My grandfather always told me the same thing you just said in this video about this stuff and he was an uneducated man that couldn't read and write quit school in third grade and started doing this type of work when he was 11 years old until the day he died at 85 he always told me always concern yourself more about feeding your soil than feeding your plants and most of the time everything else will take care of itself. I don't remember Grandpa ever using a whole lot of fertilizer on anything he planted he always concerned hiself with healthy soil.
Love it. Basics, no bs, low-maintenance results. Takes a few years til you realize most growing info is really Marketing of Ag products. "Myths" is the kind way to describe it. *I missed out on being tutored by my grandmother reputed to be able to grow anything. You've made up for that loss in spades. Bless You.🍒
Finally someone that talks sense. All videos I've watched refers to feeding plants and nothing about testing the soil and treating it. Thank you so much.
Absolutely pumped for the awareness on synthetic vs organic. The pictures of your garden really bring it home your experience with something so close to nature
Soil everywhere has all the nutrients needed within it. It's the microorganisms capable of breaking them down into an edible source for the plant that you must cultivate. When you simply replace the nutrient rather than the organism that breaks the soil down into the nutrient, you end up with a dead soil that always relies on chemical inputs. Once the plant consumed what you added, it's gone. This is the philosophy behind no-till gardening, though some fall into the dogma of it like it's a political statement. It's not (till when absolutely necessary). It takes time to build the right soil organisms, so I'm not saying don't use inputs. Use as needed to keep your plants healthy but with the goal of not needing them the following year. The nutrients will come with the life balance. To learn about how to do this, look up "living soil."
Fertilizing with nitrogen will always stimulate growth beyond what there would otherwise be. Adding the other two along with it will never hurt. If the plant doesn’t need it, so be it. A little fertilizer is a hell of a lot cheaper than ‘lab tests’ on your soil.
I'm late to the party and I can't speak for other places. But my local extension office does soil tests free. I drop the soil sample off and a couple weeks later I get an e-mail with the results.
I shredded a bunch of my kitchen scraps that I normally toss on the compost and instead tossed it on a garden bed. That bed has the most worms right now.
I am a master gardener in my county. I don't know how many people I talk to that say that they put all kinds of stuff in their soil thinking that it will improve their crops. They say they put epsom salts, egg shells, bone meal, gypsum, rock phosphate, lime, coffee grounds, compost tea and many others additives believing they soil turns into gold. I ask them if they had their soil tested. I have yet to have one person answer, "Yes." When I suggest they have it tested for $15, not one person, so far, has been interested. In the end I have to tell them that I have no idea what their soil is like.
I have been meaning to ask you this question for some time, does the fact that plants are taking up nutrients in a ratio of 3-1-2 apply directly to the label on a bag of fertilizer or should we be factoring in that the P and K are actually giving you less P and K than the label suggests? Klaus
As I understand it, let's say you buy a fertilizer that is 24-8-16. That's its full-strength NPK (say 1.5 tbsp per gallon of water). By using 1/8th of the full strength amount (3/16 tsp per gallon of water), that gets you to 3-1-2. It is less in potency, but the same ratio on the label. For example, seedlings would not need 24-8-16 because they are too tiny, but as they grow, at least what I do is increase the strength/potency. I'm a container gardener, so I defer to the master gardeners but just trying to help. Peace.
@@Marifletch This makes sense. He shows a can with 24-12-17 and says use a 3-1-2 ratio which those numbers are not which is a tad confusing. Took me awhile to figure out he was probably just using the can as a prop and saying the 3 numbers should be 3-1-2 not necessarily meaning the numbers on the can were 3-1-2 which they aren't.
I think the number one mistake that home gardeners make is they do not correct pH. In the vegetable slot of 6.2-6.8 most vegetables will properly respirate AND the plant will be able to properly lift all the minerals it needs. Most soils unless overworked have most of the nutrients needed by plants. Even soil testing should be done when the pH is in the vegetable slot.
10:39 *_Miracle-Gro Water Soluble All Purpose Plant Food_* costs 1/2 to 1/3 and is essentially the same formula with the same ingredients. Compare labels and you will see.
@@Gardenfundamentals1 Comparison between kingdoms is fraught, but I'd equate root zone to stomach (the place where exogenous material makes contact with endogenous digestive tissue), define 'food' as 'that which is digested by the digestive tissue', and define 'feeding' as 'supplying to the digestive tissue that which it digests'. Nitrogen added to soil is not eggs added to fridge, it is eggs added to the stomach, i.e. feeding. (This is semantics. We are agreed on the substantive point of "Liebigs barrel".)
