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Should You Apply Fall Fertilizer To Your Garden? When & How Should You Fall Fertilize?
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Apr 27, 2022
Fall fertilizer can be valuable to any gardener. This goes for both the perennial bed and the annual beds. Fall fertilizer applications should take place a few weeks before the first frost allowing the fertilizer to work its way into the soil. The plants enjoy a fall fertilizer that is higher in phosphorus, potassium and micro nutrients. Apply nitrogen in the fall is less then ideal because ultimately it can cause leaching over time.
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0:00
So the concept of fall fertilization came from farming. Farmers typically will apply some fertilizer in the fall based on their inputs or what their needs are for the following year
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And they will completely base off the amount or the volume of fertilizer they put down either organically or inorganically off of soil tests
0:22
How do we take that information and apply it to the garden? Well, that's what we're going to do in the video today
0:27
The video was actually requested by quite a few of you, but beyond that, my day job is obviously in soil science. Now, my family farms as well, and we've noticed that through this year, the soil fertilization levels are higher than what they normally would be, to the point that in many cases, no fertilizer is needed in the fall application of the farming sector. And we'll get into why that is a little bit later
0:57
The question is whether or not to apply it. And there's two ways of looking at this
1:02
when we're looking from a gardener's perspective. The first version is perennials
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and the second version is an annual bed such as a raised garden that is being used
1:12
to produce fruits and vegetables such as tomatoes. But first, let's get into why you would apply
1:18
fall fertilizer slash when to apply fall fertilizer. Fall fertilizer should be applied two or three weeks
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before your first frost date, meaning If you're in zone three, you probably should have applied it two weeks ago
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If you're in any lower zones right now is probably quite honestly the time to apply that
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So you want to apply two to three weeks before your first frosty
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The reason for this is because we don't simply want that fertilizer to sit on the surface of the soil
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There's a lot of potential for loss in the springtime and even in the fall where we could end up with leaching or volatilization
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those soil nutrients because they have not yet made their way into the soil profile. So if we
2:04
apply our fertilizer organically or conventionally in that two to three weeks before our first frost
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date, this gives it time to get into the soil surface other through the fall due, the less stress
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I mean the heat of the soil microbially, it's much more active because we don't have the intensity of the sun and we have
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have plants in some cases such as in lawns or perennials that need that root juice so phosphorus
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and potassium in particular to help them get through the winter and help them thrive throughout
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the winter and get a head start in the spring so a fall application two to three weeks out gives it
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enough time that it can be drove into the soil because majority of nutrients with the exception of some
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are water soluble, so the water catches it either morning dew, rainfall, snowfall that melts
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and forces it down into the soil profile into that root area where some roots may be hungry
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because August is a very warm months for a lot of people. And hot, hot, hot soil means lower and lower
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nutrient uptake. So this is a little bit of a break time where they can work on the valves
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and the root mass of the plant. So when we're looking at perennials versus annual beds
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we may want to change our fertilizer inputs. If we were looking at perennial beds
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we actually wanna focus more on that root root and bulb development meaning we want high phosphorus and we want high potassium low nitrogen so something with a nitrogen under 15 total volume so the the number on the
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the first number being 15 or lower is ideal this if it's not possible you can just add a regular
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fertilizer especially if you have some left over that's going to expire in the new year get that fos and
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Tassium in the soil or whatever nitrogen you can if it is an all-purpose or a
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fertilizer with very high nitrogen and you apply to the soil it's not a bad thing
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it's not going to harm your plants whatsoever it's just that the nitrogen loss
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will be very very great because it's probably going to leach or volatelize out into
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the atmosphere because the distance between when it's needed and when it's applied
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it's much too great so you can apply full all-purpose or whatever's going to
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expire next year throw it in the soil get rid of it so you it doesn't just simply go to waste utilize it and you will be just fine
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With annual beds you can also apply now annual beds would be more of the atypical farmer style
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because we are completely harvesting from the land. In many cases here in Canada there is no
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cover crop being applied or green manure being applied to the area because our growing season
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just simply isn't long enough. So we remove our crops and then we have zero soil
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cover we have zero inputs but we want to have an earlier start next year we want bioavailable
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nutrients right off the hop for next year then we can apply again i would stick with foss and potassium
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high fertilizers regardless of annual or perennial mostly because nitrogen is a very volatile chemical
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within the soil profile meaning it is very easily lost so nitrogen that you do put on some is going to
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stick around some I mean 50% honestly to be quite honest is most likely going to be lost
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but if you can stick with high foss high potassium fall is also a great time for annual beds
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for you to apply it micronutrients you can find a nice little micronutrient fertilizer
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things like sulfur are a great thing to apply it magnesium calcium that sort of thing
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apply into the soil isn't going to do anything no for the most part it's going to sit there
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it will over time like when you go to transplant that nutrients is going to be much more
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bio available sooner in the year compared to the fertilizer that you apply when you
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transplant or just before you decide to transplant into the garden so we do have
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some exceptions to a fall application and the number one exception is a dry year
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or a year where we underwatered or underutilized that land mass now this is more
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tree for farmers than it is for gardeners. Obviously as gardeners were continually watering all the time
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but people who run homesteads or people who run larger-sized gardens that may not necessarily have
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a huge volume of irrigation. Maybe the budget is really tight, so you don't want to use too much water
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It was a poor rainier. You're going to have drier soil. So in the case of a larger landmass
