View Single Post
Old May 18, 2013   #67
b54red
Tomatovillian™
 
b54red's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Alabama
Posts: 7,068
Default

The fertilizer is doing a great job in encouraging fruit set. Some of my plants have been in the garden for two months now and are 6 ft tall and loaded with fruit. They are all grafted plants with various rootstock and a mix of scions. I am keeping them pruned to between 2 and 5 stems depending on the plant and the space it has. Only my Akers West Virginia has refused to set a single fruit. I don't know what is going on with that plant. The first blossoms only showed up three feet off the ground and they all dropped so I'm waiting to see if the next blossom trusses will set.

I am still having a problem on some of my plants, both tomatoes and peppers, showing an iron deficiency. The tomatoes have only gotten the Texas Tomato Food and the peppers the Vegetable Food. I have noticed this deficiency in some of my seedlings that are in two different types of potting soil one being Miracle Grow and the other Fafards. Since it is also showing up in the seedlings could it be a case of the fertilizer being a little lite on iron? I have only used your vegetable fertilizer on them since potting up. I did not add any liming to either potting soil and this showed up on both tomatoes and peppers just as they were getting to the size to be transplanted. The foliar application of iron seems to take care of the problem on seedlings but for some reason is not as effective on the large plants in the garden possibly because my garden soil ph is a bit high. I got tired of fighting it and just this morning added a soil drench to my garden plants of a chelated iron supplement giving the ones with the more noticeable problem a bigger dose and just a little bit to the rest. I will know in a few days if this helps or hurts.

Bill
b54red is offline   Reply With Quote