7 Fertilizer Mistakes That RUIN Your Vegetable Garden

Are your plants looking sad, stunted, or just not producing? You might be making one of these common fertilizing mistakes — and trust me, I’ve made them all. 😅. For more info, visit WWW.GARDENGUIDE.COM

In this video, I break down the biggest fertilizer mistakes gardeners make in vegetable gardens — from overfeeding and bad timing to ignoring your soil’s actual needs. Whether you’re growing tomatoes in raised beds or lettuce in pots, this guide will help you feed your plants the right way and avoid stunting your harvest.

🌿 What you’ll learn:

-Why more fertilizer isn’t always better
-How to properly water before and after feeding
-How container gardens lose nutrients faster
-When to fertilize (and when not to)
-The hidden dangers of synthetic-only routines
-How to read deficiency signs in your plants
-Why soil testing is a game-changer

MENTIONED LINKS
www.gardenguide.com

Neptune’s Harvest: https://www.neptunesharvest.com/shop.html
ENTER CODE: NLG05

Test Kit: https://amzn.to/409P73y

MENTIONED VIDEOS
Tomato Leaf Curl: https://youtu.be/lqAaRrvDPAo
Transform your Tomatoes with this ONE ingredient: https://youtu.be/hzzizV1LFds

hey guys today we’re going to talk about something that I wish someone would have discussed with me years ago and that is fertilizer mistakes and I don’t care how green your thumb is if you’re making even one of these mistakes you could be either setting your plants up for failure or killing them outright and I know you try to do everything right you plant the seeds you water you feed them and something’s still off so let me walk you through some of the mistakes I’ve made over the years so you don’t have to make them and your vegetables can thrive this year the first one is overfeeding when love turns toxic this is by far the most common mistake I hear from viewers all the time um because it’s easy to do it’s easy to overfertilize fertilizer companies make it sound so simple it makes them sound like a miracle solution throw the fertilizer on there and bam big juicy tomatoes but the truth is more is not better in fact overfertilizing is probably one of the fastest ways to harm or even kill your plants i remember way back I was trying to have the biggest juiciest tomatoes between a couple of my friends and so I poured on the fertilizer thinking that was going to make it happen the problem was I got big huge beautiful green plants and no tomatoes i basically gave them a nitrogen overdose too much nitrogen promotes leafy growth at the expense of flowers and fruit and in some cases especially with synthetic fertilizers it can burn the roots it can cause nutrient lockout and lead to yellow leaves or stunted plants so what do you do instead always follow the directions on the label less is often more and if you’re new to this start off weak start off half strength especially for young plants and then see how they react keep an eye on them they’ll tell you if they look happy then they’re enjoying it if they look like they could use a little bit more give them another half strength dose if they look stressed back off a little bit now some of you know that we have launched garden.com which is everything you need to know about all the plants you’re already growing and one of the things we tell you in there is how much to fertilize per plant what plant a tomato a pepper basil they all like different amounts of fertilization and so you can go onto our guide for free figure out the plant you’re growing and learn what fertilizer and how much of it that particular plant wants so I’ll leave a link below but it’s pretty simple garden.com all right the second mistake is not watering when fertilizing here’s something a lot of people miss your soil should be moist when you’re fertilizing liquid fertilizer or dry especially dry especially synthetic fertilizers again they can cause the roots to burn if it hits the plant full strength the salts in the fertilizer pull moisture out of the roots essentially burning them from the inside out your plants will wilt they’ll yellow they’ll just look off of course again this is mostly with synthetic fertilizer organic fertilizer is a lot more gentle so if you’re new to this or if you’re not I think you should be using organic anyway but for this reason especially it’s much more gentle on the plants the ingredients are natural and they just naturally aren’t strong enough to burn like a chemical fertilizer will but watering well before and after even with synthetic fertilizers can reduce the risk of burning it also just helps the nutrients dissolve and it gets them deeper into the soil where you want the roots to go you want the roots to go deep from deep watering and you want those to be the roots that are pulling in the nutrients so summing that part up water first especially if the soil is dry apply your granular or liquid fertilizer and then water again afterwards again that’s going to flush those nutrients down into the deeper root zone number three is forgetting to fertilize container grown plants more often than inground or raised bed plants and the reason is every time you water it actually flushes the nutrients down deeper that’s in the case of inground or raised beds but the thing about that is the roots can still grow deeper to get that those nutrients but in a pot every time you water more and more nutrients leech through the holes in the bottom of the pot now you need those holes there for drainage but unfortunately the nutrients leave there as well this is a citrus tree in a container and it’s doing okay but it is starting to get yellow i haven’t fertilized in probably 2 months that’s a no no especially with containers so with containers I usually use a half strength especially if it hasn’t been fertilized in a while i’m not going to shock it i’m going to use a half strength fertilizer and I’m going to do that every other week um you could do it every week if you want to develop a habit of every Monday I’m going to fertilize all my containers i really should do that you know with my ADHD brain it would help me to develop a pattern so some tips for containers when you first plant something in a container you want to mix in a slowrelease fertilizer now I use Neptune’s Harvest crab and lobster formula and their kelp meal um there’s all different kinds of pieces uh sizes of pieces of the crab and lobster shells all natural so some of it goes to work right away and some of the bigger pieces they’ll feed the plant over the first few months of its life and then again you know I come through with a liquid fertilizer i should do it on a more regular basis but look life happens and I don’t and you