which plants benefit from fertiliser

berarde · April 2022

I've mostly cottagey garden plants, simpler sorts of things. Some seem to bound away anyway things like rudbeckia, nepeta, cranesbills, achillea, stocks, cistus-rock rose perennial candytuft, potentilla, hypericum( a non spreading one)
Some things not so well such as daylilies poor flowering, lithodora doesn't either.
I've fed the delphiniums and clematis.
I have heard that too much fertiliser for some things makes them flower badly, so not sure which ones to do and which to leave

Fairygirl · April 2022

I don't feed plants in the ground much at all. They get regular applications of compost, so the soil is fed rather than using an additional chemical feed. The exceptions are heavy flowerers like the later clematis, but even those don't get much.
Potted plants are different, as they're reliant on me. That would mainly apply to heavy flowerers too though, like sweet peas, or bulbs that are dying back.
Shrubs don't get fed, other than an occasional sprinkle of BF&B, but that's quite rare too, because they get organic matter added to the soil.
The better the soil is, the less food plants need. It can cause too much soft growth, which is then more vulnerable to changing weather conditions etc. I'd rather my plants were tougher, and therefore able to cope with that weather.

AnniD · April 2022

I just do a general feed in Spring with something such as Blood Fish and Bone or chicken manure pellets.
If the daylilies and lithodora aren't doing too well, could it be down to their location perhaps?

GardenerSuze · April 2022

Hemerocallis can vary considerably when it comes to flowering depending on which ones you grow. It is possible that it has nothing to do with feeding at all.

which plants benefit from fertiliser

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