what do i feed my plants for healthy, speedy growth?

[jme]

Can you please help me out with food for my plants for speedy growth and also how, and how often do I feed?

[shibui]

Can you please help me out with food for my plants for speedy growth

Use fertiliser to help plants grow.....



In most cases use any fertiliser. Anything is better than nothing! There are a very limited number of trees that have special needs - Banksia is an obvious one that does not tolerate phoshorus and can die if high P fert is applied - but most do not care. Some species love fert and can take huge doses. Figs will grow fast when smothered in dynamic lifter but some species will resent such high doses and could die. Ask 10 different bonsai growers what fert they use and you will get 10 different answers

I believe variety is important so that if one fert lacks one or more elements the next should supply it so I use osmocote in the soil mix at planting with extra applications of any/all of: worm farm liquid, dynamic lifter, soluble fert, fish emulsion, fert for 'flowers and fruit', 'azalea and camellia', anything else that comes to hand. Read the directions on the packet and apply at the rates specified for container plants. Overdoses can be fatal.
I try to apply some sort of fert every 2-3 weeks during the growing season.

For speedy growth look for high N ferts. Try lawn food or most of the soluble ferts. fish ferts are also quite high N. Check the packets for analyis. N numbers a lot higher than the P and K will promote lots of green growth.
note that there is a limit to how fast a plant can grow. Time is still your best friend in bonsai.

[Boics]

Hello Shibui.

What do you class as "high P"?

Ta.

[Bougy Fan]

Anything above 2 in phosphorous will be deadly to Banksias straight up. You can wean them onto a bit higher P strength fert gradually

[Brian]

add a pinch of lime to figs every month to sweeten the soil. I use Charlie Carp liquid fertiliser weekly on everything. My trees are lush and healthy with vigourous growth.
Beware of using too much dynamic lifter. Just a few pellets on the soil is enough for bonsai. Any more and it can burn the roots.

[The Ficus Guy]

Time, time and more time

[Graeme]

jme, fertilising relies on a number of different things when you are setting up a program. First and formost is the type of tree being fertilised. As has been said before, Australian natives (in the main) do NOT like any P being chucked at them, so make sure whatever you are using for your Natives is a low P type fertiliser. There are a couple of very good Native Fert's available now. Azalea also needs a specific fert and once again there a few really good ones out there now. (I fertilise my Junipers with the Azalea fert' as well and seen to get good results from it) Just about everything else we grow as Bonsai will take any of the general fert's. My preference is for the more organic type fertilisers, as I find they feed the plant at a more controlled rate, instead of the heavy spikes and rapid decline of available levels of fert in the pot obtained from chemical fertiliser use. I do use a slow release pellatised fert' at potting time, but there after rely on the organics, in liquid form. I also use pellatised chook manure and Blood and Bone for my Ficus. My liquids all come from the sea, by the way. I also use Seasol as regularly as I remember, although it is not a fertiliser it is a soil conditioner which helps all the goodies living in the potting medium do their stuff and supply the applied fertiliser in a usable condition to the plant.
The other thing to take into account when setting your fertilising program is your watering. If you have an open potting mix and you water often you will want to fertilise more as leaching will be very high from the pot. One other thing to keep in mind is the ratios advertised on the box. Ingredients will be listed as a percentage, you will find, for instance, N 10.5, P3.5 and K 6.0 on the side of the box. If that is all that is listed you have purchased a box/bottle containing 20% fertiliser and 80% fill, which wouldn't be bad. But, say you have a bottle of fertiliser which reads N3.5, P2 and K2.5, then you have bought a container which is 92% fill. Obviously you wouldn't be getting much bang for your buck and would need to apply more ferliser more often to get the results from the first example. The second example would however be better to use on more tender plants - like ferns etc. With the nice open, well drained potting mediums we like to use in our Bonsai it is also a very good idea to go for one of the fertilisers that contain trace ellements along with the NPK.
Hope that helps somewhat for you.

Sorry, just realised you asked how often as well. Weekly is good - if you can remember, if not then as often as you remember (As long as you don't remember more than once a week. )

[Jason]

Great post Graeme, I'll definatley be using some of those tips

So is using Seasol on Natives ok? I've avoided using any ferts or the like, as I haven't done any research into the specifics of what should be used with what. From what I've been reading, Seasol seems to be a good all round choice for keeping your plants healthy. Would that be correct? (sorry, not trying to jack the thread )

[Graeme]

aka ( ), not the most experienced bloke to ask about Natives and Seasol, so if you don't mind I'll leave that for someone else (pup??) to answer. I agree with your oipinion about Seasol otherwise though, I use it everywhere nowdays. I actually apply it with one of those bottles you click on the hose now, so everything gets hit with it, Bonsai, garden beds, lawn, the lot. Unfortunately I am a lazy bugger, so application is a bit hit and miss time wise.

