The arrowroot plant is native to the tropics of South America. It has a long history of cultivation by native peoples, who developed an extensive treatment process for extracting the usable powder from the roots. The roots are washed, scraped, beaten, soaked, pulped, and finally forced through a sieve.
A 100 pound bag of 16-4-8 contains 16 pounds of nitrogen, 4 pounds of phosphorus and 8 pounds of potassium. The rest if filler and minor elements. Even though it may cost more, a fertilizer containing slow release nitrogen is more efficient and cost effective in our sandy soils.ounding this number to six, you would apply six pounds of 16-4-8 fertilizer per 1000 square feet of lawn area. Using 12-4-8 fertilizer, you would apply eight pounds per 1000 square feet.
So now that you know what the numbers on fertilizer mean, you need to know why NPK is important to your plants. All plants need nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to grow. Without enough of any one of these nutrients, a plant will fail.or example, if a fertilizer is 10-0-0, then it only contains nitrogen. These fertilizer numbers, also called NPK values, should appear on any fertilizer you purchase, whether it is an organic fertilizer or a chemical fertilizer.