I believe this report cannot answer your question. You are concerned with nutrients for plants and the county is only concerned with contaminants for humans. Fertilizer contains nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium and the county test did not look for any of those elements. You may get a better answer if you pull a water sample at your house and take it to the local Extension Agent for testing. Good luck in your investigation.

Other than informing you of the pH, the water report is really quite meaningless when it comes to its impact on fertilization. Just fertilize your plants as you would without the report, although I might acidify it to some degree if you are growing a lot of acid lovers - it is a bit too alkaline for things like blueberries or rhodies and azaleas.

And may I just suggest that you are overthinking this container growing process? It is really not that complicated once you realize the benefit of a fast draining, durable soil mix and just take it from there :-)

@harold100 No, the report does not only list contaminants. It has selenium, copper, iron, maganese, sulfate, calcium, chromium, magnesium, phosphate, potassium, sodium, vanadium, etc.

I wasn't not trying to use this report as a substitute for fertilizer for nitrogen, phosphorous, etc. I was asking about micronutrients.

@gardengal48 Maybe fertilizing is easy. But can't I ask a question about whether my soil and water contains all the needed micronutrients for a plant?

Out of curiosity, what is your end goal here? To save money by buying a fertilizer that does not contain micronutrients? Presumably you are talking about growing in containers, given the forum, and presumably you are growing in either gritty mix or 511, given your other posts, so you will need to fertilize regularly regardless. Using a complete fertilizer will take care of micronutrients, and toxicity seems unlikely from the additional (small) amounts present in your irrigation water.

You seem very curious about container growing - have you started looking at books written on the subject yet? The more systematic information presented in a well-written book may be more beneficial than the piecemeal information presented in a forum like this.

One book that has been recommended here, that I will wholeheartedly recommended myself, is "Water, Media, and Nutrition (for Greenhouse Crops)", edited by David Wm. Reed. It is a good introduction to container growing, including media pH, irrigation practices, fertilizer, etc. Worth a read.

Of course you can ask!! And I will continue to answer that they do not.....if that were the case, no one would have the need to fertilize anything grown in a container and that situation just does not exist!

I'm sure that some of the trace elements in the water are available and taken up by the plants. But I would hesitate to ever consider it would be all that is needed - different plants require and pull different concentrations of these elements from the soil or wherever they can access them. And the vast majority of growers do not have these water reports available and have no way of determining what if any micros were available in their water supply and rely on their fertilizer program to supply what is needed.

@ilsstep My goal is to understand how well nourished my plants are from the water I am supplying them.

I am vaguely aware that I need to fertilize. Depending on who you listen to on the container garden forum, the opinions run the gamut from:

* You worry about fertilizing too much. Fertilize once a year

* Fertilize with a microscopic dose (not well defined usually) with every single watering

When you research online, you don't get a less divisive point of view. Some people argue that fertilizing requirements are minimum and warn that it is easy to kill plants by overfertilizing. Others seem to feel the plant cannot possibly reach optimum health status unless fertilizing is done on a regular basis (albeit at a lower dose than normally recommended).

I'm not trying to turn this into a science project. I am asking pretty simple questions, and as a sometimes astute observer, I am noticing that I rarely get simple answers, or consistent answers, which then leads me to ask more questions.

Westes: The first answer was the simplest - that water report does not tell you much with respect to plants. Understandably you were not satisfied. But your question sounds like that you are looking for a perfect scientific solution. Given your water report, it will be very hard to find a fertilizer that will perfectly complement the elements that you already have in your water.

Let us see why it is hard to make a fertilizer that contains every required element in perfect proportions. Let us take just nitrogen. Nitrogen can be supplied by many sources: potassium nitrate, sodium nitrate, ammonium sulfate, Urea, ammonium nitrate. If you use potassium nitrate then it increases potassium also whereas urea does not. It seems simple in this case, but when you have to achieve a certain NPK ratio, and then Ca and Mg and then the micro-nutrients it becomes a tough puzzle.

Even the source of nitrogen is a puzzle. A nitrate source is considered better than an ammonium source. Urea, ammonium based, that is a very popular and the cheapest nitrogen source is great for plants when applied correctly at the right time. As a by product, it acidifies soil (probably a good thing in some cases) and at worst it can can cause ammonium toxicity. All Miracle gro formulation are urea based because it is the cheapest source of nitrogen. Miracid just has more of that urea. Foliage Pro is nitrate based but more expensive. Nitrate source encourages tighter growth as opposed to Urea. But many people love the effects of Urea on their plants. To top that of, using Urea for nitrogen makes it a lot easier to add other (micro) nutrients.

But unlike Foliage pro, no one else even bothers to address the micro-nutrient part of the puzzle. I think MG fertilizers do not have Ca. Some claim, that in most parts the water is alkaline (hard) and already has enough Ca and perhaps even Mg - so why bother. Most packed soils come already buffered with dolomitic lime anyway.

But I often water with collected rainwater so I bother that I am leaching away many nutrients. I have many plants in 511 and gritty type mixes that are devoid of nutrients. My water is neutral and relatively low TDS of about 110-150 (means low in Ca and Mg). Foliage Pro is my go to fertilizer. I do also use MG Shake and Feed for annuals in pots.

@tropicofcancer thanks that helped to have the extra detail.

I think the answer to my original question - which is suggested by some of these responses but maybe not said directly - is that it does not matter what is in the water supply because there is no water anywhere that will avoid the need to fertilize a container plant.

I am going to spend some time reading through Al's fertilizer thread.

I read Al's (as usual) excellent information, and I posted a question in one of his fertilizer threads that I will duplicate here:

If I make 511 without the lime, I will not have the calcium or magnesium from the lime. Will FoliagePro 9-3-6 be sufficient to give me all the required nutrients?

If I made the mistake of already adding Osmocote Plus time-release fertilizer (N=15, P=9, K=12) to my containers, is it safe to apply 1 tsp/1 gallon of FP 9-3-6 in addition? I plan to thoroughly irrigate each container with water, then apply fertilizer at the end separately.

1) yes.

2) safe but could be unnecessary. Osmocote Plus supplies pretty much all the same micronutrients as does the Foliage Pro with the exception of Ca, which may or may not be an issue depending on what is being grown (and the media used).

If you do use the Osmocote, then consider the Foliage Pro as an occasional supplement rather than a routine fertigation product. I treat all my containerized woodies in this manner - Osmocote Plus in the soil mix when potting and again at the beginning of each growing season. I may hit them 2-3 time later in the season with the FP just to supplement the Osmocote, which is then winding down its nutrient dispersal. But never on a weekly or more frequent basis.