Tag Archives: soil health

Garden Advice

Common Nutrient Deficiencies in Plants

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Spotting nutrient deficiencies in your plants can be challenging, especially if you’re new to gardening. Here are what a few common deficiencies look like and how to correct them.

Soil Nutrients

Nutrients in the soil can be divided into two categories macronutrients and micronutrients/trace minerals.

The first category, macronutrients, comprises primary nutrients nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium and secondary nutrients sulfur, magnesium, and calcium. If you think your plant has a nutrient deficiency, these are the likely culprits.

The second category, known as micronutrients or trace minerals, includes boron, chlorine, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, and zinc. While these are still important to plant health, they’re needed in such small quantities that it’s less likely your plant is deficient in one of these micronutrients.

You can read more detailed descriptions of what all of these nutrients do in our post, Understanding Soil Tests.

Nitrogen Deficiency

A nitrogen-deficient plant will grow slowly and lack vigor. The leaves may turn pale and yellow before dropping off, with the oldest leaves dropping first.

Note that it’s easy to overdo it when adding nitrogen, especially if you’re using chemical fertilizer. Adding too much nitrogen will cause lush, dark green foliar growth at the expense of fruit and flower production.

There are many ways to add nitrogen to your soil. While you shouldn’t directly apply it to plants, animal manure is a good choice if you have access to it. Compost will also add some nitrogen, or you can add seaweed or kelp meal, fish emulsion, bone meal, coffee grounds, soybean meal, or cottonseed meal. Using legume cover crops also helps to increase your soil’s nitrogen levels.

Phosphorus Deficiency

A plant that is deficient in phosphorus will also lack vigor and may be stunted. It might drop fruit before it’s ripe or not produce fruit at all. The lower leaves may appear red or purple.

You can add phosphorus to your soil using rock phosphate, greensand, compost, or bonemeal.

Potassium Deficiency

Potassium deficiency will probably be most apparent in your plant’s leaves, which may be mottled or curled or have brown edges. The plants will also be weak and have stunted root growth. They will likely be more susceptible to disease and pest issues.

Good potassium sources include manure, compost, seaweed or kelp meal, potash, granite dust, greensand, and wood ashes.

Sulfur Deficiency

While sulfur is a macronutrient, a sulfur deficiency is much less common. Signs include stunted growth and pale, yellow leaves.

Add sulfur with gypsum, compost, or sulfur.

Magnesium Deficiency

If your plant is deficient in magnesium, you may notice poor flower and fruit production, stunted growth, and dropping leaves. Leaves may also appear mottled with yellow/white patches or purple/brown patches between the leaf veins.

To correct a magnesium deficiency, add limestone, manure, compost, or greensand.

Calcium Deficiency

Calcium deficient plants may die back or have buds that die. Their leaves will likely appear burnt, curling, or have necrotic leaf margins. You may also notice issues like blossom end rot and other signs of tissue necrosis.

Use oyster shells, eggshells, limestone, gypsum, or fishmeal to add calcium to your soil.

Notice how similar a lot of these symptoms are?

If you’re having problems with nutrient deficiencies, the best advice is always to get your soil tested. It isn’t complicated or expensive and will tell you precisely what you need.

It will also tell you what your soil’s pH is. Soil pH can affect plants’ nutrient uptake and may cause deficiencies even if your soil is otherwise fine.

If your soil test comes out fine, your plants may be struggling due to over or underwatering or disease issues.

How do I prevent deficiencies?

The first step you should take is to develop a garden rotation plan that includes cover crops. They’re excellent for preventing erosion and adding nutrients to your soil.

Yearly applications of good quality compost can provide a wide range of nutrients to your soil.

Garden Advice

What’s a Nitrogen Fixer?

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Nitrogen fixing plants have a symbiotic relationship with specific bacteria. The bacteria colonize the plant’s roots and pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere. The bacteria uses the nitrogen and then it becomes available to the plant.

Nitrogen fixing plants include most plants in the legume family. They also include certain grasses like buckwheat but legumes are generally the most efficient. 

Why are they important?

Nitrogen is key for plant growth. Plants require it in order to perform photosynthesis. Yellow or pale leaves can be a sign that your soil lacks sufficient nitrogen. Rotating nitrogen-fixing crops through your garden replenishes nutrients in the soil without resorting to using synthetic fertilizers. 

Many nitrogen fixing crops, like those listed below, are used as cover crops or green manures. Like other cover crops they help prevent moisture loss, reduce erosion, and provide habitat for beneficial insects and fungi all while adding nitrogen to the soil. Using cover crops is in investment in soil health.

Nitrogen Fixing Cover Crops

Other legume crops like beans and peas are also nitrogen fixing. Pole beans are grown in the “Three Sisters” garden technique because they help provide nitrogen for the heavy-feeding corn.

