In Western nurseries, at leat 169 different kinds of fertilizer clamor for attention. Shoppers can easily be confused by the lineup: specialty fertilizers for lawns, roses, cmaellias, and more than a dozen other plants crowd shelves alongside all-purpose products in a wide variety of forms--liquids, granules, sticks, stakes, tablets, pellets.
Despite this array, choosing the right fertilizer can be simple if you know what fertilizer ingredients can do for plants. On these six pages, we explain why plants need fertilizer, why there are so many products, how to select the right one, and how to use it.
To find out how various fertilizers affect plant growth, bloom, and ...