Plant food composition

Hi all

I am looking for some general rules of thumb regarding the composition of plant food/fertiliser.

Obviously different plants have different requirements, and those requirements will vary during their life cycles. And yet there may be some general themes that, while varying in the specific quantities and timing, might run true more or less across the board. Such as, for example, go for phosphate rich food during early growth and nitrate rich in the fruiting phase or something like that (that particular example was a random selection plucked out of the air and not intended as serious). Then, there are particular classes such as brassicas that may share common requirements across the board, contrasted with beans, contrasted with squashes and so on.

Sorry if this has all be thrashed over many times in this forum, but my attempts with the search engine are a bit hit and miss, mainly miss.

 

Hi Jack

There was a thread on this some time ago, which may have some useful information. http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=193&highlight=fertiliser

 

"that particular example was a random selection plucked out of the air and not intended as serious"

That's a relief to hear as you've got it about 180-degrees wrong! Nitrogen to boost growth, Phosphate to establish plants and increase drought tolerance, and High Potassium fertilizers are used for fruiting Tomatoes, for example

Fertilizer usually has a published ratio for N-P-K - Nitrogen Phosphorus Potassium. So you can get balanced, or un-balanced fertilizers, according to which of the three main ingredients you need to boost.

Then there are trace element, which can be important for certain conditions - where the plant needs a specific trace element, or the ground lacks something, or the previous crop was greedy for something specific.

However, I don't really understand whether specific fertilizers boxed & marketed for a specific plant are worth buying, or whether "something close, but more generalist" will do.

 

Thanks for that. Definitely bookmarked that thread