Nitrogen management in nursery systems faces two challenges: improving seedling quality and reducing environmental impacts on adjacent ecosystems. Nursery management is generally based on the concept of “bigger seedlings are good seedlings.” Guidelines for seedling quality have been developed based on seedling size and other physical features (Thompson and Schultz, 1995; Dey and Parker, 1997; Kormanik et al., 1998; Jacobs et al., 2005). Seedling performance after outplanting suggests that soil management under conditions of luxury consumption will improve chemical seedling-quality (Timmer, 1997). Maintaining large plant-available nitrogen pools in nursery soils requires large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer over a growing season because of the complexity of the soil nitrogen cycle, the sandy soil texture, and intensive irrigation events typical of tree nursery systems. Thus, maintaining luxury-consumption conditions with nitrogen fertilizer could generate excessive soil nitrogen levels in nursery systems, which may lead to nitrate groundwater contamination.