Do you have a home garden ? Do you wish to grow your own veggies ? Do you hope to get the joy of harvesting your own produce ?
Often times we plant seeds in a pot and we water and nurture them and we are delighted to see them grow .. gardening gives us a lot of joy.
Alas, often times that's where it stops, we may see a few flowers, small fruits but then that's the end , we don't see any more growth.
Well it's all about nourishment. Plants, like us, require a lot of different nutrients to grow and be bountiful
There are macro nutrients and then there are micro nutrients.
Here's a picture to explain what different parts of the plant needs
So we can see that the Plant requires nitrogen to grow and be green (it also requires Epsom salt - coz that mineral is one of the components of Chlorophyll - which makes the leaf green and helps produce food for the plant)
Now, back to topic - we want flowers and fruits (consider vegetables also to be the fruits of a plant)
So as per the picture above, our plant needs phosphorus.
And there are many natural ways to give phosphorus to plants - example: banana skin, crushed rock phosphate and bone meal.
You can add these to the pot for a slow release of phosphorus to your plant.
I wanted something quicker ☺️(also I ran out of banana peels 🙄)
So I decided to order the following product
The granules look like this :
The numbers might confuse some,
So, NPK 10-26-26:
These three numbers form what is called the fertilizer's N-P-K ratio — the proportion of three plant nutrients in order: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). The product's N-P-K numbers reflect each nutrient's percentage by weight.
So in the beginning your plant needs nitrogen + magnesium to grow big, at that time I use a fertilizer which has more nitrogen in it, also known as your everyday TEA .
YES, tea is a great fertilizer. 5% nitrogen, 2% potassium, minute amount of phosphorus. And once a week water with Epsom salt (1 teaspoon in 5 ltr of water)
Once your plant is grown, it will have some flowers and fruits, but these will be small and few in number.
Once the 1st harvest is done - that's when we need to give the phosphorus
So, for applying the 10-26-26 fertiliser, we dig a small trench about an inch or two from the stem of the plant
And we place these granules in the trench.
How much you ask ? I do 1 teaspoon per plant once every 15 days. (10-12 inch pots)
And lo and behold,
3-4 days after adding these water soluble fertiliser
I had rampant flower blooms all over the window garden.
It was so much ... That I got an allergy from all the pollen that was released.
Especially the BASIL & Jasmine plants.
This SAI BALAJI Fertiliser is water soluble, so you can dissolve it in water first and then water your plants, either way is fine.
Don't overdo it. Just give them a little at a time.
Remember : trial and error.
As a rough estimate, your plant needs about 2.5 to 3 Litres of water a week (10-12 inch pot)
Just water the plant when the top 1 inch of the soil feels dry to the touch.
Water the plants till you see water starting to seep out of the drainage holes at the bottom (not too much else you will wash all the nutrients away)
Happy Gardening.
We just harvested radish(radish is a root, but still needs phosphorus/ potassium to grow big), bitter gourd, capsicum and chillies this week.
Still waiting on the tomato .
Feel free to comment or message me with any queries you might have
And
As always
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