Can I give my Monstera some cactus food?

[CarterBeatsTheDevil]

It's the only non-succulent I have and I mildly resent buying a whole separate Baby Bio for it. (But I will, if I have to.)

Have a look at the NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium) ratio on your cactus food. Your Monstera would ideally like all three %ages to be the same, to encourage good leaf growth, whereas the cactus compost may have higher proportions of AP and K to encourage flower growth. The cactus fertiliser may be lower nutrient all round to reflect the arid nutrient-poor natural habitat. So, it my not be ideal, but it won’t do any harm and should do some good.

An alternative is slow release pellets which you scatter on top to be watered in every 6 weeks.

Do you have any fertiliser for outdoor plants? A sprinkle of a few Growmore granules or similar would be fine if you have some.
What @MereDintofPandiculation says about NPK is right and I've just checked, and the NPK for Baby Bio cactus food is 6.6, 4.7, 8.7 so I reckon that would be all right, the nitrogen content is the highest. The plant isn't going to know or care what it says on the label anyway.

By the way, the chemical symbol for potassium is K.

N is higher than P which is critical (the K is higher than the N)

Going to give it a go - thanks, friends!

@MereDintofPandiculation I've just done another search and found a different source which says it is 5:5:5. So that's a totally balanced one. Maybe they've changed the formula.

I actually went to a lecture about fertilisers recently, I wish I could remember more of it.

I'll have a look at the bottle. Thanks for the pointers - really helpful. The Monstera did take over an entire room earlier in its life, so I don't know quite how fertilised I want it to be. But I don't want to starve it either.

It's 5%/5%/5%!

Yes, that will be absolutely fine then, you can use it for pretty much anything.🙂

Gardening is about how far you can push the boundaries and move away from “ideal” practice. I use tomato fertiliser for everything.

I like that @MereDintofPandiculation . I spent most of my life terrified of gardening and plants because there were so many rules and it seemed so easy to kill whatever you were growing but it turns out to be a lot more intuitive than I had realised.

When I started gardening most gardening advice originated from large gardens with full time gardeners and a requirement to maximise yields. A far cry from the odd hour or afternoon fitted in when you can (and not to the plants’ timetable) and not needing enough courgettes to feed you and the neighbours every day for 6 months.

Gardening should be fun.