to/3DvlzVJ
Jack’s All Purpose [20-20-20] (1.5lb): https://amzn.to/4iRWtRc
Jack’s All Purpose [20-20-20] (25lb): https://amzn.to/3ZSJeGW
MiracleGro Tomato [18-18-21] (3lb): https://amzn.to/3EoRYy6
LINEX 56.7″ Self-Watering Planter: https://amzn.to/4hWvRNI
LINEX 67.7″ Self-Watering Planter (featured size): https://amzn.to/4gWhPud
Grow Bags (Black, Many Sizes): https://amzn.to/4a0MHa5
Grow Bags (Tan, Many Sizes): https://amzn.to/3GENxQb
Full Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/themillennialgardener

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Introduction
1:02 Mistake #1: Underfertilizing
3:49 Mistake #2: Overfertilizing
7:16 Mistake #3: Nitrogen Imbalance
11:47 Mistake #4: Synthesized Fertilizers
13:38 Mistake #5: Water Soluble Fertilizers
17:55 The Perfect Fertilizing Routine
20:55 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about fertilizing your vegetable garden, growing fruit trees or want to know about the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

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ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

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#gardening #garden #fertilizer #vegetablegardening #vegetablegarden

Well, after what seemed like an endless winter, the warm weather is finally here. Most of our gardens have been planted out, and now all we have to do is sit back, relax, and wait for the harvest to roll in. Right? Not a chance. We have only just begun, and nothing is more important at this stage than to develop a healthy and consistent fertilizing routine. But fertilizing a garden is so confusing. There is so much conflicting information out there. How do I really know I’m fertilizing my garden the right way? With all of the myths and bad information out there surrounding fertilizers, it is so easy to make a mistake. And I myself have not been immune to making those mistakes over the years. That’s why on today’s video, I’m going to share with you five mistakes I would never make again when fertilizing my vegetable garden. I am going to share these mistakes that I’ve made with you all in hopes that you can learn from them and you won’t make them yourself. If you’re new to the channel, please subscribe, hit the bell for notifications, and check out my Amazon store and Spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom apparel and gear. Mistake number one that gardeners make when fertilizing their vegetable garden is the most common mistake of all, and that is they are simply underfertilizing it. If you have ever suffered from unimpressive yields or small stunted plants or just overall disappointment in your harvest, you’re probably just underfertilizing your plants. So, why do gardeners notoriously underfertilize their garden? Well, let’s look at the facts. Fertilizer costs money. It takes time to apply, and applying it isn’t really a fun process. It’s kind of a chore. All the fun in gardening is in the planning and the harvesting. We love picking out what plants we’re going to grow. We like planting seeds and watching them grow when it’s still cold outside so we can dream of spring. We like the transplanting process because, hey, it’s April and May and the weather’s getting nice. We like the harvest because we get to reap the rewards of our investment. But all the stuff in between like fertilizing, well, that’s just kind of a monotonous chore that we’re not into. So, in the beginning, we are really gung-ho and excited to start our garden, and the weather’s really good, and we can’t wait to be outside after a long winter. So, we baby our plants. We give them attention. We even fertilize them well in the beginning. But then what happens? The spring and the summer drag on. It gets hot. Our plants start getting beaten up. We start taking our garden for granted, and we sort of let it fall by the wayside. And what is worse is time is not on our side. As the season drags on, our plants get larger and larger and they take more and more from the soil. So, we actually need to in many ways increase the amount of fertilizer that we give our plants as they get larger and have higher nutritional demands. But we tend to do the opposite. We’re really into our garden and we pay it attention when it’s young, but then as the plants get larger, we lose our interest and fertilizing falls by the wayside and our plants begin to suffer because of it. The most important thing that you can do for success is to get yourself on a consistent fertilizing routine and stick with it throughout the entire year. So, I like to fertilize my vegetable garden every 2 weeks or twice a month. That is the frequency. So, what I do is I pick one defined day a week. I usually pick a Sunday and then I will fertilize my entire vegetable garden every other Sunday and I will get myself on that schedule and stick with it throughout the year. If you do that, you will likely have the most amount of success. Consistency is everything here. Now, you may be wondering, “Well, that’s great. Now I know the frequency. Now I know the schedule. What do I fertilize my garden with?” Well, I’m going to save that until the end of this video. So, stay tuned until the end of this video. I will show you exactly how I fertilize my vegetable garden, what products I use, and how I apply them. Mistake number two that gardeners make when fertilizing their vegetable garden is the opposite side of the coin. Some gardeners overfertilize their vegetable garden. And this is actually a mistake that is more common with new gardeners and with gardeners with small gardens. If you have a fairly expansive vegetable garden and you’ve been doing this for a pretty long time, it’s very unlikely that you are going to overfertilize your garden because it takes a significant amount of time, effort, and money to fertilize your vegetable garden. So those are limiting factors