What Happens to Your Veggie Garden When You Forget to Fertilize?

Did you know that you should probably be using fertilizer for your vegetable garden? We know it can sometimes be difficult to figure out when to fertilize your vegetables and even how much fertilizer to use but luckily, we’ve got you covered. Read on to see what happens if you don’t use fertilizer for your garden and why it’s an essential part of keeping your plants and produce healthy and thriving.

What Happens If You Don’t Fertilize Your Vegetable Garden

So, what happens if you don’t use fertilizer at all? Well, hopefully you won’t have to find out. If you are in the habit of not using fertilizer, you may notice your plants and vegetables not thriving or blooming properly.

Fertilizer is essential to help your vegetables grow and prosper, and sometimes sun and water just isn’t enough. Fertilizer replenishes your soil so that plants can grow new growth and your soil needs to have the essential nutrients for your vegetables to flourish.

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When Can You Skip Fertilizer?

Plants like trees, hedges, and shrubs usually grow fine without fertilizer. If you’re ever wondering where to use fertilizer or where not to, you can get a soil testing kit at your local nursery. This will ensure you aren’t using too much or too little fertilizer, and are putting it in the correct spots.

The vegetables and fruits that don’t need added nitrogen are sweet potatoes, watermelon, beets, turnips, and parsnips, so you can skip the fertilizer for those plants.

When Should You Fertilize?

For vegetables, you will need to apply fertilizer in the early months of spring and mix it in with your soil before planting all your seeds. Just to name a few, almost all your vegetables like corn, lettuce, peas, cucumbers, beans, peppers, and eggplants will benefit from fertilizer. They love to soak up all the nutrients fertilizer has in it and will continue to prosper because of it.

Benefits of Fertilizer

The beauty of fertilizer is that it gives soil added nutrients that it needs for your vegetables to grow and prosper during the growing seasons. Fertilizer simply improves the quality of soil and even helps your soil retain water as well. Fertilizer will help your crops grow and grow like you haven’t seen before.

When to Fertilize Your Vegetables

Before growing season in the early spring you can mix your fertilizer directly into your soil before planting. But you can also add fertilizer to your garden while it’s blooming too.

Base the amount of fertilizer on how much each individual vegetable needs. For example, broccoli, tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers are considered “heavy feeders” which means they may need more fertilizer than the average plant.

You can always test your soil out to double check if it needs more fertilizer or less.