Home Garden Trends

How to choose plant foods depends on the objectives you have for your lawn or garden. If you simply want to keep your plants alive, a yearly application of a complete fertilizer should do the trick. But if you want your plants to do their best you’ll need to do more.

Of the 16 nutrients essential to plant growth and reproduction, only four are likely to be deficient in soils: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and calcium is usually sold separately in the form of limestone.

The best way to know how much in what proportion to add plant nutrients is with a soil test. Once a soil test indicates what nutrients you need to add, you can select a fertilizer to correct most of those deficiencies.

As you become more involved in gardening and managing your soil, you will probably hear a good deal about the benefits of one type of fertilizer compared to another. In weighing these arguments, remember that plants can’t distinguish between the sources of their nutrients. Plants simply need to have all of the nutrients present in sufficient quantities. In the proper proportions, and in a form they can use.

The key to nutrient value is availability. Fertilizer needs to be reasonably soluble and available to plants soon after application. Soil elements such as phosphorus and potassium - though plentiful in the soil - can become fixed to soil particles so they are not available to plants.

Organic plant foods include compost, manure, sewage sludge, bone meal, tankage, blood meal, cottonseed, meal, and soybean meal. If you’re planning to buy any of these materials, remember that their analysis - in terms of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash - is low, so the actual nutrients you buy may be more expensive than if you bought them as one of the inorganic fertilizers.

Other characteristics of organic plant foods also should be considered as you make your selection. With the exception of bone meal, nitrogen is the predominant nutrient in the plant foods. They usually contain less phosphorus and potash. In bone meal, phosphorus predominates. The nutrients in organic plant foods are insoluble and become available only as the material decays in the soil. That makes them slow-acting and long-lasting. And finally, organic fertilizers alone are not balanced sources of the nutrients your garden needs.

Inorganic plant foods are either mined or manufactured and have characteristics that contrast strongly with organic fertilizers. Their nutrients are in soluble form so they are quickly available to plants but are not very long-lasting. Their solubility can make their caustic to plants. If you apply them in concentrated amounts, be careful to keep them from direct contact with roots and foliage or you might kill the plants. Analysis of chemical fertilizers is relatively high in terms of the nutrients they contain.

The ratio of nutrients contained in fertilizer must be printed directly on the container. The numbers indicate the percentage of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash, in that order. Thus, a 12-12-12 fertilizer contains 12 percent, by weight, of each nutrient, with the remainder being inert matter.

Because of the different characteristics of organic and inorganic fertilizers, many gardeners find a combination of the two produces the best results. Cost and available supplies may influence your choice.

Fertilizer forms. Liquid plant foods have no particular advantage over the dry forms, except around individual plants or for use as starter solutions. They’re also good for accurate application to houseplants and other container-grown plants.

Slow release fertilizers, like sulphur-coated urea, are relatively new products for home gardeners. They work on the same principle as the “time” capsules you take for your cold- they feed the plants slowly over an extended period. Slow-release fertilizers are especially useful on lawns, because you can apply them at higher rates and not burn the grass. They also save the time of repeat applications.

A complete fertilizer is simply one containing all three major nutrients. The nutrients in any particular fertilizer may not be in the proper balance or ratio for your particular needs. Look for a fertilizer that contains nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in the approximate ration recommended by the soil test. Then base your rate of application on the recommendations of provided by the soil test.

Micronutrients. Some fertilizers cantain a small quantity of certain micronutrients. However, because you usually must pay extra for micronutrients in fertilizers, it is best not to apply them unless you find your plants have serious problems growin, and a soil test shows one or more micronutrients to be in short supply. Because these elements are generally needed in such small amounts, any excess can betoxic to most of the plants.

Limestone should only be applied if a soil test indicates your soil is too acid and you need to raise the pH. Soils with a pH of 6.5 to 7.0 will support the growth of most garden plants. (Do not add limestone without first having a test.)

Applying Plant Foods

Applying plant foods most effectively requires you to know when your plants need the nutrients, how quickly the nutrients become available from the fertilizer you select, and which fertilizer placement will be most beneficial.

The chart below summarizes when you should fertilize various types of plants. In determining the proper fertilizer placement, it helps to realize that phosphorus and potassium are fairly immobile once they’re placed in the soil. As a result, they need to be placed near the root zone of the plants you’re trying to feed. With these two elements especially, it does little good to spread fertilizer on top the ground and hope it will work its way down to the root zone.

Plant Season to Feed Special Notes

Annuals Before planting Spread food before turning soil for bed. Feed again when plants are thinned

Bulbs, tubers Early spring or fall Add food to planting pocket, either complete plant food or superphosphate

Evergreens Early spring Feed sheared ones again in fall. Use “acid” foods for azaleas, camellias

Fruit trees Fall or spring Use supplementary nitrogen in early spring in addition to yearly feeding

Hedges Spring Feed sheared hedges again in fall

Houseplants Any Time Feed sparingly every two or three months except during winter when plants cease active growth.

