Well for starters, are you growing in the ground or in a pot? And what plants are you growing? They can have wildly different cultural needs.

1. More important than the brand is what type of fertilizer are you looking for and what is the purpose? A liquid fertilizer is given often, whereas a slow-release granular fertilizer is usually a one shot deal. It depends on what your goal is. If there is a specific deficiency you are targeting, it will narrow down your options. Organic vs inorganic? In a pot, your best bet is inorganic. In the ground, organic may also work.
2. Cannot answer "how often" without more info. Do you drink the same amount of water every day? No. Too many variables.
3. Liquid vs pellets...again, too many variables. They both have advantages and disadvantages. The choice you make depends on what you are growing.
4. Worm castings and other "natural" fertilizers are perfectly fine, you just need to make sure they contain the nutrients for your particular plants in the right proportions. Also, the organic fertilizers require micro-organism breakdown. These microbes, in a pot, are not stable so nutrient availability is unpredictable.
5. Dormant plants should not be fed.

x

Gary,

#1 - Miracle-Gro general fert is fine, in fact any fairly-well-balanced fert is fine, but I've always recommended that it's diluted to 1/4, lest one give plants too much nitrogen and get bloated growth. It's a good thing to say 'I don't see that bloated growth from that Brazilopuntia.'

As X wrote, narrow your purpose to narrow your particular need. Some folks fertilize constantly, some never at all, some sometimes; it's like many things in life - a personal, learned choice.

The main three elements (NPK) of a general fertilizer address different things in a plant - growth in foliage, growth in rootage and flowering - I forget which is which.

#2 - I use it 1x a month myself during the growth season.

#3 - whatever I have, but I usually turn it into a liquid.

#4 - No, no, and I don't know, although at one time I had a recipe (perhaps it was from an old CSSA journal) for horsepoop tea; I should think that earthworm castings would improve the soil rather than act as an actual fertilizer.

#5 - Think about it - the plant is dormant and is not-at-all/hardly being watered - why would it be fertilzed?

Thank you for your assistance.

This is why you guys are the experts!

I never fertilize my potted succulents. I guess my goal was to have a much healthier greener and fuller plants such as my crassula's.

As for dormancy, I normally give my plants little sips here in there and quite frankly, i have been very succesful at it.

Thank you,

Gary

I generally prefer the lazy approach to things, so my fertilizing scheme is as follows.

First and foremost, I treat the organic component of my soil mix as the dominant source of nutrients. Plants that need more nutrients tend to want more water anyways (Malagasy Euphorbs), so a richer soil mix is better suited for them. Rough and tough plants that only bloat and distort with too much fertilizer get an almost entirely inorganic soil (South African Crassula).

Now, I have absolutely nothing to really base this on, but I figure the organic component alone pretty much covers the fertilizing needs for about one or two years. By that time, there are usually other reasons to change their soil anyway. This is literally all I do for maybe half of my plants.

The other half get a little more pampering, but not much. For plants that I particularly care about, I usually add about 1/4 strength application of Nutricote, a product similar to Osmicote. This serves mostly to provide any possible missing nutrients (particularly the micronutrients) and to give me some sense of comfort, knowing I'm doing all that I can ;-) This is a once a year application that goes on top of the soil, so it really takes very little effort.

For a very small number of my plants, the *only* source of nutrients is from the Nutricote granules I add. These plants (P. brevicuale for example) are in pure pumice, and only very occasionally need repotting.

Again, my method really emphasizes minimal effort on my part, so I'm sure some of my plants suffer for it (definitely my Adeniums). On the other hand, these plants are *supposed* to suffer to a certain extent. A hard grown plant has certain age and permanence that coddled plants always seem lacking.

I'm not necessarily advocating my method, just sharing another possible option you could take when it comes to growing succulents.