You know, a lot of folks on other threads and forums warn against over fertilizing. Yes, you can over fertilize potted plants, but if you watch them with a critical eye, you can usually tell when they need fertilization. Tomato plant leaves and pepper plant leaves turn a lighter green, and potted flowers quit their exuberant blooming. I start tomatoes and peppers with an organic 3-4-4 veggie fertilizer, bone meal, blood meal, fish emulsion and finely ground eggshells in the planting hole, and at first bloom, work more of the 3-4-4 in as a side dressing. About this time of the year they are getting pretty tired soI start using liquid 12-12-12 diluted with water at half recommended strength. For annual and perennial flowers I start out with granular rose fertilizer, I think it's 10-20-15, and switch to the 12-12-12 water soluble. The perennials planted in the ground and in the bed get the granular in the spring and then one application of the 12-12-12, plus in really early spring they get bone meal, blood meal and cotton seed meal scattered over the bed and I let the rain wash it in.
This is the first year that I've grown a sweet potato vine that the bugs didn't just eat it up! They seem to be concentrating on my other plants. My poor canna and my sun patients, two echinaceas, and some of the morning glories are being shredded, I finally gave up and sprayed them with Spinosad; enough is enough! I'll tolerate some leaves with holes in them; I won't permit total destruction of my plants!