@@Gardenfundamentals1 yes, but we humans could eat more eggs or other foods even if we're not hungry, plants and most animals don't function in the same way. Most of the mistakes made by people when are caring of plants come from the idea that plants and humans behave in a similar way. Many people make the equation: more food and more water = the plant will feel better, because they think that fertilizing and watering a plant is like giving food and water to a human child or to a puppy
Dupuis, I don't mean to be insulting but your comment sounds foolish and you're missing the point. He's talking to people who are obsessed with "feeding" every plant some intentional thing that they're supposed to have like the plant is a baby and they have to buy the right baby food - as if SOIL, SUN & WATER don't make plants grow. They don't understand that a plant growing in soil simply needs amendments to the soil, and not to be hovered over and fed ridiculously and obsessed over like it's a Japanese tea ceremony. Am I right? Your second comment is OVERTHINKING
"Don't feed plants" is a sensational, contrarian, tendentious title which licenses (if not outright invites) rebuke commensurate in tone. It is not 'overthinking' to respond directly to RP's explicit claim that semantics matter. "Feeding" has a simple common-sense connotation that is perfectly appropriate to plants. "Feeding" vs "fertilizing" is worse than pedantry, it is jargonization that functions to bully and belittle. The substantive point - feed what's missing - is adequate without playing euphemism treadmill on 'feed'.
So you Are saying we should everytime pay for expensive lab tests ? Before planting then before harvest. I have few garden locations so i should pay for few tests at the same time? How did then 100 years ago people Had such a Big fruits without Labs? I know you Are on the Point but i think it is cheaper to add some soil and compost after harvest. Who Said that some Plant will Die Because it needs less P From NPK or K ? IF your theory Is correct why the market GMO food Is not tasty ? Why it Has bigger and smaller fruits ? My fruits Are Also some Big some small but tasty. Whats the Point of Been perfect fertilized? Whats the physical proof or Point of perfect fertilization? More fruits? But i also have much fruits
Lab test is needed for making amendment decisions. You shouldn't guess with Fertilizer. So if you suspect your plants are missing something and are showing symptoms you should get a lab test before making a decision to apply nutrients. Tree's and shrubs also can be spoiled with over nitrogen application and become susceptible to leaf sucking insects. The point is that treatment before diagnosis is malpractice. The large fruit that has little taste is also because farms may pick while the fruit is not fully ripe and will artificially ripen it at the store or let it ripen in travel. Older farms also didn't deal with super degraded soil.
@@Maczust63Agree on everything except olders. They just put caw manure after harvest. They made seedlings on top of the manure in my village. Seeds are the secret. Older seeds evolved every danger in their micro climate. Older fruits trees dont need anything and they allways fruit.
@@Gardenfundamentals1 No way I am going to spend hundreds of dollars getting my soil tested which is what it cost in Australia and they don't sell home tests to the general public. All that money for 5 small beds, I don't think so.
the only thing i add to my garden is urine. in the summer,whenever i need to take a leak i piss in the soil of my plants. they also get water this way. many think its nasty but its all chemistry!
You realize this is not good advice? Going to skip the obvious pun. Everyone's pee has different waste in it, including pharmaceuticals they're taking. Not all plants will appreciate getting that splashed on them.
This is such great advice. Love your factual common sense scientific approach to gardening. Just curious I keep reading feed your banana plants lots of nitrogen cause they need as much as you can supply. Is that true or is like what you say if the nutrient is already in the soil you don’t need to add more?
Nitrogen is usually the nutrient that limits plant growth, so adding more makes things grow better. But only to a limit. Add too much and it kills the plant as in overfeeding lawns.
Your idea of 'don't fertilize unless tested for deficiency' sounds great & wise, but it really fails in actual practice. Those tests for deficiency are deficient themselves. They are not tuned to maximum growth, but very, very far from it. I hate to say this, it sounds terrible, but in real life it is true that any average schlub using a cheap fertilizer like Miracle Gro per instructions will far outgrow you using your testing-for-deficiency method
I used the Dyna Gro Bloom product for many years in my hydroponic gardening; for which that product was designed to be used. In hydroponic gardening you have to supply all of the nutrients because there is no soil. Dyna Gro was not trying to con ignorant customers with that product. The products that tell customers to use the Bloom products in soil are misleading ignorant customers.
