This is true for growing vegetables, flowers, fruits, shrubbery, or trees. This page will deal with the fertilizer that generally comes from a bag. We will explain those mystical numbers on the label of a fertilizer bag. The first number indicates the percentage of nitrogen. Nitrogen is the most important of the three.
Plants use it to build proteins, enzymes, chlorophyll, and hormones.
A plant with adequate amounts has healthy green leaves and strong growth. A plant with too little nitrogen is a pale, slow growing plant. However, too much nitrogen results in a plant that is succulent, over stimulated, and very attractive to bugs and some diseases. Nitrogen is constantly moving through the soil, atmosphere, living things, and can be rapidly leached away with too much watering. And, it is usually the element in short supply.