fertilizer Fertilizer Questions?

 I often see posts where a person has over fertilized their plants and then wants to know whats wrong with them.  I just wanted to share this pic to illustrate a point - Fertilizer is not "plant food",  its really more of a soil restoration
These plants were all started roughly the same time OVER 3 MONTHS AGO in a neutral seed starter mix, no available nitrogen and little to non other nutrients.  My planting out has been delayed and I started re potting about a week ago in basically the same mix but with a small amount of granulated fertilizer mixed in.  You can clearly see the difference in color, also the unfertilized plants have some moisture issues since the plant isn't functioning at peak performance.  However, what I really want you to take note of is the size difference.  There really isn't one, some of the unfertilized plants are actually taller than the fertilized ones and they have started to flower.  The point to all of this is that plants need very little in the way of nutrients to be happy and do their thing.  You cant jack your plant up with fertilizer and think its going to become a beast, in fact the opposite will most likely happen as you lock up other nutrients with excess nitrogen.  Fertilizers are good but remember your not "feeding" the plants, your restoring the 2-3% of the plants total make up it took from the soil, so go easy.  I might not even bother to re-pot all of them as I'll be planting out next week and I'm confident they will all make a full recovery. 
 
side-note - The tomatoes quickly out grew a size that they could support them selves entirely without nutrients. These were started about a month ago, this time in the same mix as the re-potted peppers which I will do from the beginning from now on.

The kids are alright - they just need room

Hey Galveston, thanks for sharing. What ratio of you use of compost and soil? Thanks

I'm in Texas as well here in San Antonio. Do you buy or make your own compost? I was thinking about getting the ladybug potting soil and mixing with their cow compost with some perlite.

ReaperTheRed said:

Hey Galveston, thanks for sharing. What ratio of you use of compost and soil? Thanks

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I use half and half plus I add in some composted cow manure as it contains very finely shredded tree mulch.

InFamousElGuapo said:

I'm in Texas as well here in San Antonio. Do you buy or make your own compost? I was thinking about getting the ladybug potting soil and mixing with their cow compost with some perlite.

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I make my own compost here. I usually get some cheap but very good Texas made potting soil from the local hardware store that goes three 40lb bags for ten bucks...mix in some of my compost...and if needed ad some composted cow manure. No perlite as the composted cow manure contains finely shredded tree limbs so it drains perfectly.