Matt Kane

Nitrogen will have to be replenished every year for certain crops.

Some vegetables require no Nitrogen.

The biggest user of N is Sweet Corn.

Rest would probably do alright without it.

Gary

Go buy you some 10-10-10 and be happy! If you wonder why then I use 19-19-19....because it takes less of it. It's pretty hard to apply too much when using 10-10-10.

It will not be there next year.

Just throwing money into the wind and adding nitrates to the water supply.

Gary

Well spoken. I didn't suggest the soil would store the N. If I were putting in a specific crop beyond a family garden sized plot, I would be very fertilizer specific. But the average Joe, putting out a vegetable plot...say 1/4 to 1/2 acre isn't going to be using much fertilizer anyway and what N he will waste is inconsequential. Makes better sense to me to buy one type to use on everything, than to buy 3 or 4 bags of various mixtures, some of which will not be used much at all.

I'm not out to kill space station Earth, but I'm not a greenie tree hugger either. As one professor at Auburn told me, pour the fertilizer to it if you want it to grow. It took nature billions of years to form the topsoil and it took the plow about 150 years to erase most of it. If you want what (soil) remains to produce a crop, the addition of chemical fertilizers is a must.