Lawns Spring and fall Supply extra nitrogen in fall if grass is damaged by drought or hard use

Perennials When growth Starts Repeat when flower buds appear

Roses Spring and summer Fall feeding may force new growth that will be damaged by cold

Shrubs Spring or fall One feeding a year usually sufficient for mature plants

Small fruits Spring or fall Two feedings a year preferred for most bramble fruits. Extra summer feeding may increase crop

Trees Spring Repeat in fall if tree is weak, or damaged by drought, disease, or insects

Vegetables Planting time Side-dress when plants are thinned, or shortly after thinning. Check instructions on specially formulated vegetable foods

Vines Spring or fall Feed both spring and fall until plants get well established, then once a year

Broadcasting fertilizer with a mechanical spreader is the best way to cover large areas. In your garden, it’s best to broadcast fertilizer in the fall or spring, before planting. Then work the fertilizer into the top two or three inches of soil.

Starter solutions are best used when transplanting large plants such as tomatoes. You can buy a commercial preparation or mix your own by dissolving one cup of 5-10-1 or 5-10-10 in three gallons of water. Pour this around the roots as the planting hole is filled until the soil is thoroughly moistened.

Side-dressing is a way to add nutrients needed during the growing season. Spread the fertilizer in a row at least six inches from the base of the plants- letting the band extend to 12 inches away from the row.

Deep feeding is usually not necessary to get nutrients down to the roots of trees and shrubs. Use a water lance with tree food only for young trees. Then majority of a tree’s feeder roots- the ones that can use nutrients- are located in the top ten to 12 inches of soil, so deep feeding is not required. Check with your local arborist or county extension office for help analyzing your trees’ needs.

Base feeding. For rose and shrubs, begin fertilizing six to 12 inches from the plant, and extend the circle of plant food six to 12 inches beyond the branch tips. Scratch the fertilizer into the soil, being careful not to damage shallow roots.

Watering

Conserving water is not only a way to save money, it’s become a necessity in some drought-plagued parts of the country. Here are some guidelines to help you get the most from the water you use - and help save money, too.

Water requirements of plants

High temperature and low humidity cause plants to give off (transpire) huge quantities of water into the air, creating a drain on soil reserves. Under these conditions, a large, mature tree releases as much as 200 gallons of water a day. Small plants release much less, but the actual quantity surprises many people.

A block of sweet corn often transpires more the 12 surface inches of water in a season. The average tree, shrub, or flower can grow without regular feeding or cultivation, and even survive several insect attacks. But let it go dry for only a short time, and growth is stunted severely - or the plant dies. Plants require water for every physiologic function, so adequately supply your with moisture.

How much to water

No rule applies to all plants, but a good one to follow is to supplement rainfall until you’ve supplied plants with one inch a week. When you water the lawn or garden, mark a one-inch level inside three one-pound coffee cans and space them within an area covered by a sprinkler. If less than one inch of rain falls during the week following the last watering, run the sprinkler until water reaches the one-inch mark. Empty the cans and reset them each time you move the sprinkler.

Deep watering

This saves both time and money. Water applied to only the top inch or two of soil is wasted because it evaporates before the plants can use it. Roots will penetrate deeply into moist soil. Top growth depends on a continuous supply of deep water to promote strong supporting roots - especially important for trees in windy regions.

Light watering results in shallow root systems. Hot midsummer sun and wind will dry out surface soil in a few days, leaving the plants high and dry. For this reason, let sprinklers or trickle systems do the watering. Few of us will patiently hold a hose long enough to supply sufficient amounts of water over large areas.

Soil amendments

You can save moisture and improve the structure of any common soil by spading in leaf mold, compost, peat moss, aged sawdust, or other partially decayed organic matter. All act like sponges.
Sandy soil dries out at least three time faster than clay and twice as fast as loam. Adding organic matter improves the tilth of all three. It binds sandy soil for better water retention, and opens up clay and heavy loam soils for better penetration by water and air. Mulches also will save soil moisture.

Water robbers

Weeds in your lawn and garden steal water and plant food from the soil - sometimes more than the plants use themselves. Eliminate them with a hoe or other hand tool when they are small.

Wind is another robber. Prevailing winds injure a garden or lawn by increasing soil water evaporation and plant transpiration. Avoid much of this moisture loss by establishing windbreaks, such as evergreens or a fence designed to reduce the force of winds.

What plants have priority?

