Feed me!
|23:23 UK time, Tuesday, 23 June 2009
A question that's cropped up a few times lately at Dig In events is what, and how much, to feed plants? Anyone who's ever looked sadly upon a sorry, stunted, yellow specimen will know that the little leafy darlings need nutrition if they're ever going to flourish. And that's where we can help.
Plants don't eat the soil - obviously, as it's still there after they've gone. Instead, they build themselves out of light, air and water. But they do need a few minerals to pull off this trick and thats what we feed them, especially if there's not enough in the soil or compost they're growing in.
The three minerals all plants absolutely rely on are nitrogen, phosporus and potassium (represented with the symbols N, P and K). Plants suffer in various ways if they don't have enough of these - not enough nitrogen leaves them short and yellowed, too little phosphorus and they'll go purplish and shrunken, and if they refuse to flower or grow fruit, they could well be in need of potassium.
These three are the ingredients of most off-the-shelf plant foods like Growmore and Tomorite, so using any of those will usually help. Don't overfeed though, it can be just as bad - make sure you follow the instructions on the bottle or packet.
This type of plant food is made using industrial chemical processes, so if you've decided to garden organically, you'll want to avoid them. There's plenty of organic options, like blood, fish and bone mixtures (best avoided if you have a dog!), pelleted manure - or just regular old manure. Make sure anything you put on your plants has had a chance to rot down, otherwise it could be too rich and "scorch" your plants - that is, give them a sort of chemical burn.
If you fancy making your own plant food, there's lots of recipes for organic fertilisers out there - try the Garden Organic website for starters. One of my favourites is comfrey tea, effective but very, very smelly. To make it, put five good handfuls of cut up comfrey (pictured to the left) in a tub, and add ten litres of water. After a month, it'll pong of toilets and death, but will be a ready-to-use liquid feed to boost up your plants. Enjoy!
If you've got a special fertiliser recipe, or have advice or a question about feeding plants, let us know by adding a comment below.
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