PRACTICAL ADVICE ABOUT FEEDING
Plants need nutrition in order to grow and thrive. They get nutrients from the potting compost, but after a while, these start to run out as the plant “eats them up” and watering washes them away. That’s why you need to add plant food.
A lot of people regard plant-feeding as advanced plant care, but it isn’t. You can make it really complicated or else really simple. Me, I prefer simple. I feed indoor plants from March to September, and then from October to February I hardly do any feeding.
Plant food, or fertilizer, is available in many different forms: organic liquid plant food, artificial liquid plant food, fertilizer balls, fertilizer sticks, compost and so on. For my part, I swear by organic liquid plant food. I dilute it in water and my plants thrive on it. I prefer organic plant food to artificial plant food because it’s more natural, environmentally friendly and sustainable.
Does plant-feeding sound complicated? Do you want to make feeding your plants as simple as possible? Get hold of some fertilizer balls or sticks. These are small balls that you spread on top of the potting compost a few times a year, or sticks that you poke down into the compost just as often. Both gradually release nutrients for your plants. Job done!
NO NEED TO COUNT YOUR CHICKENS
As a child, I grew up with free-range chickens in our garden. The result was a garden with the ideal level of nutrients. The regular application of chicken poop is like gunpowder for plants, providing them with plenty of nutrients. Because of the smell, you don’t often find chicken poop being used on potted plants indoors, but there are plenty of other specialized plant food products you can use instead.