With a new year upon us it marks a good time to change things up a little.

At the start of spring, Evan Marsh put me onto a cheap dosing attachment available from our friendly, faceless multinational hardware chain.

The easy way to feed!

It has been a good addition to the garden so far as it’s ease of use has really upped the regularity of my feeding and all my trees are showing excellent health and growth as a result.

I always liked to think that i fed regularly but when i though back to when my last weekly feed was it was often months ago……. This new dosing attachment makes the process so simple and convenient i have been able to feed as i water and it has kept me to my intended schedules much more easily.

For those interested, THIS is the product in question, the Holman ‘Quickmix’ spray gun.

After the Quickmix discovery, then came the task of deciding what fertiliser to use. I tried some of my usual go to liquid feeds but their paste like consistency clogged some of the jets and just generally didn’t feed out very well in the Quickmix.

So after very little experimentation I have landed on the below system:

From Right to Left: Right – 2 part hydroponic fertiliser concentrate, middle – 2 part fertiliser pre-mixed, Left – Holmann Quickmix.

The fertiliser itself is intended for Hydroponics so has a good spectrum of nutrients and minerals but requires some preparation prior to use. It is a 2 part system where you need to mix a ratio of the crystals and water into 2 parts prior to combining the two into the Qickmix before you feed. It is my understanding that some of the minerals will re-crystalise if you leave the 2 parts mixed for any period of time so best to mix the two prior to feeding.

To use the Quick mix i add about 5mm of each 2 part solution tot he Quickmix and top up the bottle with water. Then i simply water using the gun. The gun has some adjustment for the dosing rate but as i have lower pressure from my water tank’s pump i just use the maximum rate. (more details about the dosing rates on the Holman website)

I have made my pre-mixed solutions in 2x 500mm bottles. I have been feeding each week and have so far used less than a 1/4 from each bottle. This stuff goes a long way! For $25 i think i will get several years worth of feeding done so i cant complain on the value side of things. All in all i am very happy with the system thus far. This combined with a slow release seems to be covering all the feed needs i have for now.

Some of the finer details