that kind of naturally keep you in check. But if you have a fairly small garden, it’s probably not much of a time and money expense for you to actually go and fertilize your garden. It’s no big deal. It may only take a few minutes. And that can lead to you overusing and abusing fertilizer products. But why would we purposefully overfertilize our garden? It doesn’t make sense. Well, it’s not like we do it on purpose. It’s just we’re humans. We’re impatient. It goes something like this. Uh, it’s been such a long winter. I’m so tired of eating grocery store produce. I’m dying for a fresh tomato. But these have been in ground for a month and it’s like they are barely growing. At this rate, it’ll be months before I get a fresh tomato. Wait a minute. What if I gave them more fertilizer? That’ll make them grow faster and I’ll be eating tomatoes sooner, right? It is true that if you generously feed your plants, you can help grow them along. Just like if you give somebody excess calories, they can become bigger and stronger more quickly. But if you overfertilize your plants, you can create havoc in your soil. You can create all types of nutrient imbalances. You can have too much nitrogen. You can have too much phosphorus. You can have buildup of heavy metals. And these can cause all sorts of problems. You can only make your plants grow so quickly by giving them fertilizer. And the typical case, especially this time of year in April and May, is giving them more fertilizer beyond what you should give them every two weeks or twice a month like I already described, is not going to help your case. The issue this time of year that most of us are running into is that our day lengths are not optimized and the temperatures are not optimized. The plants aren’t getting maximum daylength and it still gets pretty cool at night, which kind of slows down their metabolic rate because plants are like cold-blooded animals. They grow based on temperature. So if your area hasn’t warmed up sufficiently yet and your day length still isn’t 11 12 hours long, well the plants just are going to crawl along until your climate meets those conditions and dumping more fertilizer on your plants won’t help anything. You are probably just hurting your cause. You just have to be patient and you have to wait for things to warm up and for us to get nice long summer days. So just maintain that every two week fertilizing schedule. Sit back, relax, and stay the course. Everything will happen in due time. We are naturally impatient people. I’m a naturally impatient person. That’s why I learned years ago I like to start a few additional potted tomato plants about a month early out on my sun room or you can start them in your garage and you can just wheel them out in the middle of the day. This allows me to get a big jump start on my harvest. So, I don’t have to be really impatient with my tomatoes growing in the vegetable garden. I can get an early harvest off of all of these first, and this keeps me from making a rash decision and going to town and pushing things too hard in my annual vegetable garden. Mistake number three that so many gardeners make when fertilizing their garden is they give their plants way too much nitrogen. Anytime you buy a fertilizer product, on the bag or the box, there will be three numbers separated by two dashes. This is the NPK ratio which represents elements on the periodic table. N stands for nitrogen and it is predominantly responsible for leafy green growth on a plant. P stands for phosphorus. This is primarily responsible for the blooming and fruing cycle as well as the development of roots on the plants. And K stands for potassium which is primarily responsible for the overall metabolic health of the plant. The NPK ratio that you give your plants can have profound effects on their behavior. Particularly if you give them too much nitrogen and you are growing a plant that flowers and fruits like a tomato or a pepper or things like fruit trees. If you give them a very high ratio of nitrogen relative to P and K, you can have yourself giant bushy dark green plants that are absolutely enormous and look lush and great, but they have very few flowers and very little fruit production. This happens all the time. And the biggest offender on the market is this Miracle Grow allpurpose fertilizer. Reading this box, you may think that this is an all-purpose fertilizer, but it is not. It has an NPK ratio of 24816, meaning it has three times more nitrogen than phosphorus. If you remember from earlier in this video, nitrogen is responsible for leafy green growth and branches and stems on a plant, whereas phosphorus is responsible primarily for the development of flowers, fruits, and roots. So if you give your plants something that has three times more nitrogen than phosphorus in such a high concentration like this, you are going to give your your plants so much nitrogen that they develop into a huge bush and have very little flowers and fruits. So giving a fertilizer like this to something like a head of lettuce actually wouldn’t be all that bad of a decision in terms of the NPK ratio because something like this you’re trying to grow big leafy greens. But if you give this to something like tomatoes or peppers or melons or cucumbers or zucchini, be prepared to have a pretty lousy harvest. When fertilizing your vegetable garden, try to keep the NPK ratio as balanced as possible. So it’s about a 1:1 ratio. So, for example, an all-purpose granular organic fertilizer like this garden tone, which is 344 NPK, that is a very balanced ratio and it is great for allpurpose fertilizing. Or if you must use a processed fertilizer like this Miracle Grow, at least use the Miracle Grow tomato, which is 1821, and it is much closer to a 1:1 ratio. If you have to use something like this, I recommend Jax 2020, which is actually what I use. I think it’s a superior