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lower water inputs, you may want to take exception to a fall application. Now, this is a
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because you going to have great losses after it applied It actually quite the opposite If you fall apply a majority of that soil nutrients is going to stay in the soil profile because it has absolutely nowhere to go And we talk about the mechanisms in which those nutrients are lost a little bit later here in the video
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Now with a dry soil in the fall time, a fall application is actually probably going to cause an overabundance of nutrients
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So if it is a dry year, such as what we had here in Saskatchew and what we're starting to see with soil samples coming back in is that a majority
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of the soil has excess nitrogen, excess phosphate, and excess potassium. And the reason for
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this is because it has been very dry. So inputting more fertilizer is just going to be a waste of money
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because the battery reserve of the soil is actually already full. And we've talked about this
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many, many times, is that the soil can only hold so much. So if we top it up, yes, we're going
8:00
to fill the cup, but the rest is going to overflow over the sides. And it's going to have
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no use to us so dry years would be the exception if you know your land mass is
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underwatered then consider skipping the fall application it's really not going to serve you any good if anything it's going to cost you more money
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because there's enough nutrients in the profile that when spring does come the
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plants will have enough nitrogen for example to utilize so so far on the video we
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know a fall application is completely appropriate especially in a perennial bed or an annual bed that was in a moist environment that yielded very high yields this year
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Now, when we do apply, we want to lay off on the nitrogen, keep it under 15% volume, but we do
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want to stack up heavy on the phosphorus and the potassium. This means the fertilizer we choose
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probably won't be an all-purpose, but it would be something closer to a bloom formula. With that being
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said we do have losses so let's look at the actual scientific methods or theories in how
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nitrogen is lost through the soil so one of the main mechanisms through which nitrogen is lost
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from the soil system is through volavalization the levelization is the loss of nitrogen through ammonia
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so it is a gas at this point and is simply released back to the atmosphere out of the
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soil profile and so when this does happen it is volatilization this typically only takes place and
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incredibly moist soils but this loss can also happen through alkaline soils so a soil profile that has a
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pH above age or above seven so volavalization can happen in warm moist or alkaline soils meaning that
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one that is valavilized in the atmosphere is longer attainable to the plants
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which for most of you probably isn't going to be the case. However, for container gardeners, for example, or house plant owners
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this could happen. The levelization is probably very common because we have high moisture
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We have high heats because of the container style of it. If it's in a terracotta pot or a cloth pot
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we have a greater exchange of air to atmosphere. So we have greater interaction sites in which this gas can be leached off
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into the atmosphere around it. So the lavelization is applicable for some of you
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and it is a mechanism through which we lose nitrogen. So the second mechanism through which nitrogen is lost
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is through leaching Leaching is very common in environments that again are very moist but specifically not soil moisture atypical but soil moisture that comes in the form
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of rainfall or downward gravity movement that actually takes the water or it
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hooks onto the nitrogen and it pulls the nitrogen through the soil profile
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out of the root zone so it can no longer be taken up by the plant and eventually
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down into the groundwater or into the water system that is below that soil profile. If you're applying a compost or a manure or a granular
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fertilizer to the surface of the soil, similar to what we do with a no-day garden or
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when we apply granularly with like the lawn fertilizer, in that case, what ends up
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happening in most situations is it doesn't actually penetrate the soil at all
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especially if we have a heavy clay soil or a soil that has a hard pan or um
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you know, an impermeability issue of some sort. What ends up happening in leaching in that case
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isn't that it goes through the soil profile at the bottom is it will run off
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and it will run off into bodies of water, which can cause eutrophication in some cases
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So, flagellolization and leaching are the two mechanisms in which nitrogen is lost
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I think it's particularly applicable to the fall application. We really want to think of what our falls are like
12:06
This may not be applicable in all areas. say you have a fall that has very high rainfall, very high levels of moisture, you may want to avoid
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this fall application in this case because, especially in an annual situation and a no-till-dig
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annual situation, is that if you have a hard pan or if you have a perched water table within your
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regular parent material soil and maybe the no-dig zone that you have, you could end up with
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runoff. And it's a waste of your money. It's not good for the environment. the list goes on and on. So definitely something to think about. Now if you had a dry season
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you're probably going to have more than enough nutrients actually stacked up in that soil profile
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already that has not been utilized and has not been lost. Therefore, fall application is really not
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going to do you too much. However, if you do have a perennial bed that is got perennials that
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aren't quite done yet, then it is definitely applicable in that scenario. The other situation
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it's applicable in is farmers or gardeners that have gotten their soil tested and it is showing low
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levels of certain nutrients that means fall time is a great time to apply because it's going to be
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readily available in the spring we don't have to wait for gravity and water to do its job of
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actually penetrating that nutrients into the lower soil profile we will have a head start in the
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scenario of fall application but that's all i have for you guys today if you enjoy this video
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be sure to give it a thumbs up let me know in the comments down below if you fall fertilized and what
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scenario it is in so is it for a perennial bed or is it for an annual bed i would love to know i will
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talk to you guys next time
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