Testing 5 Different Fertilizers For Growing Peppers - Pepper Geek.

Hey there, welcome back to Pepper Geek. In today's video we'll be testing five different fertilizers and seeing which one grows the best pepper plants. So today marks the beginning of this experiment, it is April 21st, so we'll be following the recommended guidelines by the manufacturer of each fertilizer. We have Garden Tone from Espoma, which we've used in the past. We have Dr. Earth's Organic Tomato Fertilizer, which we haven't used before. We have Fox Farms Trio of Liquid Fertilizers, which we have used. Miracle-Gro Performance Organics, which is an organic variant of Miracle-Gro's All-Purpose Fertilizer. And then we have Miracle-Gro's All-Purpose Plant Food, which is an inorganic water-soluble fertilizer. So the jalapeno seedlings are ready for transplanting, they were planted on March 21st, so they've been alive for about a month, they're actually a little bit overdue, but they're all the same right now, they look very similar, they're all looking very healthy. So I've made a very simple soil solution, which is two parts peat moss to one part topsoil, and then one part perlite for a little bit better drainage, and we're going to be using this same simple mixture, nutrient-free, for the plants in these 3.5-inch pots, and once they outgrow these 3.5-inch pots, they'll move into two-gallon containers like this, all the same size. So today I'm just going to transplant and give them their first feed of the various fertilizers. So this is the Garden Tone going in here, just mixing that up as well, and the other is Dr. Earth's, and mix that in thoroughly. So these are the first two that I will transplant, doesn't really matter which plant goes where, I'm just going to choose randomly and pop them in. See, there's our first seedling, and this is going to be our Dr. Earth's tomato food. Pop it in, pack it down. Next one is going to be Espoma's Garden Tone. So already those are definitely the easiest two, I know that these are going to be more tricky because I'm going to have to mix very small batches of these fertilizers just to feed them once, and then on an ongoing basis. So now these three have just plain soil, okay so now I'm going to distribute the fertilizer into the remaining three, and then water them in, and we'll check back in a few weeks to see how the plants are doing. Okay so here's a quick check in three weeks later, the plants are almost ready to be transplanted again. So far the Fox Farm plant is the tallest and most healthy looking of the group. Miracle-Gro plant food and organics are also doing pretty well, and have light green foliage. The Dr. Earth's and Espoma Garden Tone plants have a much different look, with darker foliage, a shorter height, and both showing more significant signs of plant edema. I suspect this has to do with the fertilizers not being water soluble. And here just comparing the Garden Tone and Fox Farm plants, there's clearly a significant difference in development so far with the Fox Farm plant looking much healthier and sturdier. So just a few days later the plants were ready for transplant, so I mixed up a larger batch of our simple soil mixture, and got the plants into larger pots. Again it's pretty easy to see the difference in both color and size of the different fertilizers. The Miracle-Gro plants are in red pots, Fox Farm is in a green pot, and the two granular organic fertilizers are in gray pots. Garden Tone and Dr. Earth's look pretty sad at this point, but let's not lose hope just yet. Everyone loves a good comeback story, right? So now in early June all the plants have continued to grow and are looking pretty good. Fox Farm and the other water soluble nutrients still appear to have a slight advantage, but the organic granular fertilizers have certainly caught up a bit. They still have a much deeper green color, which is interesting. The two non-organic plants are basically neck and neck, both looking fairly healthy and sturdy. We're also starting to see some flower buds forming at this point, so fruit development is right around the corner. And I did this many times throughout this test, but here's one of the fertilizer applications while the plants were bigger. Espoma was applied once a month. Miracle-Gro Organics is the most frequent at weekly fertilizing. Miracle-Gro Plant Food was bi-weekly. Fox Farm is done at every other watering, which is a bit tricky to maintain. And Dr. Earth's was every two months, so in theory the simplest method of fertilizing. Okay so moving into early July, all the plants have begun fruiting. At this point, interestingly, the Fox Farm plant seems to have fallen behind, at least in terms of plant size and vigor. The fruits are certainly in the early stages of growth on all the plants, but it actually seems like the granular fertilizer plants are maybe taking the lead here, but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet. Now a week later, I noticed some rot forming on a few of the jalapenos. I'm fairly sure it was blossom end rot, but either way, I decided to pick the affected fruits and weigh them at this point. The Garden Tone and Dr. Earth's plants had the highest number of affected fruits, but we'll get more into this in a bit. One plant that showed no signs of this issue was the Fox Farm plant, which had some huge pods on it, despite being the smallest plant. So about a month more later, and that brings us to today, which is harvest day. Some very notable results at this point, the Miracle-Gro plants are both fairly similar with a tall stature and broad leaves. Fox Farm somehow looks like the runt of the group, but the pods are absolutely massive. Just huge, beautiful fruits, despite a small plant size. The two granular fertilizer plants grew tall and bushy, but the pods had issues developing, and most are on the smaller side. With that, it was time to harvest, so I picked all full-sized fruits off the plants, leaving almost none remaining. And with that, let's head inside and see the results. Okay, so back inside with a ton of jalapenos, and we're going to weigh each batch to see which plant produced the heaviest yields, at least for the first harvest, and I think this is a good time of year to test this. The plants will continue to produce, but at this stage, I think it's a good time to judge how well the fertilizer has done. So we're going to measure in grams, and I've tared this scale, and I'm going to start off with Miracle-Gro Performance Organics, 399 grams off of this, and it also had the highest number of pods, which is 15 for this little stage, not bad. This is Miracle-Gro Plant Foods, so the non-organic version of Miracle-Gro, and that has 360 grams and also one less pod off of the plant, so 14 pods and 360 grams. This is Fox Farm, it only has 9 pods, but I have a feeling this is going to be one of the heavier. These pods are just huge and meaty and thick. These are the kind of jalapenos I really want to harvest, honestly. If I had to choose a plate point-blank, this is the one I would go for, just based on the size alone. They're just really impressive. 