September 1, 2025 – Many of you planted vegetables starting with onions in mid-January, followed by peppers and tomatoes around the first of February, cucumbers the end of March and finally okra around the first of May. Soil with fertilizer and compost was great, and water was in abundanece. The results were large amounts and sizes of fruits
A few months later, the situation, except for okra, has changed. The onions are gone. Those large tomatoes and peppers are smaller and fewer. Cucumbers are fatter, shorter, and fewer, often tuning yellow on the vine. This is not a favorable condition, but how do we turn the situation around. Do we need to water more or less, add mulch, fertilize, or something else?
The problem, more often than not is a lack of nutrients. Why? Because they’ve been used up. I grow all my vegetables in pure compost, which is extremely high in nutrients, but I still regularly get these conditions starting around mid-July. Well, the answer for me, is adding new fertilizer. But the questions in clude what kind and how much.
Your spring fertilizers nearly always have Nitrogen as the largest element, and it’s needed to support plant growth. The problem in July and August is your plants are grown. A fertilizer with plenty of nitrogen will only result in more growth; not in increased fruit production. Unfortunately, however, your hardware or nursery stores probably still have only nigh nitrogen fertilizers.
A 3-8-4 or 4-5-10 ratio fertilizers seem to work very well as revitalizers, but they usually have to be purchased on line. Two tsp of either in a gallon of water once every 7-10 days should lead to increased quantities and larger fruit. You might ant to let hardware and nursery stores aware that different ratio fertilizers are needed starting in July.
