Ruud Kleinpaste: Feeding your plants?

There are three reactions to the concept of “feeding your plants”:  

1) Plants feed themselves through Photosynthesis (you don’t need to feed your plants!) 

2) They’ll pick up elements in the soil that they need for growth and development, nobody feeds the plants in a native forest. 

3) What’s scientifically needed for our gardens is a soil test that indicates which chemical elements are lacking in soil. 

This is about the Science of Fertilisers. 

This is the time of the year when soil temperatures are great for plant growth. Roots work over-time to extract minerals, dissolve them in water and transport them through the phloem bundles to the leaves of plants, where photosynthesis puts it all together and creates carbohydrates and chemicals that allow cell-elongation (growth).  

Plants use three main elements for bulk growth “food”: Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and potassium (K), which are generally known as NPK (their chemical symbols).  

N is used to make the green stuff: leaves and chlorophyll (LAWNS, LETTUCE, SPINACH, HEDGES). 

P is good for root development and plant health (CARROTS, PARSNIPS, POTATOES, etc). 

K (potash) is for sex: flowers and fruits (TOMATOES, APPLES, STRAWBERRIES, FLOWERING PLANTS). 

Other elements needed for plant functioning are needed in much smaller quantities:  

Mg (Magnesium), S (Sulphur), Ca (Calcium), Cu (Copper), Fe (Iron), Zn (Zinc), Mn (Manganese), and a heap more of those minor “trace elements”. 

There are a few different types of fertilisers:  

1) “General” Fertiliser – for general growth: usually something like N-P-K 7-3-6 or 12-4-13 (note how Phosphorus is usually less than the N and K). 

2) Potato fertiliser: N-P-K 3-9-6, also good for carrots and parsnips. 

3) Tomato or rose fertiliser - usually higher in potash (K): N-P-K 3-4-9. This helps to stimulate flower and fruit growth. 

Of course, you can always use the general fertiliser (which tends to be highest in Nitrogen) and simply add a few handfuls of Superphosphate (P) if you grow root crops, or handfuls of Sulphate of Potash (K) if you want to up the dose of K (potash) for flowers and fruit.  

Organic fertilisers usually have lower concentrations of elements, and they are often less prone to fertiliser run-off into water courses. Chicken poo (a “Natural” organic fertiliser) has a high content of Nitrogen which can burn plants – I would always send it through a cycle of composting before use. 

These are very general comments on how to use fertilisers; some plants require a bit more detailed knowledge or would benefit from changing fertiliser regimes in different times of the year (Cymbidium orchids have a green-growth phase to make leaves in spring and summer – followed by a flower bud initiation in autumn and flowering in winter).  

I use General fertiliser on my young tomatoes to get them growing up and create a strong climbing vine, before the flower buds are formed.  

Once they start flowering, I assist the plants with more potash to keep on making fruit – I just switch to a higher potash fertiliser such as Wet&Forget’s Seaweed Tea.  

Dog Pee fertiliser  

Most homeowners let their dogs use the backyard as their own personal toilet. Urine is very high in Nitrogen. Too much nitrogen will burn the grass and create yellow patches after sensational, dark green growth (a dog will usually come back to the same patch – territorial “marking”).  

The concentration of nitrogen in the dog’s urine depends on the type of dog, its sex, and what the animal eats. Larger dogs will pee more and cause more damage. Female dogs also tend to cause more damage than males because they squat and urinate in one concentrated patch whereas the males spray their urine over a larger area and in much smaller doses each time. Finally, diets high in protein can increase the concentration of nitrogen in the urine since protein breaks down to release nitrogen compounds. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks that.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Be Rude Climb passes our man in the garden killed.
Well you are, you're Europolic. How many languages do you speak? Rude,
I can imagine a few.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yes, quite a few. But that's that's all by accident.
The the thing actually you you made a really good
comment about, you know, other countries in the Netherlands we
needed we spoke Dutch, of course, but it was compulsory
for us to learn French, German and English. Wow. And
so you came, you came basically out of school with
four languages. And and because French was so difficult, you

(00:47):
had to start in the primary in primary school that French. Yeah,
we started a year earlier with French. It's good fun.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
So so, so did you find French? I mean, Germans
is more kind of rigid with its grammar structure, right,
but yeah, so did you find French more tricky than
those other languages?

