Hi,
I was in Lowe's looking for something to give a little boost to the herbs that I am over-wintering now that the light is increasing.
Is plant food the same as fertilizer?
The plant food I was looking at was 5-3-3, it said organic, by Esposa. The label of ingredients read like the label on my vitamin-mineral supplement - seemed to have everything!
The fish emulsion is 5-1-1.
My questions: I gather from reading here that fish emulsion is always good. Those who use it, do you use it in addition to plant food?
When I water I use water which has had compost sitting in it. So that is supplying some nutrients, yes?
I also have from last year general organic fertilizer, 5-5-5. EVen tho it doesn't say for indoor, could I use a little of that? The food and the emulsion were fairly expensive, 'bout $6/ bag/bottle, so I don't want to duplicate.

Thanks in advance for any information to unconfuse me.

ellen

Herbs, generally, aren't heavy feeders. Specially if you're just overwintering them indoors. You might not want to push a lot of new growth at this point.

I use fish/kelp emulsion on seedlings after they've developed true leaves and I'm transplanting them into larger pots. Then I dilute it half strength into a tray of water in which I soak (bottom water) the flats. I'll use same emulsion, only full strength, as a foliar feed several times throughout the season (but not in times of stress).

Generally, even though I add new compost to my beds each season, I guess I'm just paranoid about it, but I still toss in half the recommended amount of organic granular fertilizer (oddly enough, ellenr, it's Espoma's. Their wholly organic line.)

If you really think the herbs need a boost, I'd just bottom water them in a 1/2 strength of the fish/kelp emulsion. (Try to get one that's got both, if you can.)

gardenz

In general compost and compost tea is considered more an amendment than a fertilizer, since it provides more trace and secondary nutrients, while fertilizer is the general term for the big three nutrients (NPK). That is a VERY general rule of thumb. They are both considered plant foods. But folks get really hung up on fertilizing and feeding plants, in my opinion. They think the more concentrated the fertilizer, the better it must be.

Some plants, like high country and desert plants, actually resent a fertile soil, preferring dry, sandy, rocky and sometimes alkaline soils to a rich garden soils. Plants cannot become obese, so they grow too much, providing weak spindly growth which is vulnerable to attack by insect and virus alike.

Some plants will grow just fine in rich garden soil, and flourish with a lot of nitrogen, but will never flower or produce fruit for you...while some are HEAVY feeders and do just fine growing righ in a cow plop.

For the most part, compost tea, manure tea, alfalfa tea and good soil amendments are all I use. I get an occasional load of free manure, but instead of using it as a fertilizer, I just work it into the soil along with rock phosphate, greensand, and glacial rock dust as a layer when I am preparing to plant. Concentrate on providing a healthy soil, and the rest will follow. If you don't have a healthy soil, no amount of fertilizing is going to get you the results you want for long.