fertilizer questions

[sergeant69]

I keep reading about a product used by many on this site that seems to work tremendously well on all the aspects of tomato/pepper growing. so I got some in, read the literature, had some concerns/questions, and called the company. and NO, I am not going to name the product or company as my purpose is not to promote nor criticize the product, but hopefully to learn something.
the person made several claims that are a direct contradiction of what I have heard/read for years. so naturally I am curious of you learned people think. he said:
1. his product is a COMPLETE fertilizer, nothing is needed. if true, ok, makes sense.
2. said foliar feeding is the WORST possible way to deliver food to a plant.
3. said the effectiveness of Epsom salts is an old wives tale.
4. said tomato roots only go down 6-8" as they are a shallow rooted plant. I guess that a relative term but I have over the years pulled up old plants w/roots a lot deeper than that.
disclaimer: if I misunderstood any of what he said I apologize up front, right now.

I have always subscribed to the Dick Raymond method that if you feed the soil properly it needs no further additives or chemicals. just finished reading in his 1980s book about his garden test plots where he added no chemicals for 10 years yet got great results from tilling in cover and green manure crops. starting in dec I tilled in tons of manure, cotton seed compost, green sand, sand, leaves, mushroom dirt etc. I so far have 15 tomato plants in the ground all about 18" tall, all raised from seed, all bushy, green and looking good.
his product has tons of rave reviews. he has a business to run and I didn't want to use up his time defending what quite possibly needs no defense. but, I admit to being a bit confused. thoughts? opinions? chemicals versus natural?

[kayrobbins]

I would not trust him or his product. Foliar feeding has benefits and most people that use it do it in combination with other fertilizers. Epson salt does provide magnesium but if you are using a quality fertilizer you probably don't need it. When I grow peppers in containers, I might add a tablespoon of it at the end of the growing season if the plant is looking pale.

Every one that has ever grown a tomato knows his statement that tomatoes are a shallow rooted plant is totally wrong. The reason we plant our tomatoes so deep is because we know they will put out roots all along the stem that is covered by soil. I have taken out tomatoes with roots that were 2 feet long.

[Hermitian]

Originally Posted by sergeant69

1. his product is a COMPLETE fertilizer, nothing is needed. if true, ok, makes sense.

I sell several complete fertilizers, one of which is for tomatoes. But by complete, it means that other sources of mineral nutrients are not necessary. Other supplements for conditioning the soil for the local environment, input of carbohydrates, hormone inputs -- all of these can be beneficial.

Originally Posted by sergeant69

2. said foliar feeding is the WORST possible way to deliver food to a plant.

There is more than one viable way to feed most plants. Some farmers of row crops in California (e.g., strawberries) feed entirely by foliar spray -- from aircraft. This can be done with tomatoes too. Another method is to fertilize the soil prior to planting, and another is to supply nutrients with the irrigation water. For any of these approaches (and others) there is a way to obtain optimal production from the plant. For any particular situation it comes down to what is most tractable, cost effective, and responsible with respect to the environment. For large scale agriculture, pre-fertilizing the soil and bringing nutrient levels "up to levels" is the least responsible approach because half of the nutrients will end up in water resources due to natural percolation.

Originally Posted by sergeant69

3. said the effectiveness of Epsom salts is an old wives tale.

Epsom salts can be an important part of a nutrient combination fed to plants, or it can be a poor idea if those minerals are already at sufficient levels in the soil or nutrient supply. I have met several gardeners who use a complete Rose food, then add epsom salts, and then discover symptoms of an over-abundance of sulfur.

Originally Posted by sergeant69

4. said tomato roots only go down 6-8" as they are a shallow rooted plant.

Maybe if you're growing in serious clay that has only been tilled that deep. I keep advocating to readers here that they should be building their raised beds higher! I want at least 2 feet for my tomatoes, and preferably 32". But I'm not growing dwarfs.

Originally Posted by sergeant69

disclaimer: if I misunderstood any of what he said I apologize up front, right now.

It apparently wasn't me

[amideutch]

starting in dec I tilled in tons of manure, cotton seed ??, green sand, sand, leaves, mushroom dirt etc. I so far have 15 tomato plants in the ground all about 18" tall, all raised from seed, all bushy, green and looking good.

I've read some of Dick Raymond"s stuff on green manure as he was one of the pioneers in the field. Why did you even bother to order the ferts in the first place as the prep work you did to your growing area should be more than enough to support your plants for the whole growing season. Was this product you ordered organic or inorganic?

This may interest as it shows the major nutrients uptake of the tomato plant over the course of the growing season. It also shows the importance of inoculating your seedlings with myco's at plant out as they makes phosphorus available to the seedling which is needed from the git go.

http://www.yara.us/agriculture/crops...ional-summary/

Ami

[sergeant69]

that's a good question and wondered when someone was going to ask it. I ordered it because here in south texas, as he pointed out, we only have 2 short growing seasons, early and late. not all summer long as most people think. by mid summer the heat has stopped production, which picks up again when it begins to cool off. in the testamonials I have read for his products, some have claimed that his product helped their plants to continue producing even through the heat. (he didn't make that claim on the phone and I forgot to ask). anything that can do that is worth a try, thus my order. or, as a commercial grower here told me, plant succession plantings of determinates. I really don't want to do that. course i'm not selling mine either. and yes, I did drop in a little mycos into each hole at plant out. going over the literature that came with the order I don't see where it says where its organic or inorganic. I could a missed it, i'm only on my 1st cup of coffee right now.

