Tomato feed, fruit feed, plant feed - all the same?

trinidadone

i have some old feed for tomatos, fruits and plants - is there any difference in these feeds apart from the obvious or is this really a ploy to buy different feed???

-taff

tomato feed should be high in potassium to help the plant with fruiting, don't know what type of feed the other two are to comment.
Anything high in nitrogen is good for leafy plants, anything high in potassium is good for fruiting plants.

trinidadone

would the feed do any harm if used on plants?

-taff

it won't harm them, bu it may not be any use to them.
What feed is it, what did you want to use it on?

Davesnave

Fertilisers for plants are composed of 3 main nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, plus some trace elements. The proportions of these three chemicals can be varied according to the type of plant and the time when they're applied.

But the plant doesn't eat like we do, so if there's an excess of, say, potassium, the plant will take what it needs for photosynthesis and that's it; whatever's left in the growing medium won't make it ill!

Having different types of fertiliser isn't a ploy. High potash fertiliser helps plants make fruit and high nitrogen helps them grow leaves early in the season.

However, paying for fertiliser is not usually necessary, especially if it's one for fruit. For that, I just rot down comfrey leaves in a barrel of water. The comfrey has already extracted nutrients from deep in the soil and stored them in its leaves. As they rot, they release the nutrients into the water. OK, it stinks, but it's otherwise like tomato fertiliser people buy and it gets the same results.

Farway

To slightly expand on Dave's post, the proportion of the chemicals is on the bottle / container by law.

Shown as NPK. This is often in the small print on the back label. Cynically I assume the hiding is like shelf edge price per unit, to stop you really comparing instead of looking at the pretty pictures

forgotmyname

Wrong feed and you may have tons and tons of leaves but few tomatoes, or the tomatoes maybe small and glow very very slowly. Once the first few tomatoes take the nutirents they need it leaves even less for the later ones.

Or you may get lots of fruit but not enough leaves for the plant to do its job.

Every plant will have its own sweet spot in regard to the balance.

Camomile

I experimented with organic homemade feeds.
I made 2 brews: nettle(nitrogen rich) and comfrey(potassium). Nettle feed to start off the tomato plants, they turned very leafy and bushy. Comfrey excelleent for feeding but is one of the most stinky substances known on earth( excellent if you want your kids to give you a moment of peace in the greenhouse as they made hasty exit after first air intake:rotfl:)