We have a short growing season in Michigan. Whether your garden is for floral beauty or putting food on the table, fertilizing properly is hugely important.

Remember the old saying, “You are what you eat?” Well, the same is true for our garden-grown vegetables and to some degree our flowers. A potato is high in potassium. It’s no surprise then that a potato needs to “eat” potassium during its growing season.

So let’s look at how to fertilize our gardens.

The very first thing that all gardeners should do is know the pH of your soil. You will want to know the pH of the soil in each of your garden areas. The pH may be much different from the vegetable garden in the middle, high area of your yard to the yard’s edge garden next to low woodlands. There is much debate as to what pH actually stands for, but two likely meanings are “power of hydrogen” or “potential of hydrogen.”

But what you really want to just know is the pH of your garden soil. The pH of your soil will let you know if and what nutrients are available to your plants. For most gardening, try to get the soil pH between 6.5 and 7.0. That’s just slightly acidic soil. But if the pH is between 6.5 and 7.5, your fertilizing efforts will generally work.

I recommend having two fertilizers on hand, a balanced fertilizer and a higher phosphorus, lower nitrogen fertilizer.

Triple 12 fertilizer has equal parts of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (photo provided by Abele Greenhouse)

A fertilizer will have an analysis with three numbers. An example is the balance fertilizer of 12-12-12 or 19-19-19. These are called “triple 12″ and “triple 19.” They are the same fertilizer with just more fertilizing nutrients in the triple 19.

The first number is always the percentage of nitrogen in the fertilizer. The second number is the percentage of phosphorus. The third number is the percentage of potassium.

You can use triple 12 or triple 19 to fertilize most garden plants for the first growing season fertilizing, which you should do now. Apply this fertilizer to all annual flower beds and planters now. Also put this fertilizer on all vegetables now.

Since we are talking about triple 12 or triple 19, it’s a granular fertilizer. You can hand apply this fertilizer to your garden. Remember to wear gloves. I also wear a dust mask because the fertilizer dust is very irritating to your nasal passages. There isn’t an exact amount of fertilizer for the home gardener. You want to apply enough fertilizer to boost plant growth but not waste fertilizer. I go by a visual amount. I like to see many fertilizer pellets on the ground around the plant. You should still see much more soil than fertilizer pellets, but plenty of fertilizer pellets. If you want an amount, probably one-half cup around each plant would do it. Put the fertilizer from the stem to half way out to the ends of the branches. This should give you the fastest uptake of the fertilizer.

It’s important to lightly mix the fertilizer into the top of the soil, and then water the fertilized soil. This will also keep you from wasting money. Fertilizer laying on top of the soil could have the nitrogen portion of the fertilizer pellet turn into a gas and go up into the air. With current fertilizer prices, that would be like you taking a five dollar bill and throwing it up in the air.

So get a nice application of a balanced fertilizer on your gardens now. This will cause all parts of any plant to get bigger.

Then, in a few weeks, you’ll want to start to put specific fertilizers on certain plants.

A fertilizer specifically labeled for tomatoes will also help peppers, eggplants and other summer vegetables.

Tomato fertilizers have more phosphorus and potassium. It's hard to read, but this fertilizer has an analysis of 18-18-21. (photo provided by Abele Greenhouse)

The vegetable garden favorites of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini squash, cucumbers and other individual vegetables coming from a single flower want a lot of phosphorus when they start blooming. If you have blooms on your tomatoes and peppers now, you should probably go to the high phosphorus fertilizer. For most of us the most readily available fertilizer of this analysis is a liquid fertilizer label “tomato fertilizer.” The analysis is usually 10-20-10 or even 10-30-10. The phosphorus promotes blooming and vegetable development. So yes, you can use this fertilizer also on your annual flowers and planters.

The vegetable garden favorites of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, zucchini squash, cucumbers and other individual vegetables coming from a single flower want a lot of phosphorus when they start blooming. If you have blooms on your tomatoes and peppers now, you should probably go to the high phosphorus fertilizer. For most of us the most readily available fertilizer of this analysis is a liquid fertilizer label “tomato fertilizer.” The analysis is usually 10-20-10 or even 10-30-10. The phosphorus promotes blooming and vegetable development. So yes, you can use this fertilizer also on your annual flowers and planters.

I water planters and hanging baskets with the liquid fertilizer just enough to have a few drops of liquid come out of the bottom of the pot. If you are fertilizing a tomato or other plant in the ground, water about half the amount you would normally water with straight water. Don’t water any more or you will again waste your fertilizer and money. I’ve found the plants take up the liquid fertilizer better if they are a little thirsty.

Sweet corn is the odd common vegetable that many of you don’t get fertilized properly. If you are growing sweet corn you should probably get your hands on a high nitrogen fertilizer. When applied properly to corn, you will get a tall plant and a big ear. The most readily available high nitrogen fertilizer is 46-0-0. This fertilizer is all nitrogen, and forty five percent nitrogen. Put a band of fertilizer along the side of the corn row, on each side of the row. It is very important to mix this fertilizer into the soil, but don’t do it so aggressively to break the corn plant roots. It is also super important to water the soil at the fertilizer. If we have a good rain coming, you can also wait until just before that rain.

The main lesson you should take away is our plants grow aggressively in our growing season. You spend a lot of time getting them in the ground and getting them to grow to this point. They will need fertilizer to have a satisfying crop or flower garden. If you don’t fertilize now, you pretty well missed your chance by early August.

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