How often do you feed?

[Roseburn]

How often do you give your borders a feed of Miracle Gro?

I'm asking because garden sites often say - feed at the beginning of the season, but the miracle gro pack says every two weeks.

And a week or so ago there was a thread about hanging baskets and the advice seemed to be feed often.

Should hanging baskets/window boxes and borders be fed differently?

What works best?
I don't want to over feed - that can't be good, can it?

thanks

Following, as I was having this same conversation with DH today. I fed with miracle gro liquid feed today (three x one litre bottles used!) and said to DH that the bottle said to feed every 7-14 days in the growing season. His view was that the manufacturers would say that wouldn’t they! I have cheap tomato feed which is what I will use next time I feed.

I only feed my flower borders once or twice between spring and autumn but they are mostly perennials. I sprinkle something like blood and bone feed around the plants and water it in. I think plants in the ground need much less feeding that pots etc

I also only feed my shrubs that are in containers once or twice a season a well. No idea if that is right or not but things seem to grow ok

My flower pots and vegetables and fruits I feed every 10 - 14 days in the same time period .

I don’t feed anything in the garden as I garden on Clay which is quite nutritious. I give pots a week seaweed feed once every six weeks. When feeding always water the soil first, then wait an hour and apply the feed. Over feeding does more harm than good as it produces fleshy large leaves.

If you use good quality compost then feeding should not be necessary to often.certainly not fortnightly.

How often do you give your borders a feed of Miracle Gro? Never. I mulch with garden compost every couple of years, when the soil looks as if it needs it.

I think the every two weeks instruction is intended for containers.

Thanks for this advice FLOrenze. I didn’t water before feeding yesterday but I definitely will next time and will water tonight. I have clay soil when you dig deeper down, but it is decent to a depth of several inches. I think I remember you saying that you didn’t have bedding plants in your pots and I am wondering if that is why you use seaweed feed. Mine are a mix of bedding and shrubs and perennials (acer, small lime conifer, hydrangeas, oleander, campanula, bedding) - would you say to give tomato feed to those please?

Then I will follow the position of experienced gardeners who do not feed borders! The miracle gro container doesn’t obviously differentiate between borders and containers when it advises to feed every 7-14 days. Turns out DH (never gardens) may have been right when he said that fertiliser companies would say that, wouldn’t they!

I think it really depends on how poor your soil is and what you’re growing.

The soil in my garden is poor in places and I grow some plants that are heavy feeders, like roses. I also grow plants that thrive on neglect, like a huge cardoon, lavender and ornamental thistles.

Greedy plants get an application of manure in early spring, followed by all purpose food a few weeks later. I use a granular food that is scattered around the plants. That’s repeated every six weeks until mid July. Any later and you risk the plant putting on lots of soft growth later in the year which will make it susceptible to frost damage. Obviously that’s not an issue for annuals

My non-greedy plants get nothing, unless they’re showing real signs that they’re struggling, such as yellow leaves, in which case I’ll apply a little bit of food

I also use some specialist fertilisers for my roses, camellias, hydrangeas and climbing plants as I’ve found those actually make a huge difference to how well the plants do. Those are applied twice a year as per the packet instructions

And if I want something to really put on a show of flowers I’ll feed them tomato food every two weeks. But that’s definitely not something I do for all my plants.

So in summary, how much I feed and what I feed depends on the plant! It’s not as complicated as it sounds as most plants will show you if they’re doing ok or not 🙂

I used to have different feeds, Ericaseous feed, fish blood and bone, tomorite etc and never really understood why and what to feed. Then I had a chat with Beth Chatto at her garden in Essex. Hence I stopped feedIng, just mulched occasionally with good compost and fed pots very occasionally with seaweed feed.

I also bought a huge bag of gravel and completely covered the garden as per her advice, I have no weeds and rarely have to water.

She said “buy good quality plants, put them in good compost and any bedding plants should last the season with just watering. The only exception is when plants are packed really tightly in hanging baskets.”

I know this goes against a lot of advice from professional gardeners.

One other thing she said, which did make me laugh, was “garden feed manufactures are like detergent manufacturers. When I was a girl we cleaned everything, including ourselves with lye soap. Now we have 100s different product for every single surface”.

This is all really interesting. Thank you very much.

Might just give the rowan tree that's been growing in the front garden for the last few years from seed one last feed ( hurry up and get big, tree!) ....and then ditch the fertiliser for good.