Feeding houseplants in winter

Do you feed your plants through the rest of the year FC? If so, I'd be inclined not to feed them during the winter to give them a rest period.

 

If they're still actively growing then feed them, but if they're just marking time leave the feed until the spring.

Many of mine are just sleepwalking through winter, but the Strelitzia has put out two flower spikes over the last couple of weeks so that is on a diet of Phostrogen, along with my Clerodendrum which has gone nuts (I thought that I'd killed it when it copped a frost, but clearly not).

 

I wouldn't use any of the granular fertilizers, only liquid ones for house plants in pots.

I would only use Tomato fertilizer for things that are flowering (or fruiting if you have any - Lemons maybe? )

For the rest I use Miracle Gro - I would use that at about 1/4 strength, maybe less, during the winter (it has no Magnesium, so give some Epsom Salts a couple of times a year).

For smaller things (cuttings growing on etc and everything under lights) I use Canna Terra Vega [its one of the feeds that indoor Cannabis growers favour] which I have found gives great results (but it might be that the lights on their own would have done just as well - I haven't done any side-by-side trials)

You could consider the "cones" of slow release fertilizer granules - maybe better in the Summer though?

And you might like to consider some of the "pills" of insecticide (you just push them into the soil)

 

Ditto above, don't feed house plants in winter unless actively growing.

 

I am suspicious of the granular cones Kirsten mentions. Dig them up in a year and they are still intact.

 

Good thread this . I feed the office plants in the Lottery Office at our local Hospice each Thursday. They had 3 orchids 2 years ago so I bought a liquid orchid feed for them. I put a few drops in a 2 litre jug of water and ALL the plants on their 4 windowsills get a tot. It is naturally a warm environment and on the 4th floor - south facing, nothing goes to sleep! They just collapse IDC when they've had enough. I'm am just potting on Oxalis "Cupido" replacements for those that had flowered themselves out. I will try to remember to take my camera in and get a piccie of a magnificent Tradascanthia that I rescued and repotted just in time about 18 months ago. Wish I'd taken a before treatment picture.

 

All we have inside the house is a few large Crassula argentea and a Kalanchoe Flaming Katie. I don't recall ever feeding them as in the summer they go outside and get rained on. We have had to leave one outside in the greenhouse this year as it is to big to come into the house.


I think that one of these will be going to the daughter's house to reside.

 

Yeah, I know what you mean but that's true of all the "hundreds and thousands" types of slow-release fertilisers, none of them seem to disappear over time in my pots, and I think they must work in a different way to just dissolving slowly over time.

The Osmocote ones will deliver a very precise feed over a long time (some are 18 months, or even longer). Some clever chemistry going on I reckon ...

Personally I prefer the loose "hundreds and thousands" and I scatter them around the pot and just mix them in to the top 1/2" of compost, because I figure that that will spread the food all around the pot, whereas a cone pushed into one side is going to have a lot of fertilizer in that area, but it will be harder for it to diffuse through to the other side of the pot. But I had no knowledge to support that theory.

Blimey! I shall report you to the RSPCP !! At worst they will do a lot better with an occasional feed, at best they will astound you

 

[quote="Kristen, post:
Blimey! I shall report you to the RSPCP !! At worst they will do a lot better with an occasional feed, at best they will astound you [/quote]
I have you know that they get all they need from the rain in summer, and from the size of the plant in the picture they would be much bigger.
I can't cope with the large ones.
Feeding them would improve their look, but it is the size of them that worries me. I cannot lift them without the need of a forklift truck and the pots are all the glazed type. Any thoughts?

 

There may be goodness in the soil in the pots then? (Assuming they have been repotted recently-ish)

You could feed them with a low Nitrogen fertilizer - so you don't encourage growth, per se. That would provide trace elements - in case the plant needs that.

Chempak make one called "low nitrogen", although I don't know what's in it - in particular whether it has all the trace elements. A Bonsai fertilizer might be good too - that presumably won't be designed to encourage growth

 

Landimad, you could repot them into plastic pots and stand those inside the glazed ones making it lighter to lift them out and move.

 

Mine only got fed once this summer FC and they look fine to me. You can over feed as well as under feed.