Foliar feeding potted plants?

Is foliar feeding recommended on indoor container plants? If so, would applying at a weaker rate more often be better? Also, can you use fertilizer at the same time as you spray neem? I think I need some technical lessons :)

I was talking to a group of container gardeners on another forum site when I left this. You might find it useful:

You can make it, but it won't be very effective. Only SOME plants can absorb an appreciable amount of nutrients by way of a foliar pathway. The nutrients they DO absorb need to be in ionic form, and organic preparations like fish and seaweed emulsions are very heavy in organic molecules which cannot be absorbed and very weak in nutrients in ionic form. Also, cultural conditions on leaf surfaces are generally not conducive to further breakdown of organic molecules into ionic form.

The good news is it won't hurt anything (as long as you don't mix it too strong) & the organic molecules will eventually be washed from leaf surfaces where they will end up in the soil to eventually be broken down by soil biota into nutrients the plant CAN use.

Weak doses of soluble fertilizers are far more effective at providing nutrients via foliar pathways.

Remember too, that there is no good reason to foliar feed unless there is a recognized nutritional deficiency and you're trying to temporarily alleviate it. The soil to root path Mother Nature designed is much more effective at supplying necessary nutrition for nearly ALL the plants we would be discussing on this forum. You can't force-feed a plant, and common hort sense says you shouldn't try. Additionally, if foliar feeding DOES do any good, it's a clear indication there is a problem with your regular nutritional supplementation program.

Al

I was curious about using it instead of soil feeding during the winter months, as I am still growing in peat mixes. I do a very light feeding frequently, but have to leach the salts occasionally to counter the soil I have. In the summer, outside, it isn't even a worry as I can water deeply every time I water. I am exploring all the avenues until I can get them into a better growing situation. Thank you for your help. I didn't think of it being force-feeding, but that doesn't sound like fun for the plant :).

I didn't quite mean it that way. Maybe it will be clearer if I explain what I meant by "You can't force feed a plant .....", which is you can't MAKE it take up nutrients just because they are in the soil or applied to foliage; and even though it doesn't apply directly to what you were talking about, you can't make a plant take up more of a particular nutrient than it needs in relation to the other nutrients. A common example is P - people think that just because you supply massive doses of P in bloom-booster fertilizers, that the plant will take up extra P and turn it into more blooms than it would have if you supplied P at adequacy levels. The truth is, those massive doses of P are counter-productive and often weaken the plant in several ways so the plant actually produces fewer blooms.

The effectiveness of foliar feeding is generally seen when plants are at the peak of growth (in terms of rate) and are simply unable to extract nutrients from the soil fast enough to keep up with potential growth. During this (brief) period, foliar applications are usually limited to ionic (soluble) forms of N, Fe, Cu, and Z.

Al