Some won’t survive unless the soil is reasonably moist at all times. Care for these first if you do not have enough time or water to cover everything. Bluegrass lawns often turn brown in summer heat and drought. Don’t worry about your lawn if you have other plants need water more. This only means the grass is dormant, not dead; it will turn green again when cooler weather and fall rains stimulate new growth.

Read more »

The Essentials For Growth

All plants must have certain things to grow well. In previous articles I have explained the basic needs of plants in a garden environment, but not in the environment of a house or building. The essentials, though, are the same: light (including the length of the day and night hours), heat (temperature), water (including humidity), nutrients, a suitable medium in which to grow, and protection from insects and diseases.

Though house plants have the same basic requirements, the gardener must remember at all times that these plants are not in their natural environment. They have been taken suddenly from a most cooperative growing area to one which is less cooperative, even hostile.

The following inhibiting conditions must constantly be reckoned with in indoor gardening:

• The low light intensity of many rooms in our homes
• The low humidity when the furnace or air conditioner is operating compared with the growing area of the plant in its natural state
• The variable number of light and dark house in our seasons, compared with the almost even number of light and dark hours in the tropics.

Furthermore, growing plants successfully indoors involves attention to:

• Providing a better environment than that normally found inside modern buildings
• Choosing the best plants for any set of conditions indoors
• Adapting outside growing practices to fit the restricted soil area provided by pots or planters
• Altering set practices during the transition periods in spring, when the heat is turned off and the air conditioning is turned on, and in the fall, when the air conditioning is turned off and the heat is turned on.

The Best Environment

The first essential to provide for indoor plants is higher humidity. Most of the year the air in our homes and buildings very dry. Lately it has been suggested that this dry air is not as healthy for us as we previously thought; many doctors now recommend humidifying the air which passes through the central heating system. This helps plants to a certain degree, but even the humidifier on a furnace does not raise the relative humidity in a building as high as it was in the native habitats of most house plants. One of the best helps I have found is a simple cold-air vaporizer. If you will place one of these vaporizers among groups of house plants, you will be surprised how quickly their growth improves.

There are other satisfactory methods of raising the humidity. Spraying the plant’s foliage with a fine mist of fresh water once or twice a day will help, especially during the transition periods from heating to air conditioning. When you set pots in groups, try placing them on gravel in a watertight pan. Fill the pan with water about halfway up the gravel. Do not allow the post, however, to sit in water.

Do not place pants near an open heat vent or in the stream of air from an air conditioner. The drying effect from either source will make your plants suffer badly.

The second essential to provide for indoor plants is more light. Try taking your camera into a shady area outdoors which you think is similar to the light conditions inside your building. Make the proper adjustments to take a good picture. Then go inside and, without changing the speed setting, see what f-stop is required to take the same type picture there. If the setting is a lower number, you will know that the light inside is leass than what you considered equal light conditions outside. This simple test helps prove how dark it really is inside a building.

Artificial light can help plants grow and should be used when light conditions inside are extremely bad. However, use the camera test when adding artificial light so that you can give the plants the amount they need.

The best answer to the light intensity problem is to use natural sunlight through windows. Plants will grow well when placed in sunny areas indoors. Use the camera test here, also. When taking the reading inside, however, do not point the camera at the window; instead, stand in front of the window and point it toward the area where you will place the plants.

Some precautions should be followed when plants are placed in direct sunshine:

• Use only plants that need bright light.
• Watch your watering schedule. When the sun’s rays fall directly on the soil surface of the pot, the planting medium will dry through rapid surface evaporation as well as the normal transpiration from the leaves.
• Be careful when placing plants next to a window in the winter because heat radiation from the leaves to a cold sky may reduce the leaf-surface temperature to a dangerously low level.

There are other ways of improving a building’s light to allow you to grow better plants. Overhead skylights brighten an area tremendously. Window greenhouses are helpful additions to any room, providing a fine environment for many plants that do poorly under normal house conditions as a part of their buildings.

I built a free-standing greenhouse in my yard many years ago, and use it as a hospital for ailing plants which have suffered under my household conditions, as well as a growing house for blooming plants to bring inside our home on special occasions.

Plant Selection

There is an almost limitless number of house plant types which are being propagated for growing indoors. Whether green plants, colorful leaf plants, or flowering plants, the choice is yours. You can be successful with them all, provided you try to grow them with the inhibiting factors I have mentioned in mind.

Choosing which house plants to buy is like landscaping you home or beginning a garden. You have two ways to approach the problem:

• You can choose plants which fit the cultural situation of a particular spot in your building. If the light is low, find a plant with a very low light requirement. If the room is cool, find a plant which grows well in low temperatures.
• Or you can choose a plant which completes the decorative look of the area and then adjust conditions to help it grow well. Perhaps a palm is ideal for a spot where you need height but there is too little light. One answer is to use enough artificial light to satisfy the needs of the plant.