Very sensible approach , great video i like how he doesnt make all outragous claims of all organic power synthetic fertilizer is more readily avalable to plants than organic.
It’s remarkable how much misinformation is contained in this video. The premise that we “ never feed plants” completely ignores the science of foliar feeding. The idea that the only way to determine deficiencies is through soil testing ignores plant sap analysis, which is the far better option for determining deficiencies and toxicities. It’s like taking a blood test for the plant instead of testing the nutrient content in the plants diet ( which cannot determine nutrient uptake). Advancing Eco Agriculture has pioneered the strategy of fixing soil imbalances through targeted foliar feeding of crops informed by data from plant sap analysis, all while growing a crop. ( I’m not recommending this for home gardeners as it is simply not economical on such small scales, just pointing to the fact that feeding plants is valid). Another bit of misinformation is the assertion that organic fertilizers always take a long time to break down and therefore aren’t ideal to be used in container gardening. Organic, water soluble fertilizers are easily produced with a little knowhow. Readily available nitrogen can be sourced from fermenting fish in brown sugar to make Readily available fish amino acids called FAA, Urine provides readily available N and K, as well as micro nutrients. Finished compost has both immediately available, and slow release fertilizer value and can be top dressed into potted plants. Water soluble potassium can be made by pyrolizing plant materials with a high K content, (sunflower stalks are the go to in Korean natural farming) and then soaking the resulting charcoal in water to dissolve the K into solution, and finally, water soluble fertilizer can be made by rotting biomass down in water as has been done in Korea for thousands of years. These aren’t one size fits all, easy fixes, but rather adaptive methodologies that must be fine tuned to each growers specific context, but the can make for extremely low budget, highly productive, and ecologically sustainable gardening. I would encourage folks to check out JADAM for a complete system of low budget, ecological agriculture.
You can grow things hydroponically, too, but his point is valid, which is that if you want to create a long-term sustainably efficient garden, you need to have soil, feeding the microbiology that supports the plants rather than directly feeding the plants
@@TheGroundskeeper if that was his point then he did a shit job of conveying it by speaking in absolutes, and being factually wrong in doing so. Furthermore, I do believe I critiqued specific, factually incorrect claims he made in the video, not “his point” (which is not served by said factual inaccuracies by the way.) Finally, these things are in no way incompatible with “his point” it is not only feasible, but highly effective and efficient to grow in containers using a soil based medium with organic fertilizers while simultaneously feeding the plants directly.
@@TheGroundskeeper and just in case it wasn’t made clear I will reiterate the point that given that plants feed the soil it follows that feeding plants does in fact feed the soil.
While true I wouldn't consider foliar feeding relevant here since it's very very ineffective compared to feeding via roots. Foliar may be used as an emergency tool to fix problems (or maybe with pH unstable additives like Silicic Acid) but you shouldn't have problems in hydroponics in the first place. If you have problems you shouldn't use organic inputs in hydroponics which is a headache. Btw, I'm bringing up hydroponics since you've brought up direct feeding with nutrient solution.
I love all of your gardening advice. From my understanding it's 100% accurate and I appreciate you. I don't know if I missed you mentioning the the pH of the soil also could affect uptakes of nutrients
Thank you for these videos and your books. I'm an Arborist and seed collector who is getting into propagating native Woody plants mostly trees. I'm wondering if you could recommend some basic chemistry and organic chemistry books that would help me with fundamental knowledge. School is not in my cards right now. I have a large library of books but would like to have a good base of the fundamentals. Thanks
One thing you can do with deficiency testes look at which leaves are deficient, I do believe understanding if it’s new growth or old growth can help you identify the problem of something like iron deficiency
Wow these videos are great. Its only my second season and i have a lot to learn still but im trying to get the 80:20 ratio in order. Thanks, and good luck with the channel
Is leaf mold good for establishing newly created landscaping beds, all things being equal? What about leaf mulch in combination with municipal compost?
Your videos are very informative. Could you do a video on lawns or fertilizers for lawns? I’m in Minnesota. On one part of my property where my house is built they dug the hole for my house and spread feet deep of clay right over the soil from the ice age. On the back half is the original soil from the ice age since very deep level of dirt. I have perhaps 2-4 inches of dirt building up on the newer lawn because I never bag. Much appreciated.
