I often see posts where a person has over fertilized their plants and then wants to know whats wrong with them. I just wanted to share this pic to illustrate a point - Fertilizer is not "plant food", its really more of a soil restoration
These plants were all started roughly the same time OVER 3 MONTHS AGO in a neutral seed starter mix, no available nitrogen and little to non other nutrients. My planting out has been delayed and I started re potting about a week ago in basically the same mix but with a small amount of granulated fertilizer mixed in. You can clearly see the difference in color, also the unfertilized plants have some moisture issues since the plant isn't functioning at peak performance. However, what I really want you to take note of is the size difference. There really isn't one, some of the unfertilized plants are actually taller than the fertilized ones and they have started to flower. The point to all of this is that plants need very little in the way of nutrients to be happy and do their thing. You cant jack your plant up with fertilizer and think its going to become a beast, in fact the opposite will most likely happen as you lock up other nutrients with excess nitrogen. Fertilizers are good but remember your not "feeding" the plants, your restoring the 2-3% of the plants total make up it took from the soil, so go easy. I might not even bother to re-pot all of them as I'll be planting out next week and I'm confident they will all make a full recovery.
side-note - The tomatoes quickly out grew a size that they could support them selves entirely without nutrients. These were started about a month ago, this time in the same mix as the re-potted peppers which I will do from the beginning from now on.
side-note - The tomatoes quickly out grew a size that they could support them selves entirely without nutrients. These were started about a month ago, this time in the same mix as the re-potted peppers which I will do from the beginning from now on.