The important point to remember is that a dying or poorly growing plant will detract from rather than add to the beauty of a room. The plant list section of this area will guide you as you begin making your choices.

Healthy Growing Practices

I have stated that all plants which are grown indoors are natural in another place and another environment. All grow in the ground, with the exception of a few which have adapted themselves to growing in trees. None are ever native to a pot or planter, just as none are native to the inside of a building.

To be successful you must start with a good container and good soil, then plant correctly in the pot, water in the right way, fertilize with the correct nutrients, and finally control any insects and diseases which may attack you houseplants.

Choosing the Right Container

The container you choose must help your growing medium act like the soil in the plant’s natural habitat.

• It must be large enough for the roots to grow well and to anchor sufficiently to hold up the top. It must provide enough soil to hold sufficient water, nutrients, and air for the plant’s support.
• It must allow excess water to drain out of the bottom
• It should be made of a material which is tough and resistant to cracking and breaking. It is best if it can “breathe” by being made of a porous material such as fired clay.

Choosing the Right Potting Soil

After selecting the correct pot for your plant you must decide which type of soil you will use as a growing medium for your plant. In my years of observing houseplants and soils, I have concluded that the only good media in which to grow houseplants are the so-called “soil-less” or “peat-light” soils. Choose a medium with the following characteristics:
It should be light, and include a preponderance of peat moss, ground bark, vermiculite, and perlite.
It should hold enough water for good growth but not enough to become soggy, a condition which encourages anaerobic or toxic gases to form.

Developing Good Watering Practices

Knowing when and how to water is of prime importance when growing house plants. If we look at the way nature waters its plants, we see that, except in a very few places in the world, rain comes on no strict schedule. Heavy rain may be followed by periods of no rain. Plants survive very well under nature’s watering system. Here are some good rules to follow:

• Water when the plant and the soil in the pot need it, not on any arbitrary schedule
• Water each time the surface of the soil in the pot feels dry to the touch.
• Water thoroughly each time you water, being sure that the entire root ball in the pot is damp.
• Water more often when plants are actively growing and when the humidity is low
• Wilting of the plant is not necessarily an indication that the soil in the pot needs water. Too much water can cause root damage and water uptake, both of which also result in wilting.

Developing a Good Fertilizing Program

Plants must have certain nutrients to grow well. In nature, billions of years of soil development have provided the vital nutrients for the plants which inhabit a particular area.

Plants taken away from their native habitat and placed inside our homes must also have nutrients. Since we provide a limited amount of soil in which the house plant must grow, we must constantly add these necessary nutrients to the soil in the pot.

Remember, when we aply nutrients for a plant’s use, whether indoors or outdoors, we are not feeding the plant. Plants produce food to feed themselves. We are applying fertilizers to give the plant the nutrients it needs to produce its own food. The criteria for plant nutrients are:

• Use a soluble house plant fertilizer and apply as recommended in the watering solution.
• Use both organic and inorganic materials in your fertilizing program.
• Fertilize when the plant needs it, not on a strict year-round schedule. Plants need more fertilizer when growing rapidly and less when resting.
• Be careful not to over-fertilize. Both organic and inorganic fertilizer nutrients are made up of chemical salts which will burn the plant if applied too heavily or too often.

Controlling Insects and Diseases

Insects and diseases occur on house plants just as they do on garden plants. Though the dry air in our buildings reduces the incidence of disease, there may be attacks of insects like aphids, scale, mealybug, spider mites, thrips (mainly on flowering plants), larvae (soft worms) on the foliage, and sow bugs and pillbugs on the roots. Several excellent house plant insecticides are available for these problems. Take a sample of the affected portion of the plant or the plant itself to your local plantsman or county extension agent for identification and recommendations of control measures.

Handling the Transition Period

Twice a year, house plants go through their greatest trauma as you change from heating to air conditioning and vice versa. These sudden changes in humidity can cause severe problems. In the spring, or when the air conditioning is turned on, mist your plants several times a day or run the cold-air vaporizer during the daylight hours. Gradually reduce the number of misting or number of hours in which the vaporizer runs until the roots have become active enough to replace the moisture being lost from the leaves.

In the fall, there is generally a lag time between when the air conditioner is turned off and the furnace is turned on. The trauma then is not as great, because the plants have time to adjust on their own. But you should watch them for signs of wilting of the succulent growth at the end of each branch. Apply the mist or run the vaporizer to help the plants adjust to their new situation.

Whats Next: Getting Started: Your Adventure With House Plants

Other Resources:

• Indoor Plant Care
• Houseplant Secrets

Some House Plant Related Amazon Picks