Fertilizer Regimen and Refill

[MiniSempervirens]

I'm now a fair few weeks into my first growing season and am not sure how to continue feralization on my trees. I originally bought some biogold, but it's fairly expensive, so I've moved to using a basic 10-10-10 Scotts fertilizer for all my trees still in development and will switch to biogold once my trees are in actual pots (seemed wise to me, feel free to say otherwise).

My main questions is regarding fertilization throughout the season. Lots of places say every 6 weeks, but with the baskets it's always fertilizing anytime I water. Do you tend to top off the baskets when they get below a certain point or on a schedule? Or just leave it the whole growing season and remove it in the fall?

 

[Headhunter843]

Bump. I would like to know the answer to this as well.

 

[RoadManDenDron]

I'm assuming your baskets are evenly spaced around the pot,

Your next 'top up' would be to place new baskets in between the existing baskets

Keep the old baskets in place, there may be unused fertiliser still in there

I can't advise timing as I'm unfamiliar with this stuff you're using, I'd say go with what the label says unless someone advises different.

If it helps your biogold go further, I put 12 pieces into 2 litres of water, this is 4x stronger than recommended, I let it sit for at least a week before 1st use and regularly shake it up.

When I use it I take 500ml and dilute it into 2L water.

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

The six weeks interval is based on the breakdown of organic nutrients, after six weeks of watering, there's usually not much left other than dust or muck.
So we apply again to keep levels at an average.

I usually advocate against the use of these devices, but there are fertometers available. These devices measure the conductivity of you water and estimate whether or not there's a healthy amount of solutes. Usually with a red, orange and green light. You can try to use one of these to estimate whether or not a six week interval is OK and help you establish a system that is balanced.
Keep in mind though, that these devices do not distinguish between nitrogen, ammonia, calcium or potassium, they just measure "the conductivity" and this is based on the salt content of the water.
If you in theory would throw a bunch of sea salt in your soil, it would give you the same outcome as if it was fertilizer.
But since nobody would do that, they can be a cheap (25 usd?) tool to help you out.

Keep in mind that the drier the soil is, the higher the content of salts will be. So make sure you pick your measurement times consistently, for instance 15-20 minutes after watering.

If you want the easiest system; half the recommended dose, at six week intervals would be fine for our purposes.

 

[TrevorLarsen]

I think you were right to not keep using Biogold on trees still in early development. I would not worry too much fertilizer as long as you give them some every few months you should be fine. After all trees are not going to die suddenly from not enough fertilizer, but lots of other stuff can kill them quickly

 

[dbonsaiw]

My trees in development are pretty heavily fertilized. I use Osmocote every few months and use liquid fertilizer at least once a week.