Feeding Your Spring Garden Plants

The best time to start feeding your garden is in spring. At this time of the year the ground is still moist from the winter and early spring rains. As the ground warms up with the warmer spring weather you get ideal growing conditions in your garden.

This is a crucial time for growth in the garden and you will need to ensure that your plants have the necessary nutrients to benefit from this period.

The small feeder roots that will be developing will seek the nutrients that you need to supply them. By choosing the correct foods for your plants they will have better foliage, they will be stronger plants and will also have more abundant flowering and fruiting.

Rich compost fertilizer for soil. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are three key factors that are needed in a balanced plant food, and they are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

A plentiful supply of nitrogen will ensure that your plants have healthy foliage. Phosphorus improves the plants root health, and potassium will encourage the plant to bloom and fruit.

As you can see they are all needed for the overall health of the plants and you should always check on the packaging of the fertilizer to see whether the chemical analysis is suitable. Be sure to ONLY choose naturally sourced, organic fertilizers, and the more balanced they are, the better.

These fertilizers usually come in three forms - controlled release, liquid and soluble.

Controlled release formulations have the nutrients inside a semi-permeable membrane that allows the nutrients to be released into the soil in a controlled manner once it reacts with the soil moisture and temperature. One application can last months and it is ideal for containers and indoor plants and established plants and trees.

Liquid formulations are similar to the soluble ones but they have been mixed with water and can be sprayed on the plants leaves for rapid response. (Compost tea may also be used in this manner - be sure to dilute it with water first so it won't burn the leaves, and apply in the early morning or evening so the sun won't cause leaf burns.) Fish emulsion is also a good natural liquid fertilizer.

Soluble formulations are applied dry and dissolve once the area receives water, which will dissolve the salts and make the nutrients available for the roots of the plant. Blood meal is a good example of a nitrogen-based organic fertilizer that is soluble.

All applications have their benefits and you need to decide which is best for the plants you are feeding. Just make sure to choose organic, naturally based fertilizers, and ideally you want a good balance of all nutrients (such as compost), although this can depend on your soil composition and what nutrients it needs most, so you will want to test your soil first before applying any fertilizer.

Nutrient Deficiency In the Garden

There are many different symptoms that can show where there has been a nutrient deficiency in a plant. Because all plants respond differently to a lack of nutrients it is not always easy to determine whether it is a deficiency or something else that is causing the changes to the plant.

Chlorotic blueberry plant due to soil pH being too high, and therefore plant not being about to uptake iron. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Where you see abnormal leaf coloring, where the leaf has turned a pale yellow or changed to a paler color than normal, and the veins of the leaf are green, then this can be a sign of nutrient deficiency.

If the leaves are smaller than normal, or any part of the plant is showing signs of stunted growth, then this is a sure sign of a nutrient deficiency.

There are other signs such as brown blotches on the leaves, but this can also be leaf scorch so you need to consider the conditions that the plant is growing in to help analyze blotchy leaves. If the leaves are showing tones of blue or purple that can be another sign to look out for.

To assist the plant, you should apply a soluble fertilizer, as this will have the fastest effect on its possible recovery.

You will need to check the pH of the soil to see that it is correct and take the appropriate action to remedy the situation if it is out of balance.

The nutrients might be in the soil but without the correct pH balance the plant won't be able to make use of them. Testing can be done with a simple and inexpensive test kit that you can buy from garden stores.

Make sure that the plants you are growing are compatible with the soil that you are growing them in and adjust the type of soil accordingly if you don't want to replace them with plants that can flourish in those conditions.