Summer is Nearly Here
While the calendar says that summer begins on June 20 (at least in the Northern Hemisphere),many areas of the country are already in thethrongs of summer heat and humidity. Dependingupon where you live, plants that you have plantedare settled in, have good root systems established and are ready to grow!
Understand Your Plants
As gardeners, we can interfere with our plants as much as we help them. The key to being helpful rather than harmful is understanding your plants. I don’t mean that you need to understand yourplants in a new-age psychology way. You need tounderstand the way your plants growtake up water, nutrients, convert sunlight to sugar. That way, you can assist your plants in the specific ways that will help them, and identify problems when they occur.
Dinner Time!
Well-established plants will, at this point, need food. The amount of food your plants need will depend entirely on the quality of your soil. If you did not get a soil test at the beginning of the growing season, now is as good a time as any. Go to your local extension office and pick up a box and a form. Follow the instructions and send in your sample. If possible, ask for a profile of the micro-nutrients in the soil as well as the standard Potassium and Phosphorous levels. (Nitrogen is so mobile within soil, that soil tests cannot give you an accurate reading at any given time.) It could take a couple of weeks for you to receive the results, so in the meantime, you need to select a general fertilizer that will help your plants grow lustrous, leafy foliate that will support the flowers and fruits once they begin forming. The most important nutrients for the beginning stages of plant growth are nitrogen and phosphorous. Nitrogen promotes overall plant growth, and phosphorous is integral to root growth. In order to yield good harvests, you need to start the plant with an adequate supply of each. NEVER feed your plant at the time of planting, as that could burn the plant. Give them a couple of weeks.
Good General Fertilizers
Natural fertilizers that work well and have good nutrient ratio to promote strong root growth are available from our fertilizer reviews page. The N-P-K ratio you should look for is 2-4-1, which means that there is twice as much Phosphorous than Nitrogen, which will promote healthy root growth. These fish-derived seaweed fertilizers are completely natural and provide nutrients to plants in immediately available forms.
