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| Beefsteak tomatoes just beginning to ripen |
The single biggest mistake you can make with your plants is over fertilizing. Let's use a real life example, but I am going to change the names to protect the innocent.
Susie Homemaker has always wanted a beautiful garden. Susie never considered herself to have a green thumb. She often winds up with dead plants and in her quest for knowledge she begins reading about different types of plant care, and methods, and gets a great deal of her information on the internet.
She learns about her bedding, and soil product types and gets some tips and advance from long time gardeners to get a decent mixture together for her tomatoes this year. She is determined this year is going to be different than the rest. She starts her seeds indoors as instructed, keeping them moist and warm and she prepares her soil outside with some organic matter and lets it rest for the appropriate time after tilling.
The last frost date passes, and she brings her new tomato plants out into the world for the first time acclimating them slowly to the temperature change, by bringing them out for a few hours a day at first, then for even more hours at a time, until she is ready to put her tomatoes in the ground.
She takes care to dig her holes first and get everything situated just right and puts her tomatoes in the ground for the fist time! She really feels she has it licked this time and she will be the talk of the town soon for her "blue ribbon" beefsteak tomatoes!
The plants are doing wonderfully, as she is careful to keep her water levels correct and she is just pleased as a peach with her results.
After a month or so she decides it's time to fertilize her plants and she gets a typical instant release fertilizer mix from the big box store and she reads the label very carefully and even decides to mix it a little bit weaker "just to be safe". She then fertilizes her plants and waits for the next day to see how they react.
She is shocked the next morning when she finds are her plants are heavily stressed and she fears the worst. She is sure that now they are going to die, and that she shouldn't water them because they have had too much fertilizer and they are going to need some time to wait it out.
The plants are then completely fried after a few more days, and Susie is very discouraged, she can't help but ask:
Q: What did I do wrong!?
A. You made the biggest mistake you could make Susie, you used an instant fertilizer before analyzing your soil! Your compost and organic rich soil was still more than adequate for the fertilization needs of your tomato plant. To add insult to injury you stopped watering after you saw the severe stress they were under and didn't "flush" out the instant fertilizer
The moral of the story is: ANALYZE YOUR SOIL! Know what you are adding, instead of going it blind. Commercial growers always know what they have in terms of plant requirements, versus where there currently soil is in terms of nutrients. Don't just slosh fertilizer on plants that may not necessarily need it!
Most importantly, always remember to "Keep on Digging!"
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