Growing Cover Crops

Nitrogen fixing cover crops can be used in different ways. Biennial or perennial crops like clover are often grown for a season or year and then tillled under. This process adds organic matter to the soil and makes the plants’ nitrogen and other nutrients available to your crops. Alternatively winter-kill or annual crops like Sunn Hemp die back on their own and can be used as mulch. As they decompose they add nutrients and organic matter to the soil. 

These nitrogen fixing crops are also perfect for permanent pathways between rows or beds. Clover pathways in particular can be mowed through the summer. The clippings make excellent mulch for the adjacent beds.  

You can find more individual information under individual variety descriptions. 

 

Garden Advice

The Importance of Sustainable Soil Management

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Your garden harvest starts with healthy soil. How much produce you get, whether your plants are affected by disease, and even how many pests you have can be affected by how you treat your soil. But how you manage your soil can also affect wildlife and the environment, we always suggest getting help from professionals if you don’t know how to treat your landscape, by visiting southernpalmetto.com/services/ you can learn more about this! 

Algal Blooms

On this blog, we’ve frequently discussed the importance of mulch and cover crops. They are two simple ways to help prevent soil erosion and nutrient runoff. While these effects are obviously bad for your garden they also have more far-reaching consequences. When soil and nutrients erode they contribute to algal blooms in streams, lakes, rivers, and eventually the ocean. 

Algal blooms can be green, red, blue, or brown. They affect both marine and freshwater environments and produce toxins that have a variety of negative effects. The toxins can sicken or kill people and animals, create dead zones in the water, raise treatment costs for drinking water, and hurt industries that depend on clean water. One way we can prevent these algal blooms is to practice good soil management. An alkaline antioxidant water machine is an easy to install device which helps to ionize your water to produce alkaline antioxidant water or ionized water as it is more commonly known. An alkaline water machine can be easily attached to your water faucet to produce safe drinking water that is ionized.

There are several advantages of drinking alkaline ionized water. It helps to boost your immunity levels and reverses the signs of aging. It also helps to cleanse your system more effectively, thus making it an ideal choice to treat diseases such as acidosis. It also helps to balance out the pH levels in the body by reversing the acidic effects caused by junk food and aerated acidic soda drinks. The best way to ensure a steady supply of ionized water is to install an alkaline ionized water machine in your house. There are several models of water alkaline machines available in the market today in different price ranges. The price depends on the quality of materials used as well as the set of features offered in the ionizer. You can easily browse through the available models either in an online e-commerce site or in a department store before you decide on the brand of the machine that you want to buy. There are certain factors to keep in mind before you purchase your best alkaline water machine. The first thing to look for is the ease of use. It has to be a sleek design which does not occupy too much space in your kitchen and should have easy to operate controls. The other factor to keep in mind is the technology that is used for the ionization process. Unless the technology used is a superior one, your alkaline machine may not produce the kind of results that you are looking for. Finally, you must also keep in mind the budget that you have for the machine. You need not install it in all the taps in your house. You can choose to install it in the kitchen sink as that is where you are most likely to take your drinking water from.

Ultimately, even if you manage to install a really good alkaline water machine, you will not be able to derive the benefits out of it, unless you actually drink the ionized water. Therefore, make it a point to drink at least 8 liters of ionized water on a daily basis.

The best alkaline water filters have far more benefits than regular water filters! The use of an alkaline water filter in your home or business has extremely important benefits that lead to:

  • Higher quality and enjoyment of life!
  • Disease fighting benefits that make your life stronger and longer!

However, are all alkaline water machines equal? If they don’t provide the health benefits described in the following paragraphs, don’t waist your time and money!

Research has shown that the best alkaline machines outperform regular water filter benefits! Alkaline water greatly exceeds the health benefits of tap water, charcoal water filters, reverse osmosis, and bottled water as well!

Alkaline machines produce electrolyzed water orp values that are much healthier for the body to absorb and digest.

Good Soil Practices

Sustainable soil management means using practices that build healthy soil, reduce erosion with NG Turf products, and reduce the need for fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. They include:

  • Planting cover crops, especially in the fall to prevent erosion and add nutrients and organic matter to the soil.
  • Using mulch around plants whenever possible to prevent erosion, suppress weeds, hold moisture, and add nutrients and organic matter to the soil.  
  • Rotating crops to disrupt disease and pest life cycles and reduce excess nutrients.
  • Reducing soil compaction which helps fungal and insect life in soil thrive. Whenever possible reduce tilling and using equipment. 
  • Providing habitat for beneficial insects like cover crops, mulch, wildflower patches, and insect hotels.

While small gardeners and farmers are not the biggest contributors to this type of pollution every little bit helps. You can ask long island landscaping services to help you add some trees and flowers to make your garden look prettier. Making these small changes can improve your garden, improve water quality, and help wildlife.