The good food guide
“There is no advantage at all in over-feeding. Plants cannot take up more than a limited amount at any one time”
When it comes to feeding plants, I have one important rule: Try not to. I see feeding any plant, anywhere, anyhow as a sign of limitation at best and failure on my part at worst. If not the last resort, it is certainly something that I try to factor out wherever possible.
This probably needs a little explaining. Until relatively recently our approach to plant nutrition and health was basic to the point of being simplistic. Plants needed water, nitrogen, phosphates and potassium – and if they received these things in the ‘right’ quantities then they should, if suitably responsive, deliver whatever we required of them, be it a harvest of fruit, vegetables flowers of foliage. Very crudely, nitrogen encourages good green growth – the stems and leaves of plants; phosphorus aids good root growth; and potash, or potassium, the production of flowers and fruits. Trace minerals were acknowledged by this approach, but not really heeded and certainly not measured or calibrated