I'm getting ready to purchase some soil to fill new raised beds. I'm planning to buy a planter's mix, which is 60% topsoil and 40% compost. Would it be better to just buy topsoil? Will this mix have too much phosphate?
Thanks for the information. It's been a struggle for me--why "add" fertilizers? We ate decently before Big Pharma, which represents more, faster and cheaper regardless of outcome.
After WW2 they found a way to use leftover chemicals as crop fertilizer for heavy nitrogen feeders like corn. Hence the over-use of synthetic fertilizers ever since. I hate that they refer to bad practices (tilling and chemical fertilizer) as "conventional."
As has been consistent on your presentations, true accurate SCIENCE based information and none of the mythical-quasi-pseudo science that abounds in so many online communities and I’m constantly amazed by some of the “stuff” people believe to be true without any scientific evidence to be found. Thanks Robert!
How does one find a suitable soil testing lab? I was looking into it before I watched your video but I only found environmental/builder soil testing. Are there any keywords or search terms the would narrow it down?
@@TheRattle Very true! Our local Illinois extension is fantastic but not the quickest turn around time. We used the Ill-extension for all of our lawn soil samples when I was in the lawn care industry.
In the US - most extension universities do soil testing. U of Guelph does it as well. There are many private soil testing labs as well in other countries.
A "weed" is not a class of plant, it's any plant you don't want growing in any given spot. It's completely subjective. So, there is no way to answer your question as it is. Find out what weed plants you have and then you can research why they're flourishing.
Thank you for this incredibly informative video. Your garden shots are beautiful. I'm also very grateful to hear your thoughts on container gardening in this video. I live in a city, and I have no outdoor space, so container gardening is what I do. I especially appreciate the points you make about organic vs. synthetic fertilizers. Peace.
Hi Robert, I had posted this on the blog but not sure it made it. In Plant Science you describe auxin as a prohibitive chemical and I notice in Botany for Gardeners that Brian Capon describes it as the stimulant for growth. Am I splitting hair? Just curious about the possible difference. Thanks as always for great information!
Auxin is used different ways in plants. It is produced by top buds to keep lower buds from growing. "Apical dominance is the process whereby the shoot tip inhibits the growth of axillary buds along the stem. It has been proposed that the shoot tip, which is the predominant source of the plant hormone auxin, prevents bud outgrowth by suppressing auxin canalization and export from axillary buds into the main stem." www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6324225/#:~:text=Apical%20dominance%20is%20the%20process,buds%20into%20the%20main%20stem.
He's talking soil growing. Foliar is useless for feeding in practice. It's used to fix minor problems but you can't grow plants with it. Also, good luck with botrytis and powdery mildew with foliar.
My grandfather always told me the same thing you just said in this video about this stuff and he was an uneducated man that couldn't read and write quit school in third grade and started doing this type of work when he was 11 years old until the day he died at 85 he always told me always concern yourself more about feeding your soil than feeding your plants and most of the time everything else will take care of itself. I don't remember Grandpa ever using a whole lot of fertilizer on anything he planted he always concerned hiself with healthy soil.
Love it. Basics, no bs, low-maintenance results. Takes a few years til you realize most growing info is really Marketing of Ag products. "Myths" is the kind way to describe it. *I missed out on being tutored by my grandmother reputed to be able to grow anything. You've made up for that loss in spades. Bless You.🍒
Finally someone that talks sense. All videos I've watched refers to feeding plants and nothing about testing the soil and treating it. Thank you so much.
Absolutely pumped for the awareness on synthetic vs organic. The pictures of your garden really bring it home your experience with something so close to nature
Soil everywhere has all the nutrients needed within it. It's the microorganisms capable of breaking them down into an edible source for the plant that you must cultivate. When you simply replace the nutrient rather than the organism that breaks the soil down into the nutrient, you end up with a dead soil that always relies on chemical inputs. Once the plant consumed what you added, it's gone. This is the philosophy behind no-till gardening, though some fall into the dogma of it like it's a political statement. It's not (till when absolutely necessary). It takes time to build the right soil organisms, so I'm not saying don't use inputs. Use as needed to keep your plants healthy but with the goal of not needing them the following year. The nutrients will come with the life balance. To learn about how to do this, look up "living soil."
With the abundance of clean rain. Everything is growing perfectly.
