How to Fertilize Flowers Organically

Grow beautiful flower gardens using only organic fertilizers for soil and plants. Know the elements that flowers need and when they need them for better bulbs, perennials and annual blooms.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Blood Meal
• Bonemeal
• Compost Makers
• Cottonseed Meal
• Fertilizers
• Fish Emulsions
• Mulch
• Rock Phosphate
• Seaweed Fertilizers
• Epsom Salts
• Alfalfa Pellets
• Measuring Spoons
• Plastic Storage Containers
• Epsom salts

1. Understand why you need to fertilize: to renew your soil and replace nutrients that plants use as they grow. Know that nitrogen is helpful for green shoots, phosphorus assists roots and strong cell walls, and potassium encourages flowers and fruit.

2. Know that you'll amend soil annually to encourage its healthy structure and ecology. But plan to feed flowers several times throughout the season.

3. Use compost tea to promote rooting and prevent transplant shock whenever you plant. Put 2 c. dry compost in a gallon of warm water; pour off or strain the liquid to use the next day.

4. Fertilize bulbs and perennials as they emerge - use organic nitrogen like fish emulsion, alfalfa meal or blood meal. Work a balanced organic fertilizer into the soil after flowering - buy one or mix it yourself: 1 c. cottonseed meal plus 2 tbsp. Epsom salts is a common organic formula suitable for three perennial or bulb clumps.

5. Discover alfalfa pellets added to fish emulsion or seaweed fertilizers (two pellets in 1 gallon) for annual flowers. Mulch annuals with compost for slow-release nutrients and use the alfalfa pellet mixture in your watering can every week or two.

6. Wait until flowering shrubs and trees bloom, then fertilize annually with a balanced granular organic formula or the alfalfa pellet mixture described for annuals. Scratch in bonemeal or rock phosphate for phosphorus and greensand (glauconite) for potassium every five years, in fall.

7. Plan to use organic mulches in your flower beds for their nutrition - turn them into the soil when they break down and replace the top layer. Sprinkle a fine layer of cottonseed meal on top of the soil to feed your earthworms, and cover it with the mulch.

Tips & Warnings

• Store fertilizers in plastic bags or plastic containers out of the sun.
• Use 1 c. compost tea for planting small seedlings, and up to a gallon for a large shrub or tree.
• Mix only what you can use today - fertilizers don't store well in solution.
• Water several hours or the day before fertilizing. Remember not to fertilize a dry plant.