All About Fertilizer
There are some things that are more low maintenance than other things, but fertilizing is always going to be key for planting, especially for annuals.
Most annuals are heavy feeders and they’re going to be blooming continuously, especially things in the sun. Petunias and million bells, those things are like heavy, heavy bloomers. You want to give them a lot of food, especially if they’re in a container, they’re sucking up these nutrients like just as quickly as they can get it.
Roses are real heavy feeders. They’re like tomatoes, they’re always hungry. You would definitely want to use both the granular and the liquid. It’s going to give you the best results on those roses. Yes, the granular gets applied once a season and then the liquid can be done once a week. It doesn’t have a lot of long-lasting power. It’s kind of like an energy drink. It gives a plant a whole bunch of energy but then is very short lived. It has to be reapplied about once a season.
Usually at the nursery, we have a siphon hooked up. We just do a slow, slow continual fertilization. It’s almost like IV. They’re just getting a slow dose of a fertilizer every day. That’s totally fine to do every time you water. If you just use a little bit of fertilizer, like half the rate that you would normally do, that’s something that you can completely do. That will just keep everything looking really good. It is a good idea to at least fertilize like maybe every other time you water, or once a week.
Triple Superphosphate is good for causing something to root or bloom, but your bloom building fertilizer is already going to do that. I would use like the All-Season green pelletized fertilizer. It’s going to feed the plant more extensively than triple super will. It’ll actually help the top of the plant grow and help it bloom.
Is it possible to put too much all-season fertilizer on your plant? That is a great question. Unless you were to literally dump the entire bag on the plant, it’s not going to be a problem because the stuff releases so slow. And this was designed by the growers. It can literally lay against the hair roots of a plant, which is the most sensitive part of the root system. And as it releases, it will not burn that hair root.
Thing is, you don’t want to waste money either. You want to be appropriate. There are some instructions on the back of the bag with how to apply it. You want to stay within reason on that. If you were to double that dose, it would not probably hurt the plants, but there comes a point of diminished returns where you’re not getting any extra value out of adding more. So more frequently and consistently year after year would be the way to help the plants improve over the long run.
That brings up a good point with like the liquid fertilizer too. You can’t really overdo it with that unless you don’t follow the instructions. If it just calls for one scoop, just use one scoop. Don’t use five. That could do it because it’s a quick release. That’s going right in there and that’s just going to shock it, you don’t want to do that. So just make sure you follow the instructions on that. Don’t we always say- read the label. One scoop is good, two scoop is bad.
it’s interesting when you start to plant this stuff, then you have to remember there’s maintenance throughout the time. It’s not just plant and walk away.
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