I applied the drench very early yesterday morning and also applied a good foliar spray to the affected plants. They should look better by this morning if it is iron deficiency. I'll check when it is light out and try to get a few pics.
Don't get me wrong I am super happy with the results from using your fertilizers. I have never had fruit set on my tomatoes this good overall. I'm still pinching my blossoms on my peppers so they don't make while too small. My peppers were late going into the garden this year. My citrus trees in containers are doing fantastic and my satsuma is loaded along with one of my peach trees that hasn't made a peach in years and years. I have already recommended your fertilizers to dozens of people because I am so happy with the results so far.
I don't have my last soil sample but I can remember basically what it said from a couple of years ago taken before planting for spring. It said my ph was too high and recommended not adding any liming products especially dolomite since it said I was high in Mag. It also said my garden was very high in P but normal in K and low in N. Talked to a guy at the lab and he said not to add any more cow manure as it would lead to increasing the P levels and he recommended low P fertilizer or no P fertilizer for a while. The only fertilizer I have used for the past two years is cottonseed meal which is very acidic, alfalfa meal, some molasses, a small amount of chicken manure, homemade compost and a low P high N and K formula of soluble fertilizer and some calcium nitrate for side dressing. I don't think my soil is too out of balance because my earthworm population is huge. I feel guilty when I till the beds because I chop up so many of them with my little Mantis but within a few weeks the soil is teeming with them so I guess the tilling isn't doing the population much harm.
I didn't get a soil sample for the last couple of years because I wanted to see how much it came down from using the cottonseed meal and no liming products and give the time for the P levels to drop from plant uptake. I meant to get a soil sample this year but somehow forgot in my grafting frenzy this winter and early spring. I'm certain my PH is considerably lower because I have much healthier plants with only a couple showing iron deficiency at all and only then on a couple of tomatoes and peppers. Everything is much greener than in the garden 3 years ago. Our postman of 30 years came around to check out my garden and see if he could get some tomato seedlings yesterday and he was amazed at how good my garden looked this year and asked what I had done different.
The worst iron deficiency has shown up in the seedlings in potting soil and not in my garden where it is minor and only on a few plants. The reason I applied the iron supplement was because a few years ago I didn't and it went from bad to worse on a few plants and resulted in them losing their new growth which got so pale it eventually died on some of my tomatoes and I had to replace them. This has happened before on seedlings in potting soil for me and the only thing that stops it is an iron supplement but if it is not applied soon enough it can become irreversible. I lost nearly a whole tray of plants one time to this and I don't want that to happen again. Maybe I have just gotten some bad potting soil but I always buy the top professional grades even if I have to pay more at a nursery. I never had this problem in my potted plants when I could get Jungle Grow Professional; but it has been unavailable around here for a couple of years.
Bill
|