EXCELLENT video! Thank you so much for great education.
Guess what I'm doing.....I'm feeding my slugs.
I don't eat at all I just let my throat receive the nutrients.
Fertilizing with nitrogen will always stimulate growth beyond what there would otherwise be. Adding the other two along with it will never hurt. If the plant doesn’t need it, so be it. A little fertilizer is a hell of a lot cheaper than ‘lab tests’ on your soil.
Thank you Robert. ❄️💚🙃
The thing is that, unless your garden is quite big, the cost of LAB analyses is higher than fertilizers cost
I'm late to the party and I can't speak for other places. But my local extension office does soil tests free. I drop the soil sample off and a couple weeks later I get an e-mail with the results.
$29.00 ? Really?
I shredded a bunch of my kitchen scraps that I normally toss on the compost and instead tossed it on a garden bed. That bed has the most worms right now.
Hi. which veggies are sensitive to over fertilize
@@The13Raze look up the requirements of the plants you're interested in & have your soil analyzed. Carrots like it lean.
I am a master gardener in my county. I don't know how many people I talk to that say that they put all kinds of stuff in their soil thinking that it will improve their crops. They say they put epsom salts, egg shells, bone meal, gypsum, rock phosphate, lime, coffee grounds, compost tea and many others additives believing they soil turns into gold. I ask them if they had their soil tested. I have yet to have one person answer, "Yes." When I suggest they have it tested for $15, not one person, so far, has been interested. In the end I have to tell them that I have no idea what their soil is like.
lol
How do people succeed in growing food a thousand years ago? Did they test their soil? 😂
Very impressive video.
I have been meaning to ask you this question for some time, does the fact that plants are taking up nutrients in a ratio of 3-1-2 apply directly to the label on a bag of fertilizer or should we be factoring in that the P and K are actually giving you less P and K than the label suggests?
Klaus
As I understand it, let's say you buy a fertilizer that is 24-8-16. That's its full-strength NPK (say 1.5 tbsp per gallon of water). By using 1/8th of the full strength amount (3/16 tsp per gallon of water), that gets you to 3-1-2. It is less in potency, but the same ratio on the label. For example, seedlings would not need 24-8-16 because they are too tiny, but as they grow, at least what I do is increase the strength/potency. I'm a container gardener, so I defer to the master gardeners but just trying to help. Peace.
@@Marifletch This makes sense. He shows a can with 24-12-17 and says use a 3-1-2 ratio which those numbers are not which is a tad confusing. Took me awhile to figure out he was probably just using the can as a prop and saying the 3 numbers should be 3-1-2 not necessarily meaning the numbers on the can were 3-1-2 which they aren't.
I think the number one mistake that home gardeners make is they do not correct pH. In the vegetable slot of 6.2-6.8 most vegetables will properly respirate AND the plant will be able to properly lift all the minerals it needs. Most soils unless overworked have most of the nutrients needed by plants.
Even soil testing should be done when the pH is in the vegetable slot.
10:39 *_Miracle-Gro Water Soluble All Purpose Plant Food_* costs 1/2 to 1/3 and is essentially the same formula with the same ingredients. Compare labels and you will see.
A 6 acre garden! Wow! Do you have a video touring your gardens?
This is like how I don't feed my family, I just replace the nutrients that are missing from their plates.
It is more like replacing the food in the fridge. You only buy the stuff that is missing. If you have eggs, you don't buy more eggs.
@@Gardenfundamentals1 Comparison between kingdoms is fraught, but I'd equate root zone to stomach (the place where exogenous material makes contact with endogenous digestive tissue), define 'food' as 'that which is digested by the digestive tissue', and define 'feeding' as 'supplying to the digestive tissue that which it digests'. Nitrogen added to soil is not eggs added to fridge, it is eggs added to the stomach, i.e. feeding. (This is semantics. We are agreed on the substantive point of "Liebigs barrel".)
@@Gardenfundamentals1 yes, but we humans could eat more eggs or other foods even if we're not hungry, plants and most animals don't function in the same way. Most of the mistakes made by people when are caring of plants come from the idea that plants and humans behave in a similar way. Many people make the equation: more food and more water = the plant will feel better, because they think that fertilizing and watering a plant is like giving food and water to a human child or to a puppy
Dupuis, I don't mean to be insulting but your comment sounds foolish and you're missing the point.
