Plant food?

I have just bought a Bougainvillea - the advice on the BBC gardening website is to 'provide a high nitrogen feed when it comes into growth, followed by a high potash feed when the buds appear'. Can you tell me what is a high nitrogen feed and what is a high potash feed please - for example, can you give me any brand names or types of fertiliser that provide these nutrients please?

Plant food?
firstly to explain plant food. on the packets of fertiliser you will find the letters n p k.these indicate n for nitrogen. p for phosphoric acid and k for potisium.the letter k is the greek word for potasium and is used to stop any confusion by using two letter p.


nitrogen promotets the leaf growth.


phosphoric acid promotes strong root growth.


potasium promotes the strenght of the plant and colour plus fruit ropening.


a good sourse of nitrogen is nitro-chalk as a chemical fertiliser or dried blood an organic form.


potasium is usualy found as sulphate of potash.


aply as the intructions on the packets.
Reply:Miracle-Gro makes a great product that contains a high nitrogen content and also the pot ash needed to sustain buds. If you look at the ingredients in plant food you will see the following number system: 25-1-12. The first number is the level of nitrogen and the last is the level of pot ash. So look for thsi set of numbers to determine the product you need. Good Luck
Reply:When you go to your local garden centre/nursery go to the chemical department and pick up a box and it will have an analysis on it NPK.


N = Nitrogen, P = Phosphate %26amp; K = Potash; followed by trace elements.


For Bouganvillea's personally I would use CHEMPAK Clematis Food as this is designed for all types of climbing plants including Bouganvillea's.


If you want to follow the BBC's advice and feed with a specialist feed then use Chempak No. 2 for Growth and Chempak No. 4 for Flowering.


I hope this helps,


Jason
Reply:Stay away from Miracle Gro.





For high nitrogen, get blood meal or fish emulsion. Potash comes in a bag labeled as such. You will find all you need at your local nursery
Reply:Any good compost should have sufficient nitrogen, if not then add some Miracle-gro, or a basic lawn feed, or diluted urine.





For potash - any tomato food or Phostrogen.
Reply:DON'T use Miracle Gro. It's killed most of the seedlings (tomatoes, radish etc) in my garden and killed all my strawberries. They all turned brown and shrivelled after I watered them with the stuff. I even rinsed the stuff off the leaves straight after, but they still died.