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No Phos for my plants!?!? How do I save them!
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Posted by plantRN SoCal zone10 (My Page) on Mon, May 23, 05 at 18:06
| I just discovered (can someone confirm?) that Australian plants need NO or VERY LITTLE phos in the fertilizer. When I put them in I am terribly afraid I used something like 7-7-7. I only have Kangaroo Paw and some Cat's claw (that is looking very puny, actually...) Should I dig them up, rinse off roots, replant, etc...or just leach out current fertilizer with slow trickle of water (overnight?...how long?...)
Does this combination make it too hard to plant with flowering plants (I do not use high phos to force blooms)...are they best kept in containers? Can they tolerate a 5-3-7 or something like that?
Any help would be lovely,
Cheers,
PlantRN
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Follow-Up Postings:
RE: No Phos for my plants!?!? How do I save them!
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| See if your local nursery/hardware store has any fertilisers that are Iron based. The most used ones are Iron Chelate (rather expensive but reacts immediately in the soil), Iron Sulphate (which will take a bit of time to react in the soil to be available) available. The addition of Iron into the soil locks up Phosphorous and makes it unavailable to the plant roots. Iron Chelate would be the best in this situation if you can get it. It is sometimes used on Rhododendrons etc. so if you ring around you should be able to find some. Just water it on according to the directions. You may have to make a few applications of Iron Chelate over a few months. |
RE: No Phos for my plants!?!? How do I save them!
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- Posted by pos02 NSW Aust (My Page) on
Tue, May 24, 05 at 1:08
| For the future, you can buy fertiliser for natives. Osmocote has this variant. |
RE: No Phos for my plants!?!? How do I save them!
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| I think it would be hard to find Osmocote for Australian Native plants in California!!! However I am sure there would be low phosphorous fertilisers somewhere there. |
RE: No Phos for my plants!?!? How do I save them!
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| You do not need to fertilize proteaceae. They do need iron sometimes, but you are wasting your money and hurting your plants. They have adapted to nutrient poor soils over the last zillion years and are unhappy if you try to change them. |
RE: No Phos for my plants!?!? How do I save them!
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| I have a variety of leucadendrons, leucospermums, protea & serruria (I know, I know...So African NOT Aussie) which I have in large tubs. I fertilize with something called Iron Safe. It's just Nitrogen & Chelated Iron. It works quite well. If they were all in the ground I would probably skip the fert. all together, but in tubs they seem to perform better with a bi-annual applications of some sort slow-release fertilizer. |
RE: No Phos for my plants!?!? How do I save them!
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| I use normal slow release equal NPK fertilizer for all my plants without trauma. That includes some dryandras and isopogons. I think the problem is too much fertilizer, rather than P in particular. CSIRO did a study a few years ago testing the susceptibility of natives to phosphorus, and the general conclusion was that the mainstream varieties all appreciated P. I would just leave your plants in their pots and stop coddling them :) We grow plenty of roo paws here in the ground (eastern australia), and they've survived things like our ex housemate putting phosphate derived washing water on them. |
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