may not either and it’s okay but you also want to look for signs like this saying “Hey I need a little bit of food.” So throughout the season I feed a liquid fertilizer either the tomato and veg formula by Neptune’s Harvest or the Rose and Flowering if you if it’s fruiting time rose and flowering formula works uh well for vegetables in the fruing stage i have discounts for all these products i’ll leave a link to those down below as well all right the fourth mistake is fertilizing at the wrong time timing matters you know fertilizing a new seedling right after you transplanted it not the greatest idea again organic fertilizer is more forgiving but that seedling is still getting used to its new spot and it doesn’t need to be hit with anything else it has to worry about or deal with or take up right thin like I said slow release granular fertilizers are great for planting time because they’re not going to be there and available the moment the plant gets in the ground but no liquids and no synthetic granules that will dissolve right away and the same goes for feeding your plant when it isn’t actively growing you’re just wasting product and possibly encouraging more problems here’s a better timeline for seedlings wait till they have two to three sets of true leaves and then use a quarter strength liquid organic fertilizer after transplanting wait 1 to two weeks before fertilizing with any quick absorbing fertilizer so roots can settle during active growth and flowering every 2 to 3 weeks in the ground um or every week with a half strength solution for containers now late in the season or during heat waves you want to scale back on how much you’re fertilizing because uh during heat waves they’re already stressed out so don’t add to it by fertilizing just keep them watered get them through the heat wave maybe put some shade cloth over them and then once the heat dies down then you can go back to your fertilizer schedule the fifth mistake uh for fertilizing is never testing your soil you wouldn’t take medicine without knowing what’s wrong right but that’s basically what we’re doing when we throw fertilizer on a garden that we have no idea what the soil makeup is in terms of nutrients your soil might already have plenty of phosphorus or potassium u it might be so acidic that the all nutrients are locked out no matter what’s in the soil there’s plenty of home tests that are fairly inexpensive i’ll try to link one below that take no time at all to find out what’s in your soil at least of the NPK the nitrogen the phosphorus and the potassium and usually it comes with a pH test as well you can also send a soil sample to your local extension office and they can do the test for you and based on the results you can add what’s actually needed and skip what isn’t so you can save money by not giving your plants what they don’t need this one step alone can reduce waste it can save money it’s a win-win so I’ve talked a little bit in this video i’ve gone back and forth talking about synthetic or organic it’s going to be easier for you and so the next mistake has to do with that it’s using synthetic fertilizer and forgetting soil life synthetic versus organic isn’t just a health decision um it’s probably one of the main decisions i would rather use something that’s organic because we know something organic and something natural is not going to go into a vegetable and then go into us and do something we don’t want it to do we don’t necessarily know that about chemical or synthetic fertilizers but that aside it is scientifically proven that organic fertilizers feed the soil life and then in turn the soil feeds the plants long-term synthetic use can harm microbial life reduce soil structure and lead to nutrient dependency plants become junkies needing a hit every week just to keep going it can also cause wild leafy stem growth which looks good at first but then you’ll notice it starts to get weak flop fast growth means weak cells and those weak cells cannot support uh a plant’s growth especially when it comes to fruing weak plants are also more susceptible to pests and disease it’s almost like fertilizer companies also own pesticide companies so the solution is to mix in compost worm castings natural fertilizer like I mentioned the Neptune’s harvest and then mulch with straw or wood shavings or anything organic that is going to break down throughout the season and also feed the soil healthy soil equals healthier plants with fewer problems number seven is ignoring signs of deficiency or simply misreading them i already told you about this guy so I could ignore this but I’m not going to i’m putting it on my list on my phone for tomorrow to fertilize all of my container citrus here so we’ll start with yellow leaves yellow leaves can mean a nitrogen deficiency they could also mean overwatering now I know for sure with our hot weather our dry weather and in a pot like this this is not overwatered but if you’re not sure just dig a little hole here stick your finger a couple inches down see if it’s sppy and wet if it’s not it’s most likely a nitrogen deficiency if your leaves are purple there’s a couple of things it could be a phosphorus issue you’re missing phosphorus or just cold weather sometimes if the leaves are curling up like the ones on this tomato here it might be a lack of potassium most likely it’s an environmental problem so it’s either hot or dry uh went from too much water to not enough water i did a video all about tomato leaf curl last week i’ll link it down in the video description the thing is we jump to fertilizer immediately when it could be other things again garden.com is going to help you identify some of this these things so you don’t have to waste your fertilizer so just make sure you look at your watering habits the light the weather pests if every one of those checks out then think about possible fertilizer issues so here’s the bottom line fertilizer can be your garden’s best friend or its biggest enemy it all comes down to balance and a watchful eye from the gardener feeding your garden should be like feeding your body consistent thoughtful and tailored to its real needs keep in mind that using organic feed over synthetic it’s easier to maintain that balance it also feeds the soil which in turn feeds the plant so tell me in the comments if you have fed your plants into a slump or maybe you forgot to fertilize all together or just didn’t share your experience in the comments so we can learn from each other if you want to know a great fertilizer addition to your garden that you probably have in your medicine cabinet and know it’s not Epsom salts watch this video right here i’ll see you guys next time