When to Use AgroThrive Fruit & Flower Fertilizer

An article by Travis Key from Lazy Dog Farm

AgroThrive General Purpose and AgroThrive Fruit & Flower are both great fertilizers to use in the backyard garden to promote healthier plants and bountiful harvests. But we often get asked when you should use one over the other. So, I thought these next two blogs would be a great opportunity to explain when we prefer to use AgroThrive General Purpose and when we go with the Fruit & Flower formulation. We’ll start with AgroThrive Fruit & Flower on this blog and provide examples of specific vegetables below.

3-3-2 vs. 3-3-5 Fertilizer

The primary difference between AgroThrive General Purpose and AgroThrive Fruit & Flower lies in the general analysis. These are the three numbers you see on the front of the jug, which refer to the percentage of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium in that order. Both formulations have the same percentage of nitrogen and phosphorous, but the potassium percentage is different.

As a result, we choose to use AgroThrive Fruit and Flower on plants that can benefit from additional potassium. And we’ll use AgroThrive General Purpose in cases where extra potassium isn’t necessary. Below we’ll discuss a few examples where extra potassium can result in greater production.

Root Vegetables

AgroThrive Fruit & Flower is a great choice when growing root vegetables. This would include things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, parsnips, etc. We’re talking about any vegetable where the harvested portion is in the soil.

Having proper levels of phosphorous and potassium in your soil will promote healthy root development in plants. So, it makes sense that extra potassium would result in a larger harvest when growing root vegetables. This is why we prefer to use AgroThrive Fruit & Flower on all the root vegetables we grow.

If you’ve struggled growing carrots or beets in the past, it’s probably because the plants didn’t have enough potassium. We frequently hear from viewers who struggle growing beets. Their beet greens look great, but their beets never get larger than marbles.

You can have beautiful carrot tops above the soil, but you’ll have puny carrots below the soil if there’s not enough potassium in the soil. Potato plants will usually still grow in very poor soils, but you’ll harvest significantly more potatoes if the plants are fed more potassium. With its 3-3-5 formulation, AgroThrive Fruit and Flower can give these root vegetables all the extra potassium they need.

Flowering Vegetables and Fruits

Potassium not only promotes strong root development, but it also aids in the movement of water and sugars throughout the plant. If the potassium level in your garden soil is low, your plants will struggle transporting water and other essential compounds through the plant. This is especially important when it comes to flower and fruit development.

The scientific definition of a fruit is anything that comes from a flower. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, and squash are technically all fruits, even though we commonly call them vegetables. A fruit is made of water and sugars, and that’s where potassium comes into play.

If your plants don’t have sufficient potassium, they’re not able to effectively move water and sugars through the plant to form large fruits with a high sugar content. Potassium also helps plants have strong, sturdy stems to hold those large fruits. If the plant stems aren’t strong, they’re more likely to break as fruits enlarge.

Lastly, potassium aids in flower development. It does not promote flowering, but it does help the plants make large, healthy flowers. Without healthy flowers, pollination cannot occur, and fruit will not form. All of these are great reasons why we like to use AgroThrive Fruit & Flower on tomatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, watermelons, pumpkins, etc.

In addition to our backyard garden, we also have a fig orchard on our property with over 40 varieties of figs. Once our fig trees start putting on leaves in early spring, we start feeding them once a week with AgroThrive Fruit & Flower. This formulation helps to promote new growth on our trees where abundant fruits will form. If you have fruit trees on your property, start giving them AgroThrive Fruit & Flower in the early spring months and enjoy the boost of production!

Feed These AgroThrive Fruit & Flower

Now that you understand how AgroThrive Fruit & Flower fertilizer can help certain plants, here’s a long list of backyard garden plants that can greatly benefit from this formulation.

• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Eggplant
• Cucumbers
• Squash
• Pumpkins
• Watermelon
• Cantaloupe
• Tomatillos
• Carrots
• Beets
• Parsnips
• Turnips
• Radishes
• Potatoes
• Sweet Potatoes
• Rutabaga

Thousands of gardeners have been tuning in to The Lazy Dog Farm YouTube channel where Travis covers a variety topics ranging from how to successfully start seedlings to how to make a flavorful hotsauce that packs a punch. Accompanied by his wife Brooklyn and their two boys, the gardens on their 2 acre homestead in southwest Georgia are always filled with a wide variety of vegetables that are enjoyed fresh or preserved for later.