Often gardeners treat fertilising their gardens like some people treat feeding their kids. Before they consider whether the child needs anything more to eat, or whether they’re getting the correct nutrients and balance in their diet, they just allow them to shovel in more food just in case they’re hungry. Even “Blind Freddy” could work out that this modus operandi is going to have detrimental effects.
Yet when it comes to our plants and garden soil we take the same route. It’s the start of spring: pour on some fertiliser. It’s the start of summer: pour on the fertiliser. It’s been two weeks since I gave my plants a feed: pour on more fertiliser. We can easily get carried away with over-feeding our plants that we take little time to consider what they need, or whether they need anything at all.
And with today’s technology there’s not really any excuse for knowing what’s happening with your plants. Any one of the simple soil testing kits will quickly tell you whether your loam is lacking in nutrients, and possibly which elements they are. It takes all the guess work out of keeping your plants on track.
As I flick through many of the online gardening forums, or answer questions here on my blog, it amazes me how many relate to plants missing out on the nutrients they need. Leaves starting to show their veins lack manganese or iron. Rhododendrons not flowering is usually a lack of lime and so on it goes. Yet if we took the time to consult the soil we could clearly assess what was missing and whether our soil was capable of feeding our plants in a balanced form.
Interestingly enough, the examples above are only trace elements – nutrients that are usually found as a by-product of some other required mineral. So, while it’s easy to dispense the matter-of-fact remedy and then seek out the individual element at your local nursery, hoping to cure the problem, the issue is most probably much easier to solve than finding which element is lacking.
Testing the soil, unless you have it professionally assessed, usually won’t reveal the missing trace elements. Instead, it highlights the pH levels of the soil indiciating whether it’s acid or alkaline and what level of acidity or alkalinity it is. This then enables you to consider the ways to remedy the balance, or at least improve it.
If you don’t test the soil then, in reality, you’re very much working in the dark hoping to fix the problems without knowing what they are in the first place. If you keep doing it for too long your garden beds may become obese and have health problems just like this tubby little kid at McDonalds.
When growing in containers, sometimes this is difficult. Do you have any good resouces for a rundown on tell-tale signs, like the examples you cited above?