Potting soil with added fertilizer

[mdvpc]

I bought a bag of potting soil with this amount of fert in it:

"Total Nitrogen 14% with 0.01% Ammoniacal Nitrogen, 0.02% nitrate nitrogen, 0.01% Urea Nitrogen and 0.10% Water Insoluble Nitrogen. Available Phosphate is 0.09%; Soluble Potash 0.02%; and Iron 0.25%."

I read an earlier thread which discussed really what this means, and am confused. Looks like a lot of nitrogen to me and not much else, but I could easily be wrong.

I have a tendency to over fertilizer my plants. Interested in any comments about just what this amount of fert already in the potting soil really means.

I garden in 5 gallon root containers (they are not swc).

Thanks for your help.

[Doug9345]

First of all I think you left out a decimal point in the 14% it should be point 14 percent. It shows that about 2/3 of the listed nitrogen is water insoluble. That means that it isn't available to the plant to use. It most likely is tied up in the bark or what organic substrate that is part of the mix. I ended up using a mix like that this year and my experience is that it really wasn't enough fertilizer.

[mdvpc]

Doug-Good catch! I did type it wrong-it is .14

So its 0.14 - 0.09 -0 .02 with .25 iron

[amideutch]

I doubt they added any ferts to the mix as the amounts are minuscule and is probably what the contents contain as a whole. Ami

[mdvpc]

Ami-Thanks for posting. Would you really just disregard the supposed ferts and proceed as usual? It does have compost in it, so maybe thats where they get the npk that they have on the label.

[Doug9345]

I used a similar mix this year and my plants didn't really start growing until I fertilized them.

[amideutch]

Michael yes, disregard whats on the bag and carry on as usual. Ami

[mdvpc]

Ami-thanks for your post! Have a great weekend all!