Question on Hibiscus Fertilizing

Please see below a recipe for fertilizing potted tropical hibiscus plants from the HVH website. It is quite elaborate and expensive! I have a few questions on that, and I hope people here who are following that regimen can help me with the answers.

1. Does it work better than just using ordinary MG or other brand fertilizers or even special hibiscus fertilizers from other companies? I hope your comparative experience can help me decide.
2. Is foliar feeding hibiscus with vinegar water safe? I believe I read somewhere that it may defoliate the plant. I would love to hear about your experience.
3. The Supernova is crazy expensive. I believe it can be substituted with a proper mix of Amino, fulvic and humic acids, along with some Kelp powder and molasses. Anyone tried their hand in mixing up something similar and what is your experience?

Thank you for your time and effort. It is very much appreciated.


HVH fertilizer recipe:

"We have found that our hibiscus do best when they receive a weak solution of these nutrients every time we water. We add in a few household ingredients to help prevent fungal infections and to acidify the water to the slightly acid level that hibiscus like. This is the exact formula we use on our house hibiscus every time we water:

Put in a one-gallon watering pot:

* 1/2 teaspoon HVH Special Blend Hibiscus Fertilizer
* 1 teaspoon Super Nova Growth Enhancer
* 1/4 teaspoon HVH Hibiscus Booster
* 1 teaspoon vinegar
* 1/2 teaspoon hydrogen peroxide
* 1 drop hand soap or plain dish detergent

Fill about half full with hot water and stir until all is dissolved. Finish filling with cool water, and water your hibiscus. This formula also works well for all the tropical flowering plants we've tried, as well as non-flowering tropical plants like philodendrons and dracaenas.

If you prefer, you can buy our HVH Houseplant Formula pre-mixed and ready to use from our Online Store."

I can't answer all your questions, but here's what I can tell you:
--you don't necessarily need special Hibiscus fertilizer, but you do need to make sure to use something that doesn't have a lot of phosphorus (middle number). Buying a fertilizer made for hibiscus guarantees that you don't give them too much phosphorus, but as long as you pay attention to the numbers you could buy another regular fertilizer instead

--I do use special hibiscus fertilizer (HVH's slow release formula) and my plants do just fine, I've never gone to more trouble than that. Maybe the plants would be happier if I did, but they seem to do OK the way they are so you don't necessarily need to do anything complicated. But the folks at HVH are experts, so they've probably tried a lot of things and if they say this works the best, there's probably something to it although you can certainly keep your plants alive & blooming happily without all of that.

--Vinegar is fine unless it's super concentrated--straight vinegar can be used as an herbicide, but 1 tsp of vinegar in a gallon of water will not be anywhere near enough to cause the least bit of damage. All it does is drop the pH of the water a little bit because hibiscus prefer soil that's slightly on the acidic side (I don't see anything about foliar feeding mentioned in their recipe...the vinegar is to help ultimately with the soil pH so I don't know that it would do much in a foliar feed, although it won't hurt your plant at all)

ecrane,

Thank you for your reply.

As for foliar feeding, it is what I inferred. I went to the HVH website and have read that many of the users foliar feed along with soil drenching. Also, the use of the soap in the recipe makes me believe that it is meant to be sprayed on in some form because the soap helps the stuff adhere better to the leaves.

Thank you,
Maji

Soap would also help it soak into the soil--many potting mixes have peat in them and tend to be hard to rewet once they've dried out a bit, so soap helps with that. What you posted above says to mix it up in a watering pot, and then to water your hibiscus after everything's mixed up, which is why I assumed this wasn't foliar feeding. Not saying you couldn't use it that way but it definitely sounds to me like they're watering with it not spraying it on the leaves. If you're planning to foliar feed I'd probably dilute it a bit further to be safe, or at least test it out on a few leaves first to see what happens before you spray it all over everything.

ecrane,

Thank you again for your explanation. I did not know about soap helping the wetting out of the peat, thanks for the nugget.

I have read a bunch of posts on HVH, and I think it is not just foliar feeding that they recommend, but it appears that Charlie Black's recommendation is mostly to drench the soil and the leaves. I like your suggestion to test the waters before jumping in.

Thanks again.