[amideutch]

I have never heard of ferts helping with heat problems. We had another member who put up shade cloth which helped. Also if you dissolve an aspirin in a gallon of water and apply as a foliar it will stimulate the SAR process in the plant jump starting it's defense mechanism when subjected to stress. Basically once the SAR is activated it will close the pores on the plants leaves to reduce loss of moisture from the plant. People have had positive results with periodic applications of the aspirin/water solution. It also helps with disease issues as well.


http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/h...or-1244711.php


Ami

[sergeant69]

cool. gonna try that!!!!!! thanks

[b54red]

I have discovered a method that usually works to bring up production on tomatoes in the heat of summer. I found this out by accident years ago when my soaker hoses were left running accidentally for about 2 days during late July or early August on a row of indeterminate tomatoes that I thought were finished for the year. It was nearly a week before I could approach my plants due to the mud and water. During that time a funny thing happened all of my plants sent out vibrant new growth and were covered in new blooms. Usually blooms at that time of the year just fall off in the heat which was hovering near 100 when this happened. Amazingly I got a rather heavy fruit set after this on only those plants in that one bed. The rest of my plants of that age still looked pitiful so I tried an experiment and did a good pruning on another bed and fertilized the plants well and flooded that bed and got the same results. Eventually tomatoes will get so many disease and pest problems that they will just quit entirely and nothing seems to help at that point. Soil borne problems like fusarium, bacterial wilt and nematodes can really hinder production during the hot weather and if plants are suffering from any of these then it is rather hopeless trying to get any meaningful production.

I tried foliar feeding for a couple of years and found the benefits were greatly outweighed by the problems I had. One of the biggest problems with disease prevention down here where the humidity hovers in the 90% range most of the summer is trying to keep a decent air flow through the plants so the leaves will not stay damp. Regular foliar feeding seemed great at first but it increased my foliage diseases too much and required more spraying of fungicides so I abandoned it except in rare cases. I have found foliar feeding very helpful if an iron deficit is affecting the plants because it gets the iron to the plant leaves quickly.

I stagger plantings of indeterminate plants from March into August and it helps greatly with production later in the season. The new plants are most likely to produce good tomatoes on the first few clusters so staggered planting means that all through the season I continuously have plants setting fruit on those lower clusters. Fruit set is generally much better on those early clusters so that also increases the chances of fruit setting in the summer heat.

No doubt production and size of fruit is greatly reduced during the really hot weather and it is more work than spring and fall production with many more disappointments. Varieties for summer production are also really important. I have found that Big Beef, some red varieties and some of the blacks are far more likely to give you a decent amount of fruit to make it worthwhile. Large pink beefsteaks are generally not viable during the summer heat though three years ago Terhune was very productive even though the plant was set out in May and was setting in the very worst heat of the summer. The only problem is the tomatoes were less than half normal size and the skins were definitely tougher.

I also found that putting down a very heavy cypress mulch helped with maintaining good soil moisture and keeping the soil temperatures much lower under the plants. The mulch relieves some of the stress the plant goes through caused by the rapid loss of water. I have no scientific knowledge for this but I believe that when the plants are under heat stress they turn their energy to root production at the cost of fruit. When I am hardening off my tomatoes and they are allowed to dry out and wilt they produce more roots so why wouldn't the same thing be happening when they are fully grown plants suffering in the hot weather.

I have found that regular fertilization with a complete liquid fertilizer along with regular watering seems to relieve some of that stress and help with fruit set. For more than twenty years of gardening I never had a fresh tomato during the late summer and early fall until I started staggering my plantings. Even with staggered plantings the production was very meager during the hottest part of the summer until I started using some of the methods I have learned over the past ten years. The success I have had in the summer is still barely worth the effort because of the additional burden of keeping plants sprayed, pruned and tied up in the oppressive heat and humidity. I wish now that I knew some of these things when I was younger and more able to deal with the hard physical aspects of growing tomatoes during the hottest part of the summer.

Bill

[sergeant69]

that's a lot of good infor!! thanks. I too suffer from the "its a lot harder than it used to be when I was young" syndrome.

[b54red]

Originally Posted by sergeant69

that's a lot of good infor!! thanks. I too suffer from the "its a lot harder than it used to be when I was young" syndrome.

Some days it is just hard to go out into the garden much less get anything done.

Bill

[sergeant69]

Originally Posted by b54red

Some days it is just hard to go out into the garden much less get anything done.

Bill

I remember when getting up stiff in the morning was a GOOD thing.

[Cole_Robbie]

There was a recent discussion on here about the possibility that the benefit of kelp as a fertilizer is from hormones and not micronutrients. I thought that was fascinating as an idea, because it would explain why foliar feeding does not make academic sense on a small scale, but yet still seems to work so well for so many people - they're foliar feeding kelp and getting benefits from the plant growth hormones.

[PA_Julia]

Ask any giant tomato grower including myself about the effectiveness of foliar feeding.
I feed my plants via this delivery method exclusively and last season I had three tomatoes over four pounds including my personal best of 4.46 LBS.

Foliar feeding is the best, most efficient way to deliver nutrients to the plant.

[sergeant69]

Originally Posted by PA_Julia

Ask any giant tomato grower including myself about the effectiveness of foliar feeding.
I feed my plants via this delivery method exclusively and last season I had three tomatoes over four pounds including my personal best of 4.46 LBS.

Foliar feeding is the best, most efficient way to deliver nutrients to the plant.

that's EXACTLY what I have ALWAYS heard and read. I never did it much because I have always been warned about foliar feeding in extreme heat, and that's all we have ever had.

[PA_Julia]

The key is to foliar feed either mid morning prior to the very hot temperatures of the day after dew had evaporated or later in the evening close to sundown.

In your case being in south Texas I would recommend the latter.