What do you feed?

What does everyone feed their flowers? 
Do you have different feed for different things? 
Do you bother feeding if they’re in the ground? 
Is your feeding routine different for the cutting patch?
Do you buy pre made or just use homemade? 

I’ve been looking at rose feed. Then started wondering what everything else might need. Then got overwhelmed by the choices! 

A priority to try to keep in excellent condition is roses, peonies & camellias. 

Other questions when and how often to feed flowery things?

Living right next to the sea we collect seaweed and make it into plant food.  Admittedly it stinks when it is stewing but the smell soon goes and all of our plants are doing really well and best thing of all its free.

I'm no expert and think your questions could also be mine. I feed tomatoes fairly regularly with commercial feed and a bit of homemade. I never have faith that my homemade manure/comfrey/weed tea has all the nutrients the tomatoes crave. Shrubs and perennial plants might get a bit of BFB and/or chicken pellets in the spring. Annuals get planted in compost and that's their lot. Tubs get some haphazard Miricle gro. I currently have a very poorly miniature rose with yellowing and dropping leaves and am trying to decide whether it's chlorosis, overwatering or disease.

The only flowers that are fed, here, are the orchids in pots indoors. I've never fed an outdoor flowering plant. I work on the basis that, if they're happy they'll grow, if not, tough!! I'm hard.

Flowers in pots just get organic fertiliser mixed in to the compost before planting, generally at a rate of 6 grams per litre of compost. If they start to look a bit ropey during the season then they'll get some extra soluble high potassium feed once a week.

Flowers in the borders don't get anything except maybe a bit of spent compost and coffee grounds in the autumn, but that's mostly to improve the soil structure rather than directly feeding the plants. Most of the borders seem to take care of themselves and the a lot of the nutrients get recycled back in to the soil when the plants die back.

If I were growing for cut flowers I would treat the soil the same way as all of the raised beds and apply coffee/compost in autumn and organic fertiliser in spring. The instructions on organic fertiliser usually say to apply every 6 weeks but if you're also giving the soil compost and mulch then you don't need to add so many extra nutrients.

Dahlias, sweet peas and sunflowers in the ground I do give a bit of organic fertiliser when planting, but that's because the soil they are in is rubbish and as the soil quality improves (with the addition of compost and coffee grounds) I will reduce the fertilising.

I don't think you need to buy different fertilisers for each plant. The exception would be the camellias, but if your soil is already acidic then you probably don't need ericaceous specific fertiliser anyway.

Thanks everyone.
I make the homemade weed tea, nettle & seaweed teas.
Yeah my ground is very acidic.
Pleased I’m not doing anything overly stupid or out of the ordinary.

I just splosh Wilko’s cheap tomato fertiliser (Tomorite equivalent) around willy nilly whenever I think about it.
The tomatoes and sweet peas get fed with the same stuff every third watering

Same as FEW, tomato fertilizer on everything. Usually at half the recommended strength because it goes further that way.

Don't ever feed flowers and the veg don't get too much either. I've been mowing the lawns here now for 40 years putting the clippings on the compost heap or used for mulch and they keep on growing without being fed. The garden is fertile and when I plant potatoes and brassicas, I give them a good spadeful of compost from the heap. I assume onions, carrots parsnips etc. get the benefit of the compost the following year. I mainly feed the greenhouse plants.

I've never fed our lawn, only brushed some coffee grounds into a patch of it one year. I think the grass gets enough nitrogen from the clover and bird poo.