How often do you recommend fertilizing?

[Carl.Cook]

hard to answer that question. Have you done any soil tests? Are they in ground or potted. Indoors or outside. How much does it rain there a year and when. Make a list of the plants and answer those questions, that would be a better way to get an accurate answer. If trees are involved are they fruit trees or shade? How large are the trunks in diameter?

You nailed it! Soil testing ensures the correct mixture is applied, if need at all. Fertilizing without soil testing is like adding a quart of oil to you vehicle every week without checking the level first, simply because your last vehicle used a quart every week.

 

[sgkent]

plants tolerate a certain chemistry in the soil. Different plants tolerate different chemistries. The danger of guessing what one needs, without a soil test, is that some minerals do not easily wash out of soil. Hence, adding something over and over that worked three years ago may become toxic. There are years where my soil is so balanced, all I need to do is add a little nitrogen. Other years I need something else. ALSO and this is a big also, as the soil acidity and alkalinity change, certain minerals become more or less available. If any of you remember the acid rains of the 70's and dying forests, it was because the acid in the rain from the power plant effluents caused the soil to become acidic. As that happened heavy metals that were locked in the soil became available and killed the trees. I once bought some supposed to be really good soil from a nursery supply. Like yards of it for a side fence area with camellias. Turned out there was too much manure in it and lime, and it almost killed the plants. That was 15 years ago, and I still have not been able to get the pH back to acidic in spite of all the fertilizer and sulfur that has been used on it. It started like 8.2 pH and is now down to about 7.0 which is neutral. Camellias like acidic soil, like 5.8 to 6.5 or so. Fortunately a soil test saved my plants because we immediately did some things to bring the pH down. I dug around each plant and added a huge amount of peat to the soil. So when I suggest getting a soil test first, trust me - that is how big farms have such nice crops and you struggle with them. They test the soil so only what is needed is added. $20 a test. Really inexpensive compared to a bag of fertilizer you don't need.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Depends upon how well you know what you are growing .
Plants will tell you what they need or what they are getting too much of
Hydrangers grow relatively well around here so they are my pH indicators
Just about every plot has one or two of them trimmed back as low as possible each season because the hot summer days burn them badly .
The only fertilizer as such I apply is on the veggies & pumpkins and they get cow pats or a spray made from worm wee and of course the citrus which gets me wee .
Other than that the compost has chook, cow, horse & alpaca poo in it , fresh & dry grass clippings + what ever has been pruned run through the shredder .
I wet it down when necessary with dilute urine &/or dilute worm wee or the effluent from a weed bin full of water that nasty weeds go into to rot down anerobically
Compost goes on between every crop & then 6" of dry grass from the paddocks or as a mulch or pine needles for the acid lovers like tomatoes
Adding the charcoal to the compost I found made it a lot more effective but I will attribute that to it adsorbing the nutrients that are usually leeched out when watering.
Minimal watering via dripers also seemed to make a big difference as well and that water is from a tank, not the mains which are chlorinated & flouridated .

 

[sgkent]

Hydrangeas are a partial shade plant. As for speaking with plants, maybe after enough beers you can hear them speak. What language they speak in I do not know.

 

[Erin0110]

At least 5-6 times per year.

 

[jankihaii3]

Best thing for ALL soils is/are beneficial microbes/bacteria I think they are called. They are tiny little guys that work IN the soil to make the soil grow items. They convert urea (nitrogen) into a plant usable source.