Agricultural supply stores sometimes sell fertilizers in 40 pound bags that are useful to homeowners and much less expensive than big box alternatives. They don’t go on sale but prices tend to be much lower than those sale prices.
Pricy formulations like Osmocote aren’t something I use outside of container growing and occasionally for flower starts I want to plug in quickly.
My main nitrogen source I can only buy in bulk- I suppose my supplier would let me buy smaller amounts if I asked the manager nicely and offered to bag it myself. It is a coated 90 day release urea.
Agway sells bags of straight urea and that is the cheapest way to buy nitrogen in a safe and widely available form. The other nutrients I usually get in adequate supply from wood-chip mulch and/or compost. The urea is to get trees to productivity or sellable size as soon as possible. Seems to work much better than organic, slow release alternatives.
I buy a 25 lb bag of Peters h/p 25/5/15 for most of my citrus/figs tree’s, add micro’s on top. Figs tree’s only for the first 3months( too much nitro).
Amazon sells AM Leonard stuff, no shipping. Osmocote I use to fill I between Peters waterings, so that my tree’s will always have what they need. Mind you, citrus are heavy users. My wife have tons of flowers that use a good amount of long lasting fertilizer. They are healthy looking plants, you don’t want to p….off mommy, do you. “My” experience in growing fruit trees was not an overnight thing. Happy with what I am doing.
I use a bit more fertilizer than many folks on the forum, so I buy mine at a local coop in bulk.
If I want a blend, I just have them blend whatever formula I want. If I’m fertilizing a large area, then I’ll rent a small 2 ton cart (the kind you pull behind a tractor) and have them blend and load the fertilizer in that.
Most of the time, I just have them blend it. Then auger it in the back of my pickup. Once we get back to the orchard, we drive down the rows and toss it around the trees or bushes with a large cup, or small bucket. I think I’ve gotten as little as 600 lbs. this way.
For urea, I just buy that in 50 lb. bags, as mentioned earlier in the thread. A 50 lb. bag is currently running about 25 bucks. A 50 lb. bag gives you around 23 lbs. of actual N.
Bulk fertilizer prices have increased dramatically from last year. Depending on the fertilizer, they have increased from 50 to 80% in one year. Many are predicting higher prices in 2022.
It’s the same thing with many other ingredients. I buy citric acid it in 50 lb. buckets. It takes several years to go through a bucket, but it’s much cheaper to buy 50 lb. quantities vs. smaller bags or boxes.
Many suppliers were out of stock. Those that had it, had it marked up 50 to 100% more. Crazy.
I could never use that much. I buy quantities enough for 2 or 3 years. I think bulk older than 3 years will loses some its strength, especially nitro. Older fertilizers I spread it somewhere in the garden comes spring.
Hauling 60 good size containers in and out a year could become a drag. With it’s now time again to bring them in. Like to show you but Forum doesn’t allow me to insert pictures.
Hmm, I’m thinking that may have something to do with your computer or phone. Or just some small detail left out in posting them. You’re a level 3 member, so you should be able to post all the pics you want.
I don’t know if you have an android phone or and Iphone, but here are some instructions for an android.
Perhaps this will help?
You can look under the question “HOW DO I POST PICTURES”
Olpea, I use my IPad for all uses for years using my pictures for forum’s use. Have no problems everywhere else. Sometimes it worked on this forum now it doesn’t work . I like to keep it simple, so if it doesn’t work it doesn’t work. I,ll just move on without.
Thanks for your help, appreciate it. Got an IPhone but do not use it , way too small.
Fertilizer prices going up quickly here too. I read that that some fertilizer plants have been shut down due to a shortage of natural gas. No natural gas means no urea or nitrogen fertilizers. I know exactly how we got from a surplus to a shortage of Nat Gas. Hope we don’t have to wait for food or energy prices to double or triple before logic and reason win.
I only use a fraction of the amount of fertilizer suggested by the exerts and try to buy the perfect fertilizer for each crop from the farm store with a fertilizer plant With 5 acres of fruit receiving 50 pounds of N would require over a ton of 10/10/10 which is too much weight for an old person like myself to move around. The local farm co-op will allow me to fill 5 gal buckets of Ammonium Sulfate of Urea from the bulk bins, but they really don’t like it. Their order entry system is based on tons so a bucket requires an entry of .02 tons per bucket which looks funny. I try to buy some feed, seed or bagged fertilizer at the same time to help smooth things out with the store. I would buy the urea and AS in a 50 pound bag but they only sell it in bulk. I have not seen anything that works on Blueberries as well as AS.
If you are using woodchips or many other organic mulches you probably don’t need any K, even at that small ratio. Urea in 40 pound bags is less expensive if it can still be had for under about $40 as a source of N. Nevertheless, that is an amazingly low price for 20 pounds of almost anything. Is it on sale?
That’s a good story. I try to encourage people to buy fertilizer in bulk, which is why I posted. It’s so much cheaper, generally.
That’s nice the co-op lets you buy in small amounts and smart you buy some other stuff to make it worth their while to do the transaction.
Just as a general comment to anyone reading this post, some fertilizers store better than others. Urea (46-0-0) supposedly doesn’t store well, but I’ve kept it for a couple years in the 50 lb bags and not seen any measurable volatization. DAP (18-46-0) is more stable. It’s supposed to be stored up to 3 years, but I bet it can be stored much longer if stored in good conditions. Potash (0-0-60) can be stored indefinitely. This might be helpful if someone wanted to get several years of bulk fertilizer all at once. A person could probably shovel it in 50 gal. plastic drums and keep it on hand.
N fertilizers can give off a little bit of ammonia, but I’ve kept N fertilizers in an enclosed shipping container for years and have not seen any rust on the inside of the shipping container, nor any rust on any metal things I store in there with it.
If you grow acreage of fruit trees you have no choice to buy bulk. For me, I grow more than I should. Got 5 acres but only uses less than 2, but full of stuff.
Actually too much. Pushing the limit!! It produces far more than needed.
I’m glad I started raising chickens last year. I collect their poop daily and store it in 5 gallon buckets. Over time, it composts automatically. That’s all I used for my watermelons last year, and will continue as long as I have chicks. I collect rain water and in no time it it’s full of algae. It’s what I feed my fig trees. This year was the first time I bought NO fertilizer, and don’t plan to buy any this year. I’ve also stopped feeding my fruit trees, and I got the biggest yield I’ve ever had. Sometimes, I think we use too much commercial fertilizer.
I think the problem with urea is only that if it’s not stored air tight it will draw moisture from the air and then become a solid brick. That’s the problem for me, anyway. I’ve never need store sealed bags for more than a year and in that point there was no appearance of degradation. Left in an open bucked indoors and it will be ruined in a matter of months in our humid climate.