He's talking to people who are obsessed with "feeding" every plant some intentional thing that they're supposed to have like the plant is a baby and they have to buy the right baby food - as if SOIL, SUN & WATER don't make plants grow. They don't understand that a plant growing in soil simply needs amendments to the soil, and not to be hovered over and fed ridiculously and obsessed over like it's a Japanese tea ceremony.
Am I right? Your second comment is OVERTHINKING
"Don't feed plants" is a sensational, contrarian, tendentious title which licenses (if not outright invites) rebuke commensurate in tone. It is not 'overthinking' to respond directly to RP's explicit claim that semantics matter. "Feeding" has a simple common-sense connotation that is perfectly appropriate to plants. "Feeding" vs "fertilizing" is worse than pedantry, it is jargonization that functions to bully and belittle. The substantive point - feed what's missing - is adequate without playing euphemism treadmill on 'feed'.
How about sandy soil, is it necessary to fertiilize? Thank you.
Could be. Mulch with organic matter. Aim for "Sandy loam"
Thank you for reply. Appreciated.
Thank you for educating me - the most common sensible & science based advice in the industry - good stuff, cheers, Arno
So you Are saying we should everytime pay for expensive lab tests ? Before planting then before harvest. I have few garden locations so i should pay for few tests at the same time? How did then 100 years ago people Had such a Big fruits without Labs? I know you Are on the Point but i think it is cheaper to add some soil and compost after harvest. Who Said that some Plant will Die Because it needs less P From NPK or K ? IF your theory Is correct why the market GMO food Is not tasty ? Why it Has bigger and smaller fruits ? My fruits Are Also some Big some small but tasty. Whats the Point of Been perfect fertilized? Whats the physical proof or Point of perfect fertilization? More fruits? But i also have much fruits
I said the opposite.
Lab test is needed for making amendment decisions. You shouldn't guess with Fertilizer. So if you suspect your plants are missing something and are showing symptoms you should get a lab test before making a decision to apply nutrients. Tree's and shrubs also can be spoiled with over nitrogen application and become susceptible to leaf sucking insects. The point is that treatment before diagnosis is malpractice. The large fruit that has little taste is also because farms may pick while the fruit is not fully ripe and will artificially ripen it at the store or let it ripen in travel. Older farms also didn't deal with super degraded soil.
@@Gardenfundamentals1 I am sorry then ! By the way you are my special knowledge spring on yt 😁 So keep making videos!
@@Maczust63Agree on everything except olders. They just put caw manure after harvest. They made seedlings on top of the manure in my village. Seeds are the secret. Older seeds evolved every danger in their micro climate. Older fruits trees dont need anything and they allways fruit.
@@Gardenfundamentals1 No way I am going to spend hundreds of dollars getting my soil tested which is what it cost in Australia and they don't sell home tests to the general public. All that money for 5 small beds, I don't think so.
the only thing i add to my garden is urine. in the summer,whenever i need to take a leak i piss in the soil of my plants. they also get water this way. many think its nasty but its all chemistry!
You realize this is not good advice? Going to skip the obvious pun. Everyone's pee has different waste in it, including pharmaceuticals they're taking. Not all plants will appreciate getting that splashed on them.
Bet folks can't wait to eat a salad at your house!
This is such great advice. Love your factual common sense scientific approach to gardening. Just curious I keep reading feed your banana plants lots of nitrogen cause they need as much as you can supply. Is that true or is like what you say if the nutrient is already in the soil you don’t need to add more?
Nitrogen is usually the nutrient that limits plant growth, so adding more makes things grow better. But only to a limit. Add too much and it kills the plant as in overfeeding lawns.
Your idea of 'don't fertilize unless tested for deficiency' sounds great & wise, but it really fails in actual practice. Those tests for deficiency are deficient themselves. They are not tuned to maximum growth, but very, very far from it. I hate to say this, it sounds terrible, but in real life it is true that any average schlub using a cheap fertilizer like Miracle Gro per instructions will far outgrow you using your testing-for-deficiency method
If you have high calcium soils, shouldn’t you supplement with phosphorus even if you are not deficient?
THANKS FOR THE THIS INFORMATION.
I let the plants feed themselves 😊
I used the Dyna Gro Bloom product for many years in my hydroponic gardening; for which that product was designed to be used. In hydroponic gardening you have to supply all of the nutrients because there is no soil. Dyna Gro was not trying to con ignorant customers with that product.
