Plant/fertilizer question

[John84]

I know I am probably asking a question that's already been asked 100's of times but I'm still not clear on the answer. My question is if I bought a habiscus plant from Home Depot that was in vigaro soil, when can I start feeding it to my tort if I took out most to all of the soil it was in and planted it on the ground?

 

[ZEROPILOT]

I might get blasted by some botanist or something, but I do feed Home Depot Hibiscus leaves and flowers to my tortoises. With the small plants it's just flowers. My larger hibiscus have leaves to spare. I have eight plants now. All from there.

 

[John84]

I might get blasted by some botanist or something, but I do feed Home Depot Hibiscus leaves and flowers to my tortoises. With the small plants it's just flowers. My larger hibiscus have leaves to spare. I have eight plants now. All from there.

Thank you taking the time to answer So did you do remove the dirt it came with or straight the the little guys mouth? Would it mater if the tort is under a year?

 

[Kapidolo Farms]

I tend to be very cautious about this. I worked in the seasonal department of a home depot in PA. HD buys from a grower/consolidator which means HD does not want to ship plants all over from a central warehouse, nor do they want to have to deal with 100's of small growers, so they contract with one larger grower consolidator for an area, and that company then supplies them with live plants, from dozens of smaller growers and from where ever the grower consolidator can get them. So the company selling to home depot does not even grow all the plants they stock HD with. The range of places and methods used to create all those plants is very varied, including the use and over use of systemic -cides. Systemic means the chemical was taken into the circulatory part of the plant, the sap. This means every cell has it, and it will trans-locate as new growth appears for at least one season.

Many growers may not use any systemic's in which case topically applied -cides may last up to about 45 days or so, most much less time.

I wait for one whole season to come and go before I feed from a plant that came from any big box store, they all use the same purchase arrangement for their stores.. In the mean time I feed what I eat from the grocery store.

I don't know about you, but a $250 pancake tortoise is not what I want to experiment with regarding the roulette that this plants is safe that plant is not, let alone a $2000 P. planicauda or $3500 radiated. Get me, safe over sorry, it's called the precautionary principle, dealing with what you know that you don't know.

I do also fertilize plants, fertilizer is not poison. I use the same fertilizer that hydroponic pot growers use, there are dozens of brands, but it all is sourced such that it is not going to make the pot poisonous. The availability of indoor grower supply stores is overwhelming.

 

[ZEROPILOT]

I can't fault or argue with what Will has said.
It's all true.
I just shared with you my experience and yours could be different.
Maybe a little more caution should be used on a baby than with my elderly crew.