what plant food to use ?

I only have two plant foods , miracle grow ericaceous for the ericaceous ones and miracle grow all purpose pour and feed general plant food

Is this enough as im reading that i should use plant food designed for tomatoes in the non-ericaceous plants .

 

I use miracle grow as its a balanced fertiliser, but once things start flowering I move to a high potash one, I use chempak mostly, for that.
Chempak do a whole range of liquid feeds, in powder form, with different amounts of each element.

 

The other worry i have is that miracle grow seems to have made the plants produce lots of leaves but no flowers. When i read the bottle it says it contains a bio stimulant which makes me imagine some sort of lab based steroid is in it

 

Yes it might with some plants, maybe you are overfeeding slightly.
If you move over to a high potash feed now it will promote better flowering and less foliage.

 

This often happens when plants receive too much nitrogen which is has a high ratio in Miracle-Gro.

What are you growing @hi2u_uk and are they in pots or in the ground?

 

I just fed them today , i think its been about a week or two since i last fed them.
Can you suggest a high potash brand. Is that the way people do it ie one week you use high potash then then next week you switch to a different type ? i was hoping to just get away with one or two different types of plant food not having to switch every so often

 

It depends what you are growing and where @hi2u_uk.

 

Anything labelled tomato feed should be high potash, but look at the label to be sure. You can use it for anything that you want to encourage to flower and/or fruit, not just tomatoes, and I find the cheap ones are as good as the pricey branded ones, although it's as well to check the dilution rate as well as the size of the bottle to decide what's the best price.
You're looking for the N-P-K values. K is potash, N nitrogen, P phosphorous. something like this, with a high K relative to N and P.

This one happens to be from a big brand for sale on a big online retailer, but I only used it because there was a pic of the back of the label.

 

There's lots of things but I've divided them into what Google says are ericaceous plant and the ones I assume are not. That's why i only bought 2 types of food. They are all in containers outdoors

 

My sister seems to feed once every five years. Still her garden produces flowers and veg to rival any commercial outfit.
She makes me sick

 

Just be careful not to overfeed your plants if they don't need it. Too much nitrogen can produce lax green growth which will attract predators like slugs and snails. I found this guide useful:

Fertilisers – How and when should we use them ?

 

Thanks though now im beginning to wonder if its wrong to force it to flower using a flowering specific fertiliser.

 

I use only home-made compost and (very) occasionally a bucket of comfrey tea, plus I mulch a lot to get good humus-rich soil. Plants have managed to flower without help, and many plants flower better on poor soil, as they know their survival (in the form of seeds) depends on it. This just to indicate that doing nothing can be both easy and rewarding, it's always the first option I consider.

 

I don't feed shrubs/trees other than when planted [a little BF&B] because I feed the soil by adding organic matter as a mulch, as @micearguers describes.
For heavy flowering plants like annuals, dahlias or clematis etc. I use tomato food. Loads of makes available. That gets used for the toms too, but I also do comfrey feed now which I use for those plants in between, or instead of the tom food.
Many of my annuals are in pots too, so they need more than they would in the ground, but I have clay soil which is richer in nutrients anyway. That's where adding organic matter helps though.

As micearguers says - it also depends on the plant itself, because some do better on poorer soil. Too much food creates lots of soft, lush growth. Climate is always a factor too, because in wetter areas, or in long wet spells, food can easily get washed through before it benefits the plant.

 

We haven’t bought in any fertilisers for about 3-4 years. I used to apply chicken pellets once a year around the garden. We do produce our own compost and I use some of that to mulch my roses and hydrangeas. I ran out if fish, blood and bone about 2years ago and haven’t got round to buying any more.

In the greenhouse, the beds get mulched in Spring with our own compost and, if I remember, I make a feed with Alkanet (same family as Comfrey so assuming/hoping it has some similar qualities)

Annual pots are filled with a mix of garden soil and homemade compost.

When I started gardening I couldn’t afford to buy plant food so have never really got into the habit. Now I deliberately don’t as I don’t want to use any unnecessary plastic or products.

Everything grows and flowers quite happily. Maybe not as big and lush as they would if I did use fertilisers but good enough for a garden full of flowers and more than enough tomatoes.