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yes, it is a little bit because of all the
genders and stuff like that as well, but that's that's
of no concern really, because once you've done things like
French and you go to Italy, on holiday a couple
of times in the ego to you pick you literally
picked them up. The only thing that I've totally lost
this Mongolian.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Oh yes, no, the same thing happened to me. That's
the problem with your mogoing.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Yeah, it's so lost. It's like I never had it
in the first place. That's how last.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah we had job.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, yeah, very good. Well what about learning English? Sorry,
very quickly, what about learning English? Because that's supposed to
be quite difficult.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Right, No, it's not. English for me was quite easy
because everything on the television was in English. Trend was
all subtitled, so there was an easy way of learning. Well,
actually that's a good idea, the subtitling up until yeah,
there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well, I reckon that the TV show Friends has talked
more people English than any educational assets. You know, like
so many people are out world of watch Friends and
just learned. But I always think like little quirky things
with English. Sorry, we're going on it. This is very
unlike us. I know, we never never get diverted whatsoever.
But you know, like it's the classic, it's the big

(02:18):
read dog, right, so in English we just know it's
the big read dog. Well why is it not the
read big dog. There are lots of little quirks in
English like that, so if I said that read big
dog over there, you'd say, well, that's a weird thing
to say. But it's kind of hard to define why
that's a rule, especially if you're learning and you know,
English is the second language anyway.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
On the other hand, when you are doing those languages,
Latin languages, you learn Latin. And that is for gardening
quite interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
Oh, yes, exactly.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Well this is the point NPK nitrogen phosphate and potash
K is carlium. That's the actual word for it, so
you's it's quite easy to understand that. And the same
with the names of plants, yes exactly, yeah, and birds
and everything else. So I was going to have a
little chat about, you know, seeing it's finding a bit
nice and warm about fertilizers and people. I think it's

(03:11):
always good. So that's why I wrote this. Quite a
lot of stuff that goes on your website about NPK,
how it all works and what you need for which plants? Right,
you know that's the one and first of all, and
it's for nitrogen that means it makes green stuff. Pa
is for root development. So that's for you know, root
crops and ks, potashes for sex basically flowers and fruits.

(03:34):
There you go. So the more and you have, the
more you get into green, the more pea you have,
you get more into roots and plant health, and the
k the potash is for flowers and fruits. So's it's
as simple as that. So I gave some examples of
what you use for lawns, what you use for carrots,
what you use for tomatoes, et cetera. And then there's
all these other things. And here comes let in quite nicely.

(03:55):
Magnesium and sulfur, calcium, copper, iron, zinc, manganese, you name it.
They're all called trace elements and they eat them as well,
so you need a little bit of that too.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, yeah, okay, that is.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
The basic thing. So the rest you can read on
the website.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
It's well, what you've done is you've gon really useful
suggestions for potatoes and tomatoes and roses and that kind
of thing. What about dog pee?

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Dog pee is absolutely full of nitrogen. So if you
have a dog that sits there and does one huge
way on the lawn, it becomes yellow. It is too
much nitrogen. And it becomes literally overdosed.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
That's it. As in the yellow.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yeah, the grass does yellow and it starts to become
bear and all that sort of stuff, and you need
to sometimes resow it. But here comes the thing. It's
mostly the female dogs that do that damage.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Oh why is that?

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Do you ask? Well, if you have a male dog,
it goes, tiny little bit cocks its leg, tiny little
bit here, tiny little bit there, tiny little bit there.
It basically makes its microsoft its territory.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
And female dogs don't make their territory.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
No, they go like, I've got to go now.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
I had no idea about that. I okay.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
So so people, if you've got these patches on the loan,
you've got a female dog, get a different dog.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, well I had This is great. It is never
not an educational few minutes that we share on Saturday
mornings through That's what I that's what I love about it.
Very good. Hey, thank you. We will put your your
your advice, your explanations and the tips on different types
of fertilizer for different plants. Will make sure all of
those are up and available on the website. You have

(05:41):
yourself a great weekend, won't you? Astell ego. That is
Rude climb past in the garden for us this morning.
Like I say, all of those bits and pieces at Newstalks,
dB dot co dot nz Ford slash Jack. That's where
we put all the good stuff from our show. Are
those those TV shows from our screen time segment. They're
all up there on the website right now. Recent pes

(06:03):
that we share, film reviews, books, every thing goes up
on the News Talks.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
He'd be website for more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame.
Listen live to News Talks he'd be from nine am Saturday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.