Caring for Potted Plants

Caring for Potted Plants: Feeding

While all plants need nutrients for growing and sustaining. Potted plants are no exception. The thing people need to understand is how and when to feed your plants, especially, when you practice container gardening. It becomes   much more important for a gardener practicing container gardening to take care of their plant because, the plants have very limited resources to gather their requirements from. Plants in containers are have limited access to soil, water, nutrients, etc, and thus, the role of the gardener becomes much more important, as the gardener has to take care of all the plants requirements.

Now the question arises - What should I feed my potted plants with? Chemical? Organic? or what? My take on this question, as I've been doing this  (container gardening) for quite some time now, and also, since, I've studied soil science as a small part of the curriculum during my Graduation and also Post Graduation, is, that, we as container gardeners, should actually use organic fertilizers like vermicompost, manures, etc, as mostly these are enough to fulfill the plant's requirements, and contain most of the macro and micro nutrients that the plant may ever need. The basis of this belief are a few big problems associated with agricultural soils. We all know that almost all of the agriculture practiced in almost all parts of the world is heavily dependent on chemical fertilizers, and a large part of these chemical fertilizers are in the form of N-P-K [Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potash (Potassium)] and D-A-P [DiAmmonium Phosphate], and since these make up a large composition of plant Macro nutrients these are the ones highly used the world over. While the NPK fertilizers are commonly called as Urea in India, the DAP's are commpnly known as Dye or Di. While all these nutrients are readily available to the plants from natural sources, due to excessive usage of the agricultural lands, these nutrients get depleted and hence are required to be replenished externally.

Although being necessary for the plants, these nutrients are dangerously damaging to the plants as well as the soil and water involved in the agricultural practices using these fertilizers. These chemical or inorganic fertilizers with regular usage have the tendency to damage the soils beyond repair. Some problems associated with use of these fertilizers include Soil Acidification, where the chemical reactions of these fertilizers cause a fall in the pH level of the soils beyond a point where the soils become acidified and hence unusable for plants. Soil Salination is another problem which, to some extent can be attributable to the use of chemical fertilizers. For example, use of Potassium based fertilizers have a tendency to form a compound salt Sylvite [Potassium Chloride(KCl)], and we all know that saline soils are not very good for plants.

Since our containers have limited soils, we have to take care of that only, and can't risk our plants dying due to acidification or salination. This is the reason, I use vermicompost to replenish my plant's nutrient requirements. Though, the organic manures are somewhat slower in showing results than their inorganic counterparts, they are particularly safer, and hence, I prefer these. Vermi compost have a good nutrient content and hence are pretty useful for our plants.

Nutrient Element	Composition (%)
Organic Carbon	9.8–13.4
Calcium	1.18–7.61
Nitrogen	0.51–1.61
Iron	0.20–1.33
Phosphorus	0.19–1.02
Potassium	0.15–0.73
Magnesium	0.09–0.57
Sodium	0.06–0.16
Zinc	0.004–0.11
Copper	0.003–0.005
Manganese	0.01–0.20

Source: http://ejournal.icrisat.org/agroecosystem/v2i1/v2i1vermi.pdf

The table above, shows that plants can get almost all the macro and micro nutrients needed for proper growth and survival from vermicompost. Moreover, since these are organically available, these are much more safer for the plants than the inorganic counterparts, and are available to the plants over a longer period of time, as the organic compost takes time to rot down and release the nutrients. Hence the plants won't grow very fast or big, but, would be healthy.

There's one way, that I follow to feed my potted plants with compost which ensures that my plants get enough of the nutrients contained within the compost. What I do is, before using the compost, I let the soil dry a bit so that it doesn't become messy working with it when I'm mixing the compost with it. Once the soil has dried up to a workable form, I dig it up gently using a tool (I use long screwdrivers of different thickness as these are easy to work on with dense plant roots in small containers, and minimize the risk of the plant's roots getting severed). Once the soil has been loosened enough, I remove some soil from the pot to make space for the compost. Once done with this, I put the compost in the pot and mix it with the remaining loosened soil so that the soil gets somewhat even texture (the compost is mostly moist and darker in colour than the normal soil). This practice ensures that even if even if your pot or container is filled completely with water and the water overflows, it won't take all the compost with it (compost is very light and does contain small air bubbles, hence floats on water).

Step-1: Let the potted soil dry to an extent that your plant doesn't feel the water scarcity.

Step-2: Using a tool, dig up the soil to loosen it up. Remove excess roots which break come up in the process.

Step-3: Remove some soil from the pot to make space for compost. Put the compost in the pot, and mix it well in the soil using your gardening tool.

Step-4: Once the soil and compost are mixed well, you're ready to repeat this process with another plant. Don't forget to remove excess roots that break and come out in process.

Since, we are dealing with our beloved plants, we can't afford to be careless. That is why I use a regular screwdriver instead of gardening tools. Using a screwdriver, though takes more time, minimizes the risk of important root systems getting severed or cut. Even a screwdriver is no foolproof a tool for this purpose. You need to be careful with that too.

As explained above, since the compost if lighter than water because it does contain small pockets of air, most of it easily floats on water and can flow off with overflowing water, thus it needs to be mixed well with the soil.

The frequency to be maintained for application of compost should ideally be every 45-60 days or so. Or a good measure would be to take a small portion of soil and check the soil for chunks of compost. If they are there, you may give it another couple of days or so before applying compost again.

I hope that this post would help some of you in the process of feeding your plants. I'll be back with some interesting stuff in the next post. Till then, keep visiting and HAPPY GARDENING!