Blossom Spray - apple juice vs epson salts

[GaryVSmith]

I've seen youtube videos that show - one; spraying the tomato blossoms with apple juice and another spraying the with Epson Salts. What does this do? Are both sprays meant to accomplish the same thing? How often should this be done?

[tlintx]

Any additive is only useful if you have an issue it addresses. I've never heard of spraying with apple juice! My plants would be covered in ants before you could say "Motts".

eta, oh, interesting. I think I found the youtube video in question. If so, I also shake my plants, but i don't spray them, nor could I find any other online references to why you'd want to (can't listen to the video right now). Will be interesting to see if anyone knows!

[dice]

Sounds like snake oil. The epsom salts would treat a magnesium
deficiency (sulfur deficiency, too, but those are pretty rare).

If your leaves do not look like this: http://image1.masterfile.com/em_w/03...-03347600w.jpg
your plants are probably not magnesium deficient. It starts toward
the bottom, but after it has progressed for a couple of weeks,
the symptoms are equally distributed up and down the plant.
(A milder case, not so far along: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2651/...6feefd2ac3.jpg
)

Epsom salts would be appropriate sprayed onto plants
that look like those. But it does not have much in particular
to do with fruit set or flowering, it simply treats a deficiency
in the whole plant. The yellow in leaves like those will turn
green, because magnesium is important for chlorophyl
formation. (If the leaves do not turn all green, but they looked
close to those, it was probably potassium instead. Try a spray
with dissolved molasses and see if that fixes it.)

Some yellowing comes along with iron deficiency, but it starts
in the growing tips at the ends of stems rather than at the bottom
of the plant. Nitrogen deficiency starts on the lowest branches,
but there are no green veins, the whole leaf is yellow.

Mineral deficiencies in detail:
http://5e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=5&id=289

edit:
(NB: Overwatering can induce iron deficiency symptoms,
because the plants need air spaces in the soil or container
mix to take up iron. Once it stops raining and the soil or
container mix dries out some, symptoms of iron deficiency
induced by lack of air space around the roots will
disappear, assuming that the plants are not growing
in 10-year old container mix that has turned entirely
to silt.)

[GaryVSmith]

Thanks for your advise. Here is the you tube on why to spray blossoms with apple juice to set blossoms. http://www.vegetable-gardenplanting....ting-blossoms/.

[NarnianGarden]

I've tried the apple juice... hasn't stopped the flowers from falling off in the heat. Perhaps juice can help in creating sweet flavor - just like molasses - but it hasn't helped blossom drop problem one bit...
Quite the opposite, the blossom 'joint' snapped when sprayed on...!

[cythaenopsis]

Originally Posted by NarnianGarden

I've tried the apple juice... hasn't stopped the flowers from falling off in the heat. Perhaps juice can help in creating sweet flavor - just like molasses - but it hasn't helped blossom drop problem one bit...
Quite the opposite, the blossom 'joint' snapped when sprayed on...!

I'd also seen the video that Gary linked, by Reaganite71. He is a prolific gardener, getting enormous yields from his plants. He suggests using apple juice on blossoms to "set" them. Supposedly the nitrogen in the juice helps prolong their blooming time, extending the opportunity for pollination.

Well, I tried this at two different times. I sprayed a number of blossoms that hadn't been open for more than a day or two. A couple of days later, several of the blossoms dropped right off. It happened again about 3 weeks later when I tried it again. I don't know if it was a coincidence, or if the juice interfered with the flowers. It seems weird that something as benign as apple juice would do this... but I was really disappointed because my Black Krim had been going over 5 weeks with just one tomato (very lucky early fertilization I guess).

That Reaganite71 fellow also "spanks" his tomatoes. I suspect that he may have already induced pollination and that the juice presented no harm (maybe psychologically he thinks it has helped). But what of flowers that haven't pollinated yet? It could be that when the juice dries up, it sticks to the pollen and ends up holding it back from shaking loose, never falling on the stigma to incite pollination.

Anyway, it does seem like most places where people have asked about this, either everyone or most everyone responds with "never heard of that." I decided to stop doing it, as I think that if you achieve fertilization the flowers "set" naturally.

[NarnianGarden]

So I am not the only one who had no success with this..! Perhaps the juice was too strong and messed up with the whole natural process, don't know. As you said, this was from someine who is an experienced gardener. But just because someone has good experiences with something, does not mean that trick works for everyone.

[cythaenopsis]

Originally Posted by NarnianGarden

So I am not the only one who had no success with this..! Perhaps the juice was too strong and messed up with the whole natural process, don't know. As you said, this was from someine who is an experienced gardener. But just because someone has good experiences with something, does not mean that trick works for everyone.

Yeah, it's really hard to know how effective it is without a careful series of tests with a control group (nobody is probably going to bother with that). My suspicion is that if it does help, it's under a particular set of circumstances. The effort to figure that out seems to be more trouble than it is worth. A good shaking/buzzing of the blossoms with generally mindful care of the plant is probably enough.