Help with cottonseed meal!

dice · January 9, 2008

Sounds like that will work fine.

BER is a calcium deficiency disease. Plants
can get it from a simple lack of calcium in the
soil or from a lack of moisture (soil needs to be
moist to keep the calcium absorbable by the
roots). Some cultivars seem to need more calcium
than others to prevent BER (not as efficient at
taking it up through their roots, probably).

That seems to me a lot of bonemeal to add, 4-lbs
once a month. You should probably do a soil test
next winter after you pull the plants and see how much phosphorus in an absorbable form is still there.
They are getting some phosphorus from the other
stuff (manure, compost, seed meals, etc), and what
the plants do not use tends to stay put.

Soil pH matters for phosphorus uptake, too. A soil that
is dead on 6.5-7.0 can get by with less total phosporus
than a soil outside that range. There was a good post
by Fusion late last spring describing soil pH effect on
solubility of phosphorus in the soil:

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...orus#post51265

January 9, 2008	#16
dice Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: PNW Posts: 4,743	Sounds like that will work fine. BER is a calcium deficiency disease. Plants can get it from a simple lack of calcium in the soil or from a lack of moisture (soil needs to be moist to keep the calcium absorbable by the roots). Some cultivars seem to need more calcium than others to prevent BER (not as efficient at taking it up through their roots, probably). That seems to me a lot of bonemeal to add, 4-lbs once a month. You should probably do a soil test next winter after you pull the plants and see how much phosphorus in an absorbable form is still there. They are getting some phosphorus from the other stuff (manure, compost, seed meals, etc), and what the plants do not use tends to stay put. Soil pH matters for phosphorus uptake, too. A soil that is dead on 6.5-7.0 can get by with less total phosporus than a soil outside that range. There was a good post by Fusion late last spring describing soil pH effect on solubility of phosphorus in the soil: http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...orus#post51265 __________________ -- alias