390 grams, so actually a little bit lower than Miracle-Gro Performance Organics, and definitely less pods, but they're definitely heavier pods. Dr. Earth's not a great showing for this, the plants were pretty large, but the yield doesn't look very good, the pods are much smaller, and there are only 10 pods here. Coming in at a weight of 233 grams, so much, much lower. And last, and kind of potentially least as well, is Espoma Garden Tone. I really like this fertilizer for in-ground beds and raised beds, but in this particular test it doesn't seem to have done very well. We have some Blossom Enderot or some Sun Squall potentially, a lot of problematic pods, smaller pods and a pretty low yield, only 11 at this time. These come in at a weight of just 162 grams, so definitely not a good showing for Espoma Garden Tone in this case. I had hopes for this because it's so simple, you just throw it in the soil and let it sit for a month, you don't have to do much, just water, but the results are not very stellar in this case. So we did harvest a few fruits off of these plants early, as we were seeing that Blossom Enderot forming, so we would pick those off. I did still weigh them, so we're still taking them into account. So I have the numbers for every single jalapeno that we've harvested from any of these plants so far, rotted or not. So here are some of the more interesting conclusions. Fox Farm has the heaviest overall usable weight at 432 grams. All of those were usable fruits, meaning that none of them had cracking or Blossom Enderot. They were also the heaviest fruits by far, with an average of 43 grams per jalapeno. Compare that to the next heaviest, which is Miracle Grow Organics, at just 26.4 grams per fruit. Now, ironically, the overall loser here was Espoma Garden Tone, but it happened to also produce the largest number of fruits at 19, but only 6 of those were considered usable fruits, the rest of them succumbed to Blossom Enderot, and the overall usable weight from that plant came in at just 100 grams, less than 25% of that of Fox Farm. On the flip side, Fox Farm had just 10 overall fruits so far. The plant is definitely the shortest, it looks the least healthy, but overall, at the end of the day, what you want are fruits, and Fox Farm delivered. The heaviest overall harvest weight, including rotted fruits, came from the Miracle Grow Plant Food plant at 439 grams, just edging out Fox Farm, but only 13 of the 17 fruits were usable, so that knocked the overall usable weight to 343 grams. Miracle Grow Organics did pretty well here with a 422 grams of harvest weight, but there were a few unusable fruits, and that knocked it down to 339 grams of overall usable weight, but it did have the next highest average fruit weight, and a pretty respectable overall harvest, especially compared to the other two organic options. So, there is a lot to conclude here. The first thing I want to say is that this was really not a scientific experiment. If we wanted real, usable results here, we would have had to grow many, many more plants. We only had five plants, and each of them was treated differently, so it's really not scientific. This is really just for entertainment purposes, but definitely some interesting results. One of the most interesting to me is the size of these Fox Farm fruits. I really can't wrap my head around why these are so much bigger. The plant got a better start in the season. It looked the largest, but over time, it actually ended up being the smallest plant, but with the heaviest yield and the biggest overall fruits. I think one of the most important things to consider here is the original soil recipe that we used. If you remember, it's really just peat moss, a little bit of perlite, and some topsoil, and that's it. So, the Espoma and the Dr. Earth's organic, non-water-soluble formulas didn't do very well, and the plants were running into issues. I think the plants were having a difficult time using the nutrients that are there in that fertilizer, because obviously the fertilizers have what plants need. But I think in the soil mixture that I used, the plants weren't really able to make use of that nutrient content. On the other hand, the water-soluble ones did much better, and I think essentially these plants that were using water-soluble nutrients, especially in the case of Fox Farm, which is a liquid nutrient, were essentially grown hydroponically, and you could consider the soil to be sort of just a medium that the roots were growing in. So I think the reason we got such drastically different results from organic to inorganic and water-soluble is for that reason. All of these nutrients were much more readily available, immediately accessible to the plant, so when we would water with Fox Farm, the plant could immediately take those nutrients up through the roots. It doesn't have to wait for it to be broken down by bacteria that may or may not have been present in the soil. So which fertilizer would I recommend? Which one would I choose if I had to pick just one for the future? It would be between Fox Farm and the Miracle-Gro Performance Organics. We've always recommended these two fertilizers, and it's interesting to see that both of them have prevailed in this test at least. They've given us good results with our potted plants, with our in-ground plants, but we've also seen really good success using Espoma Garden Tone in our raised beds. So if you're growing in the ground or in raised beds, any of these fertilizers are going to help your plants grow. It's just a matter of can the plants actually make use of the nutrients that are there. If you do find yourself compelled to try one of these fertilizers, they are all good. We'll leave links down below where you can get them online if you're interested. But again, don't take this as a conclusive result for the best fertilizer to use to grow peppers. Other factors like the soil media that you're using are going to play a bigger role in the end result. I know this wasn't a perfect test, and we had some issues come up, and we tried to address them as best as possible, but what did you think? Tell me what I did wrong and what we can do better in the future. Maybe we'll do another one next year. Let us know in the comments if you have any recommended fertilizers that you would like to see us test in the future. Maybe something good for potted plants that we could test against the winners of this test. Thanks so much for watching Pepper Geek, and I'll see you next time.