Fertilizer Management for Drip-irrigated Vegetables in Florida

Fertilizer application by drip irrigation is becoming a common practice for many vegetable crops, especially in Florida. Vegetable producers view drip irrigation as a tool to reduce water use, increase fertilizer efficiency, and improve profits, while simultaneously reducing the potential risk to the environment due to nutrient enrichment of surface and groundwater. This paper presents the current Univ. of Florida recommendations for fertilizer management with drip irrigation for vegetables in Florida. These recommendations are based on more than 15 years of research on water and nutrient management with drip irrigation. Although these recommendations were developed for largely sandy soils from mostly Florida research, they should be easily adaptable for other U.S. vegetable regions on sandy soils.