product and it is a perfectly balanced 1:1 ratio. But if you just need a small box off the shelf and you want to use a fertilizer like this, this is probably your best all-purpose choice. This is the true Miracle Grow allpurpose. But please keep in mind that the stronger the fertilizer and the more processed it is, the more it will influence your plant’s behavior. For example, this granular organic fertilizer right here is a 344 and this one is a 533. Well, because these are granular organics, they are not true fertilizers in their raw form. They have to be broken down by the soil microbiology and they will trickle feed your plants for weeks or months. So, a 344 versus a 533 because the numbers are so close together and because they break down so slowly, they are not going to greatly increase the behavior of your plants. So whether you use either of these as an all-purpose fertilizer, it really doesn’t matter. Just get the one that is on the best price sale. It’s these strong water- soluble synthesized fertilizers that you really have to be careful with because you mix these into a watering can, you pour them over the roots of your plants and they will immediately go to work because they have been processed. Your plants can uptake them immediately. So the difference between your 1818 1821 and your 24816 because they will immediately influence your plants and quickly uptake them, they can have dramatic effects on your plants. So you need to be really careful when using products like these and make sure that the NPK ratios are in proper balance for what you are growing. And that leads me to mistake number four. Only using water soluble synthesized fertilizers like these in your vegetable garden. If these are the only fertilizer products that you are using in your vegetable garden, you are doing it a disservice. That’s because the primary focus that we should have as gardeners is to feed our soil. We should be feeding our soil, which in turn feeds the plants. And the way we do this primarily is by adding a few inches of compost to our garden all throughout the year and also adding in a few inches of mulch and chopping and dropping the old dead and decaying plants around our garden because that will enrich the soil and that will add organic matter back to the soil and feed our soil’s microbiome leading to healthier and healthier plants every single season. Soil should get better with time. Organic granular fertilizers like these are actually good for our soil because they’re made out of things like bone, blood, feathers, and manure. So, they’re pelleted ingredients that when you add them to your soil, they actually feed the soil microbiome, which decomposes them over time and helps increase that healthy soil microbiome, thereby enriching your soil. And while fertilizer products like these are not harmful to your plants and soil as long as you are not overfertilizing and abusing them, as I discussed earlier in this video, well, they don’t really add anything positive directly to your soil either. Because they are processed, they are made to target the plants and be immediately uptaken by them. So, they are not actually increasing your soil microbiome directly. They’re just not adding all of the good stuff to your garden like compost, mulch, and organic granular fertilizers are. Products like these are more like a tool. While there are certain applications where they can provide benefit, the foundation of your fertilizer routine definitely should not be built upon things like this. And mistake number five that many gardeners are making when fertilizing their vegetable garden is not using water- soluble fertilizers like these in their garden. Hold on, plot twist. What am I talking about? Well, like I said, these fertilizer products should be more looked at like tools. You wouldn’t use a circular saw to build every little part of your house, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some times where you need to use a circular saw to build your house. And some examples where water- soluble fertilizers like this are very, very good is when your plants are suffering nutrient deficiencies and they need a quick pickme up because your granular organics are going to take weeks if not months to work. Sometimes you have a washed out garden from heavy rain or you’ve been underfertilizing for a long period of time and you need to correct a nutrient deficiency right now. You are strategically trying to boost the flowering and fruit set of a plant by applying a bloom booster product right when they are entering the blooming phase. For example, products like these that have a lowend but high P&K numbers can genuinely increase the amount of flowers and fruit set on your flowering and fruing plants. or you are growing in a container garden. I don’t care if you are growing annuals in grow bags or you’re growing fruit trees in hard nursery containers. If all you are doing is giving your container garden granular organics, you are making a big mistake. That’s because granular organic fertilizers have to be broken down by the soil microbiology, the fungi and the bacteria in your soil in order for them to break down and your plants to uptake them. And when you’re growing in containers, you are dealing with a very limited soil microbiome. So because we have poor microbiology in our container gardens versus a real inground garden, the granular organics are not as effective. Yes, you can still use and should still use some granular organics in your container gardens like your all-purpose balance fertilizers and things like bone meal, but you need to supplement them with water soluble fertilizers because these plants need food and the soil because we’re dealing with such a limited amount. Well, it just can’t do all the heavy lifting on its own. You need to add something water soluble that has been broken down so your plants can