Feeding

Please can anyone advise me on a good plant food for container plants, one that encourages flowering? I tend to find that the ones that I have tried encourage strong growth and foliage but not enough flowers. Also, one that prolongs the flowering period - I often find that my plants seem to wear themselves out before the end of July.

[ 14. April 2006, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: Lenton Rose ]

 

the little packets of plant food that you buy for containers work really well in my experience, they remind me of birdseed, you get 25 of them per packet, i m not sure what the right name is tho

 

Osmacote? I think Phostrogen do something similar.

 

Anything that is high in potassium. As Pete says phostrogen, tomoto food, or the like should be fine.

 

all the plant-sales copanies, like T&M tell you to use tomato food for the bedding plant types most people put into containers and hanging baskets - so they obviously think it's goood too!

 

Current regulations say that all chemical fertilisers must display an N:P:K ratio on the packet. For instance Miracle Grow has an N:P:K of 15:30:15. That means it is 15% N (=Nitrogen for foliage growth), 30% P (=Phosphorous for root growth) and 15% K (=Potassium for fruit and flowers). Thus

Miracle Grow is ........... 15:30:15
Phostrogen is ............. 14:10:27
Sulphate of Potash is ... 0:0:50


It is the ratio that is important. If you check this ratio on the various packets of fertiliser on sale, you will see which ones are high in K(=Potassium for flowering). At the beginning of the season I would use a balanced feed - you want to start off with good foliage and roots. But when the plant starts flowering I would move to a higher percentage of Potassium. The cheapest way of doing that is to mix sulphate of Potash, which is pure Potassium, with a balanced feed.

Think of it as a cake mix. You can buy a packet of premixed ingredients, or you can mix the ingrediants yourself, or you can do a combination of both. In this case mixing the two is the cheapest way, as sulphate of Potash is very cheap.