The products that tell customers to use the Bloom products in soil are misleading ignorant customers.
I grow fruit and vegetables not lawn but I wound up buying lawn fertilizer for my fruit trees for the first 2 years. It was 24-0-0.
Very sensible approach , great video i like how he doesnt make all outragous claims of all organic power synthetic fertilizer is more readily avalable to plants than organic.
It’s remarkable how much misinformation is contained in this video. The premise that we “ never feed plants” completely ignores the science of foliar feeding. The idea that the only way to determine deficiencies is through soil testing ignores plant sap analysis, which is the far better option for determining deficiencies and toxicities. It’s like taking a blood test for the plant instead of testing the nutrient content in the plants diet ( which cannot determine nutrient uptake). Advancing Eco Agriculture has pioneered the strategy of fixing soil imbalances through targeted foliar feeding of crops informed by data from plant sap analysis, all while growing a crop. ( I’m not recommending this for home gardeners as it is simply not economical on such small scales, just pointing to the fact that feeding plants is valid). Another bit of misinformation is the assertion that organic fertilizers always take a long time to break down and therefore aren’t ideal to be used in container gardening. Organic, water soluble fertilizers are easily produced with a little knowhow. Readily available nitrogen can be sourced from fermenting fish in brown sugar to make Readily available fish amino acids called FAA, Urine provides readily available N and K, as well as micro nutrients. Finished compost has both immediately available, and slow release fertilizer value and can be top dressed into potted plants. Water soluble potassium can be made by pyrolizing plant materials with a high K content, (sunflower stalks are the go to in Korean natural farming) and then soaking the resulting charcoal in water to dissolve the K into solution, and finally, water soluble fertilizer can be made by rotting biomass down in water as has been done in Korea for thousands of years. These aren’t one size fits all, easy fixes, but rather adaptive methodologies that must be fine tuned to each growers specific context, but the can make for extremely low budget, highly productive, and ecologically sustainable gardening. I would encourage folks to check out JADAM for a complete system of low budget, ecological agriculture.
Agreed
You can grow things hydroponically, too, but his point is valid, which is that if you want to create a long-term sustainably efficient garden, you need to have soil, feeding the microbiology that supports the plants rather than directly feeding the plants
@@TheGroundskeeper if that was his point then he did a shit job of conveying it by speaking in absolutes, and being factually wrong in doing so. Furthermore, I do believe I critiqued specific, factually incorrect claims he made in the video, not “his point” (which is not served by said factual inaccuracies by the way.) Finally, these things are in no way incompatible with “his point” it is not only feasible, but highly effective and efficient to grow in containers using a soil based medium with organic fertilizers while simultaneously feeding the plants directly.
@@TheGroundskeeper and just in case it wasn’t made clear I will reiterate the point that given that plants feed the soil it follows that feeding plants does in fact feed the soil.
While true I wouldn't consider foliar feeding relevant here since it's very very ineffective compared to feeding via roots. Foliar may be used as an emergency tool to fix problems (or maybe with pH unstable additives like Silicic Acid) but you shouldn't have problems in hydroponics in the first place. If you have problems you shouldn't use organic inputs in hydroponics which is a headache. Btw, I'm bringing up hydroponics since you've brought up direct feeding with nutrient solution.
How many degrees there? Iam arabian is so heat. 34°/48° . Thank you😊
I love all of your gardening advice. From my understanding it's 100% accurate and I appreciate you. I don't know if I missed you mentioning the the pH of the soil also could affect uptakes of nutrients
Thank you for these videos and your books. I'm an Arborist and seed collector who is getting into propagating native Woody plants mostly trees. I'm wondering if you could recommend some basic chemistry and organic chemistry books that would help me with fundamental knowledge. School is not in my cards right now. I have a large library of books but would like to have a good base of the fundamentals. Thanks
I have not read a chemistry book in many years, sorry.
Chemistry, Global Edition is good for beginners to professional level. I learnt so many about chemistry from that book.
One thing you can do with deficiency testes look at which leaves are deficient, I do believe understanding if it’s new growth or old growth can help you identify the problem of something like iron deficiency
Wow these videos are great. Its only my second season and i have a lot to learn still but im trying to get the 80:20 ratio in order. Thanks, and good luck with the channel
Is leaf mold good for establishing newly created landscaping beds, all things being equal? What about leaf mulch in combination with municipal compost?
