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Nutrients

Here's the Cheat Sheet:

The Big Three:  Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium

  • Nitrogen (N):  builds leafy green growth.  Green leaves use the sun to produce sugars to fee the rest of the plant

  • Phosphorus (P):  helps the plant produce roots, flowers, and fruit.  Usually, what  is what you're harvesting.

  • Potassium (K):   supports overall plant health and stress tolerance and disease resistance. ​

    • Quick Trick?  N  - P  - K     =  Up - Down - All Around. 

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  • Nutrients are the building blocks, not a magic fix. If sunlight, water, temperature, and soil are all working, nutrients let the plant actually build itself, leaves, roots, flowers, fruit. If any of those other four are off, more fertilizer just sits there unused, or worse, burns the plant that's already struggling.​​

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  • More is not better. Plants take up what they need, not what you give them. Overfeed nitrogen and you get soft, lush growth that pests and disease love, and fruiting plants that put all their energy into leaves instead of what you actually wanted to eat.  Studies show that there's a sweet spot for compost and fertilizer.  Dr. Lord Abbey of Dalhousie University published this article : 

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  • Micronutrients matter too, even in tiny amounts. Calcium, magnesium, iron, and a handful of others are needed in small quantities, but a deficiency in even one shows up fast. Blossom end rot, that sunken black spot on tomatoes, is a calcium uptake problem.  Check out this chart 

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  • Feed the soil, not just the plant. Synthetic fertilizer feeds the plant directly and immediately, but does nothing for the biology in the soil doing the long term work. Compost and organic amendments feed both, slower, but building something that lasts instead of something you have to keep reapplying forever. 

    • Don't forget the Green Revolution, where the Petrochemical industry targeted developing countries with easy to use chemical fertilizers.  Farmers traded living soil, teeming with life, for a chemical fertilizer habit.  Once that trade was made, the bill could never be paid.

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  • Timing matters as much as amount. Feeding a dormant plant, a heat stressed plant, or a plant in the dead of winter wastes fertilizer and can even damage roots. Feed when the plant is actively growing and can actually use it.  And NEVER feed a seedling.  Seedlings have their own lunch, called the endosperm , which provides them with exactly what they need to emerge as a tiny baby plant.  

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Rule of thumb: nutrients complete the job, they don't replace the other four

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