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Old September 12, 2015   #20
bower
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
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It was so cold here this year, July was colder than a normal September and broke the record. My plants really suffered with potassium deficiency - as I learned, they can't take up K in cold soils, and the fruit quality really suffered for nearly all the large ones. Grey wall, uneven ripening, etc.

I probably could have remediated the situation by warm watering with some nice teas, comfrey looks good to me as a source of warm liquid bits of potassium, instead of making it worse by pouring icy cold well water on them. I will do it next time we have a cold one, this time I didn't know there was/would be such a problem until the larger ones started to ripen.

All the teas I've tried for plants have been great. I like to make Spirea tea for the salycilates - Just throw it in a big kettle, boil up, steep, and serve with water. This stuff doesn't smell bad and it kept in a bottle for ages - months for sure with no bad smell or sign of rot. The plants really loved it. I wonder if comfrey could be prepared the same way..
Actually my mom has a few big patches of comfrey out in her field. I've seen them after the frost gets them and in the spring, all brown and crispy and covering a fair patch - if we get some dry weather I'll look for that in the fall, maybe try storing it as a powder and use like my decomposed kelp stuff.
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