[Jason]

aka ( ), not the most experienced bloke to ask about Natives and Seasol, so if you don't mind I'll leave that for someone else (pup??) to answer. I agree with your oipinion about Seasol otherwise though, I use it everywhere nowdays. I actually apply it with one of those bottles you click on the hose now, so everything gets hit with it, Bonsai, garden beds, lawn, the lot. Unfortunately I am a lazy bugger, so application is a bit hit and miss time wise.

I like your style

I just see that it is used a lot, so thought I would ask. Don't want to be putting anything on that might be working against them, thats for sure, and natives seem to be a bit picky

[irish]

Hi.

Replying to Seasol, i have been growing natives from tube stock and seeds for 20 months and have found it to have only good efects on the growth of natives. I only use the amount recomended whitch is 30 mils for nine liters of water. Every other week i rotate with Charley Carp... 30 mils for nine liters of water.

Regards.
Irish.

[kcpoole]

the wiki has heaps info to get you started with fertilizers
https://www.ausbonsai.com.au/wiki/index. ... Fertiliser
Ken

[shibui]

Hi all,
My thoughts on a few matters raised here:
1. natives - A lot of mis-information is circulated here and elsewhere. Most natives do not care wht fertiliser they get! In my experience only plants from Proteacea family are sensitive to P. I grow thousands of native plants every year so I do have some experience here. I have also done a bit of work on natives as bonsai. I feed figs, melaleucas, callistemon, eucs, acacias and most others I grow with the same fert as the exotics - whatever I can get at the time. I have only found Banksia and Adenanthos to be super P sensitive but hakea and grevillea are also in Proteacea family so caution should be used with those as well until you are certain of their tolerance. Note that Proteas from South Africa are also proteacea and are also P sensitive so to say 'Aust natives are P sensitive' is a really sweeping generalisation and is actually quite wrong.

Graeme

listed as a percentage, you will find, for instance, N 10.5, P3.5 and K 6.0 on the side of the box. If that is all that is listed you have purchased a box/bottle containing 20% fertiliser and 80% fill, which wouldn't be bad. But, say you have a bottle of fertiliser which reads N3.5, P2 and K2.5, then you have bought a container which is 92% fill. Obviously you wouldn't be getting much bang for your buck and would need to apply more ferliser more often to get the results from the first example. The second example would however be better to use on more tender plants - like ferns etc.

your statement on ratios is correct but as I understand it will depend on the strength the fert is mixed as to how much the plants get. Assuming the 2 examples you have given are liquid, If the first is mixed at 10 ml per litre and the 2nd at 30 ml per litre the second will actually be giving the plants more of everything! Fert application is not just about the ratios on the packet but also about the dilution rates you mix it and the amount that is applied.
You will also generally find that high analysis ferts like the 10.5:3.5:6 are dearer per kg than low analysis 3.5:2:2.5 you gave as examples. In many cases the cost of the nutrients often works out about the same. eg if you paid 3x the price per kg for the first one then the second one would actually be giving you 'more bang for your buck' Hope this is making some sense.

Seasol is sold as a soil conditioner just to get around the labelling laws for fert. It does have nutrients in it but the ratios vary depending on where the seaweed came from, time of year and how it was processed, etc. The makers cannot GUARANTEE the analysis so are not allowed to advertise it as a fert so they invented the term 'soil conditioner'. Plants will do quite well on seasol alone but as I mention above, I think a variety is better to give the full range of nutrients to the plants.

What do you class as "high P"?

It all depends on all the stuff above Boics. P higher than 2 would be a good start but you probably need to compare P against N and K in the ratio. P as high as N is high P. Then it also depends on the strength it is mixed at and applied - A few pellets of DL is ok for banksias but a bucketful would probably be deadly.

[Graeme]

Lots of good points bought up there, thanks Shibui.

The one important thing you bought up, although not necessarily about fertilizing, is that many of the Figs we use in Bonsai are in fact natives. Never ceases to give me a giggle when you visit a Bonsai garden and the owner will tell you in no uncertain terms that he just can not grow Natives and his benches are loaded with figs.