I know there’s something wrong with my soil. I’m getting it tested as soon as the ground isn’t frozen solid anymore.❄️💚🙃
Your videos are very informative. Could you do a video on lawns or fertilizers for lawns? I’m in Minnesota. On one part of my property where my house is built they dug the hole for my house and spread feet deep of clay right over the soil from the ice age. On the back half is the original soil from the ice age since very deep level of dirt. I have perhaps 2-4 inches of dirt building up on the newer lawn because I never bag. Much appreciated.
👍👍👍Thank you
please, make a simple diy tutorial how to compost for newcomers
UR awesome. Makes so much sense. Thank you.
I'm getting ready to purchase some soil to fill new raised beds. I'm planning to buy a planter's mix, which is 60% topsoil and 40% compost. Would it be better to just buy topsoil? Will this mix have too much phosphate?
That is not a bad mix - 80/20 would be better.
@Garden Fundamentals Thank you! They will custom mix it, so I'll ask about that.
Thanks you for this toturial
Thanks for the information. It's been a struggle for me--why "add" fertilizers? We ate decently before Big Pharma, which represents more, faster and cheaper regardless of outcome.
After WW2 they found a way to use leftover chemicals as crop fertilizer for heavy nitrogen feeders like corn. Hence the over-use of synthetic fertilizers ever since. I hate that they refer to bad practices (tilling and chemical fertilizer) as "conventional."
@@pamelah6431 too many military (e.g. government) experiments...
Sir . I can't download your free ebook help me
which one are you asking about?
As has been consistent on your presentations, true accurate SCIENCE based information and none of the mythical-quasi-pseudo science that abounds in so many online communities and I’m constantly amazed by some of the “stuff” people believe to be true without any scientific evidence to be found. Thanks Robert!
Nice video! Do you have some opinion about JADAM organic farming?
Not yet.
It works..who tends to the lush growth wild area's? The old growth deciduous forests(not row planted pines, etc) 🤝🏼
How does one find a suitable soil testing lab? I was looking into it before I watched your video but I only found environmental/builder soil testing. Are there any keywords or search terms the would narrow it down?
One good resource is local university extensions.
@@TheRattle Very true! Our local Illinois extension is fantastic but not the quickest turn around time. We used the Ill-extension for all of our lawn soil samples when I was in the lawn care industry.
In the US - most extension universities do soil testing. U of Guelph does it as well. There are many private soil testing labs as well in other countries.
What ph soil do weeds like most ?
A "weed" is not a class of plant, it's any plant you don't want growing in any given spot. It's completely subjective. So, there is no way to answer your question as it is. Find out what weed plants you have and then you can research why they're flourishing.
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Just about done your new book - excellent again- what’s the next one about?
Don't tell anyone - Microbe Science for Gardeners - due out late summer.
@@Gardenfundamentals1 fabulous!
@@Gardenfundamentals1 in the new microbe book please include a discussion about biochar and molasses too
Where does one get their soil tested?
University of Minnesota does it. Other universities more than likely test soils. I’m sure private companies will do it too.
Thank you for this incredibly informative video. Your garden shots are beautiful. I'm also very grateful to hear your thoughts on container gardening in this video. I live in a city, and I have no outdoor space, so container gardening is what I do. I especially appreciate the points you make about organic vs. synthetic fertilizers. Peace.
What about having a soil biology test too?👍🏻
Hi Robert,
I had posted this on the blog but not sure it made it. In Plant Science you describe auxin as a prohibitive chemical and I notice in Botany for Gardeners that Brian Capon describes it as the stimulant for growth. Am I splitting hair? Just curious about the possible difference.
Thanks as always for great information!
Auxin is used different ways in plants. It is produced by top buds to keep lower buds from growing.
"Apical dominance is the process whereby the shoot tip inhibits the growth of axillary buds along the stem. It has been proposed that the shoot tip, which is the predominant source of the plant hormone auxin, prevents bud outgrowth by suppressing auxin canalization and export from axillary buds into the main stem."
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6324225/#:~:text=Apical%20dominance%20is%20the%20process,buds%20into%20the%20main%20stem.
If you aren't feeding plants, why do foliar sprays work? Or do they?
He's talking soil growing. Foliar is useless for feeding in practice. It's used to fix minor problems but you can't grow plants with it. Also, good luck with botrytis and powdery mildew with foliar.