Feeding Advice

Well, I use Miracle Gro which I find does the job for general feeding of shrubs, roses, herbaceous plants in the border, plants in pots etc. I do use Tomato Feed fertiliser when my roses and Paeonies are in bloom as they are hungry plants. But really there is no magical "one size fits all" fertiliser for all plants and you need to do a bit of research on your plants to find out their different needs. The more you know the more you realise that you need to know more:D

 

This could be interesting:D

 

Usually, I agree with you two Peters, but in this case I'm not so sure. My garden is in the cottage style, on sandy soil, has been established for 30 years, but due to my insane love of plants is stuffed to the brim. My plants stand shoulder to shoulder and are tightly packed in the borders and to make it worse underneath them are thousands, and I do mean thousands, of various species of bulbs waiting to come into life and compete with the rest of the garden.
So, in my view, without regular feeding, dressings of garden and commercial compost my plants would not be able to get the nutrients they need to look as good as they do. This year I have stuck to a regular, scheduled feeding of the borders, roses and paeonies, and I can see the difference. I do agree that, in the natural environment, nature does recycle decomposing material into nutrients which feeds the wild plants in that environment. But a garden is not a natural environment. We plant things that come from all over the globe and are not native to this country, we grow ornamental plants intensively, wanting our gardens to be in flower production for all the year around. We couldn't do that with regular feeding.:D

 

I think it all comes down to, as you say PeterS, the type of soil in your garden, what you're growing, how you grow i.e. just a few plants here and there or insanely intensively like me, and also down to personal experience and choice.:D
I, as you know, garden on sand with 300' foot or more underneath me. But over the years I have put over 180 - 190 tons of top soil over it, countless dressing of garden and commercial compost to lessen the hungriness of the soil, but I haven't helped my situation because the better results I got, the more I packed plants in:D I can have prolonged heavy rain for several days and after it's gone I can walk on the lawn and see that my borders are looking as though there's only been a light shower, I kid you not

But I've put plants into my sandy soil that really are not meant for such a situation and they romped away due, I believe, from the support of regular feeding. I have had a lot of failures too, but that's gardening!! But, as I've said previously, my garden is not a natural environment, it's one where plants are in situations and locations where, in nature, they wouldn't be and left to their own devices would not survive. I'm sure that other gardeners with different soils than me have their own thoughts and practices on feeding due to experience, successes and disasters.

What disturbs me is that some gardeners think that one fertiliser will be suitable for their purposes or may use a fertiliser that is not suitable for the specific use they're contemplating.. That may be down to inexperience, lack of knowledge, and/or the commercial marketing of plant feeds. But you do get gardeners "blindly" buying plant feeds without thinking of their plants specific needs and what the nitrogen, phosphate, potash and trace elements are. It's no good, though, reading the labels if you ain't got a clue as to what they mean, so I guess it's a good thing Forums like GC exist because gardeners can ask the questions they need to and get the different opposing arguments - and then get totally confused:D