United Kingdom

Help please: which feed should I buy?

I am not sure which food I should buy for my hanging baskets and containers so I would appreciate opinions on which brand people have had good results with. I had reasonable results with Phostrogen last year so was about to buy that when I had a look at the breakdown: 14:10:27 for the 'all-purpose plant food'. I thought that that seems very high in potassium and therefore probably very similar to tomato food. When I compared that with the 'Phostrogen Super Concentrate Plant Food' in a bottle the breakdown was very different: 5.2:5.2:6 plus Magnesium.

Then I looked at 'Miracle-Gro All Purpose Soluble Plant Food' which is 24-8-16 with trace elements. It seems to be much higher in nitrogen. The liquid version in a bottle is 6-5-5 and so more evenly balanced.

Like everyone I have a wide variety of plants and feeds so I use chicken manure on the beds, rose food, seaweed on the olive tree and ericaceous feed as well. The feed I am looking for needs to be mainly for some pots and hanging baskets for the usual things like lobelia, petunias, geraniums (pelargoniums) and so on. I tried asking at the nursery when buying plants last year but I don't think they wanted to give away their trade secrets!

Any advice on the best one to use would be much appreciated- perhaps there is even another brand which is better.

Links:

* Phostrogen All-purpose Plant Food
http://www.phostrogen.co.uk/trade/products/285/1/All+Purpose+Plant+Food?All+Purpose+Plant+Food

* Phostrogen Super Concentrate Plant Food
http://www.phostrogen.co.uk/products/288/1

* Miracle-Gro All Purpose Soluble Plant Food
http://www.lovethegarden.com/product-details/miracle-gro-all-purpose-soluble-plant-food

* Miracle-Gro All Purpose Concentrated Liquid Plant Food
http://www.lovethegarden.com/product-details/miracle-gro-all-purpose-concentrated-liquid-plant-food

• 5 Jun, 2010