Even great soil and ideal watering conditions can be improved upon with a fertilizer boost. If you are building up a collection of indoor plants, improving your potting soil may not be an option, but you can certainly put in some fertilizer and feed your plants directly. Targeted plant foods, such as fertilizers for blooming flowers and calcium rich products for garden veggies, can also make a huge difference to the quality and quantity of your harvest. Of course, you will need to keep an eye on light levels and the humidity of the air around your plants. A dry, warm house may make humans happier in the winter, but some plants may need to be misted. In the end, dealing with plants can be tricky, but there’s always an answer. There’s always ideal conditions that can help a plant grow. Food and fertilizer is a big part of that.
Making sure that your indoor plants get enough water is actually more involved than just checking the soil inside the pot. Because indoor plants tend to be much longer lived than the annuals in our gardens, getting them on a regular fertilizer schedule and keeping them moist but not soggy can be a challenge.
To start, consider adding fertilizer spikes to your pots for a steady dose of nutrients each time you water. Keep an eye on the humidity level in your home and review the conditions of the leaves. When your furnace kicks in, your plants may need a spritz of water on their leaves as well as smaller sips of water. Houseplants react to the low light of winter but still need moisture.
A healthy lawn will actually create its own environment. To promote healthy grass that will crowd out weeds, do your best to make sure that your lawn gets the right fertilizer during the most intense growing period. For most grasses, this growing period is early in the spring. Depending on rainfall in your area and the type of grass you have, your lawn may need
Additionally, once your grass is in good shape it will need regular mowing. For best mowing results, do take care to use a well sharpened blade and try to set it at a height that will allow the grass to fill in and thicken to crowd out weeds.
If your lawn soil is not good quality, consider adding another plant to the mix for a season or two. For example, planting an annual clover that will die back after a year can add a lot of green to a brown lawn and increase nitrogen in the soil. Combining grass seed with an annual rye grass could provide more green grass this summer and more organic material to boost soil quality over the winter months.
A simple way to increase almost any soil is to add compost to the mix. Using organic mulches and adding a cover crop to your planting rotation on vegetable gardens can leave more organic material to break down and improve the soil. For example, if you live in a region with very sandy soil that offers little in the way of nutrients, a fall seeding of daikon radishes can
If your soil is a thick or sludgy clay, consider putting down an organic mulch of pine bark. As the pine bark breaks down, the nutrients will feed the soil and you can turn under the mulch to break up the heavy soil and increase the oxygen level.
Improving soil, whether it is predominantly clay or sandy, will take time. There are gardens and seed cultivators in the desert filled Southwest who sow daikon radish seeds for years to build up better quality soil. How will you know when you have made a difference? When you start digging up earthworms!