uptake it immediately. So, when growing plants in a container garden, while you still should make the foundation of your fertilizing routine, your all-purpose granular organics and other organics like bone meal, you need to supplement them with something water soluble. Now, if you just want the easy way out, something like Miracle Grow tomato 18, 18, 21 or your Jack’s 20 2020 is perfect. You can just mix it in a watering can and you can give them a half strength or a full strength dose every other week. there’s that 2 week schedule and then just work your organics into your container garden along with them. Now, that being said, there are 100% organic water-soluble fertilizers that you can give your container garden if you want to stay completely organic. For example, one of my favorite things to use in my container garden is Alaska fish fertilizer, which is a 511 NPK. This is perfect to use as a water-soluble fertilizer, but the problem is you can’t really use it on its own if you’re growing fruing vegetables like tomatoes, melons, peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, things like that if you’re growing them in containers or if you’re growing fruit trees because it is too high in nitrogen on its own. So, what I like to do is I like to mix my Alaska fish fertilizer 511 and then give it a half strength dose of Jax 2020 2020 in the same watering can to balance out the NPK ratio. That way, it’ll be a mostly organic feeding schedule and it’s fairly cost-effective because you can get this readily on Amazon or at most big box stores and you can buy the Jack 2020 2020 or the Miracle Grow tomato in bulk and you can save yourself some money that way. If you want to stay 100% organic, you can buy organic water-soluble fertilizers, things like Agro Thrive. That’s one of many examples. They’re going to be a little bit more expensive because they are blended, but that’s a way you can stay 100% organic if you don’t mind the additional cost. I’ll link to all of these different products down in the video description for your convenience, so you will have a comprehensive selection and you can make an informed decision as to what you want to do. Now, I will show you exactly how I fertilize my plants. And remember, I do this every 2 weeks, twice a month, without fail on a routine. The first product I use is a granular all-purpose organic fertilizer. Each plant gets one tablespoon of this. Then I supplement that with an organic bone meal, which has lots of phosphorus and calcium, which is great for root and fruit development. Then in a watering can after I mix all of those granular organics into the soil, I add Alaska fish fertilizer and a half strength dose of this Jack’s 20 2020, which this is the big bulk bag. It says JR Peters 2020 2020, but it’s the same stuff. I’ll show you how to apply it. So, I’m going to target the root area of each of these plants. All of these plants were planted a little over two weeks ago, so they are due for fertilizing. And I’m going to use one of these green scoopers, which is 2 tablespoons. So each plant is going to get half of this scooper of organic granular fertilizer. And I’m going to layer that in a ring around the plants because that is where the plant’s root area actually is. Then we will follow up with half a tablespoon of bone meal in that same ring pattern that you see right here. And then after that has been placed, we are lightly just going to cover it up with our fingertips. And then I’m going to go around to all of the tomato plants in this bed and I’m going to add these granular organics. Then in this 2gallon watering can right here, I put in 3 tablespoons of fish fertilizer and 1 tspoon of Jack’s 2020 2020 and mixed it very well. I’m then going to apply this watering can full of fertilizer around the root areas of all my individual tomato plants. Now, I have 15 tomato plants in this bed. And because they are so small yet, this one 2gallon watering can will be enough to water them all in. But as the tomato plants grow and they start bearing fruit, I will have to increase the amount of nutrients. So towards the end of the year, it will probably take me two full watering cans in order to water all of them in because of the increased nutrient demands. And that right there are five mistakes to never make when fertilizing a vegetable garden and what I think is the most timeefficient and costeffective way to fertilize your vegetable garden for maximum results. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please make sure to hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring the notification bell so you’re notified when I release more videos like these. Again, if you’re curious about any of the products that I featured in this video, I place direct links to all of them down in the video description for your convenience. If you’re curious about anything I use in real life in my garden, everything I use is linked in my Amazon storefront down in the video description. So, expand the video description, click on the Amazon storefront link, and you’ll see everything that I use in real life. And while you’re down there, please check out my spreadshop for custom merch if you want to support my channel. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. We’re here at the beach. You having a good day, Dale? You having fun? Waiting in the water and he got his paws all wet. He’s waiting in the water and he got his paws all wet. Say hi, Dale. You got sand in here. Tails nice and relaxed. We’re just having a nice day at the beach. Mommy also brought some frozen fruit so we could have a little picnic. D, your snorer is so sandy. Let’s see. I brought some frozen strawberries and bananas. You want a strawberry? Do you know where we’re at? Is it ice cream treat time? It’s ice cream treat time. It’s ice cream time. And go to town here. Heat it down here. There you go.