use of epson salt as fertilizer

[hardwaterbob]

Any suggestions on the use of ES as a fertilizer and suggestions on how much and how often to use per plant. Just tomatoes or squash and beans also.

Advice welcomed

Thanks

HWB

[Baizanator]

Originally Posted by hardwaterbob

Any suggestions on the use of ES as a fertilizer and suggestions on how much and how often to use per plant. Just tomatoes or squash and beans also.

Advice welcomed

Thanks

HWB

My grandfather has been growing giant tomatoes for years. I asked if I could watch him plant this year to observe his "secrets" and he relented.

Before each plant is planted he places a large handful of composted straw and sheep manure in each hole. Then he places a palm of Epsom salts and a handful of dehydrated milk. He's never had blossom end rot and the plants always look spectacular.

[WVTomatoMan]

I put composted horse manure and a handful (about a tablespoon or so) of epsom salt in the hole before I plant. I have also side dressed with epsom salt when I didn't use it in the hole. I only side dressed twice per season with it (a week or two after planting and around flowering/fruit set time).

It can also be used as a foliar spray. You can use 1-3 tablespoons per gallon. Again you only want to do it at the most 3 times and watch getting your mix too rich.

Warning: Watch playing with epsom salt if you go too far over board you'll have a big beautiful green plant with no fruit set. I performed the experiment with getting it too rich using foliar spray. I got no fruit set during one of the flowering cycles. I backed off the epsom salt foliar spray and the plant went back to setting fruit just fine.

I've only used epsom salt on tomatoes and peppers.

I hope this helps.

Good luck.

Randy

[carolyn137]

Help me understand b'c I've never understood why some folks use Epsom salts, and when I ask most say my father or grandfather did so I do as well.

It's magnesium sulfate. I can understand the Mg++ part b'c that's the central part of the chlorophyll molecule so one might expect more photosynthesis. And then one could say that the greater the photosynthesis the more energy compounds of ATP and GTP that are made and those allow for synthesis of all of the vegetative parts of a plant as well as blossom formation and fruit set and fruit maturation.

Is that it?

Since I can't see any major role for the sulfate, then why not just use a liquid spray high in Mg++, well, the sulfate part would acidify things, now that I think about it a bit, but, well, I'm still wondering.

[duderubble]

You think too much Carolyn. Just do it. The wisdom of the ancients has never failed us. I for one know that the rite of bloodletting on my seedlings gives me redder tomatoes than anyone in the neighborhood.

[Baizanator]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Help me understand b'c I've never understood why some folks use Epsom salts, and when I ask most say my father or grandfather did so I do as well.

It's magnesium sulfate. I can understand the Mg++ part b'c that's the central part of the chlorophyll molecule so one might expect more photosynthesis. And then one could say that the greater the photosynthesis the more energy compounds of ATP and GTP that are made and those allow for synthesis of all of the vegetative parts of a plant as well as blossom formation and fruit set and fruit maturation.

Is that it?

Since I can't see any major role for the sulfate, then why not just use a liquid spray high in Mg++, well, the sulfate part would acidify things, now that I think about it a bit, but, well, I'm still wondering.

Carolyn,

You've obviously got more knowledge regarding tomatoes than most of us will ever have. That said, sometime "because my grandfather did" can be a good reason. I think that we get in this groove where we thing that just because something has been done a long time or because it's an older method that it isn't any good. I grew up in the country and these old-time, unsophisticated farmers have been raising barrels of big, beautiful tomatoes for decades. It may make sense to use a high Mg++ liquid spray but, given that it's worked so well for so long and because my grandpa did it, I'm going to keep using Epsom salts.

Not trying to agitate or incite anything at all. Just offering my two cents.


Reed

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Baizanator

Carolyn,

You've obviously got more knowledge regarding tomatoes than most of us will ever have. That said, sometime "because my grandfather did" can be a good reason. I think that we get in this groove where we thing that just because something has been done a long time or because it's an older method that it isn't any good. I grew up in the country and these old-time, unsophisticated farmers have been raising barrels of big, beautiful tomatoes for decades. It may make sense to use a high Mg++ liquid spray but, given that it's worked so well for so long and because my grandpa did it, I'm going to keep using Epsom salts.

Not trying to agitate or incite anything at all. Just offering my two cents.


Reed

Reed, you're not agitating at all, and since I was raised on a farm where we had many acres of tomatoes and my father never used it and I'll be 73 next week to give you a timeline, I never used it either.

Duderrubble, I'm happy at my age that I'm still capable of thinking, so there you go. But you have given me a great idea. Being a diabetic I have one of those things that you use to poke your finger to get blood out to test it for the glucose level. And I have an extra one.

So maybe next year I can spend some time stabbing the small seedlings before Freda puts them out, except I'm not sure how that's going to work with those varieties that don't have red fruits.

[Baizanator]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Reed, you're not agitating at all, and since I was raised on a farm where we had many acres of tomatoes and my father never used it and I'll be 73 next week to give you a timeline, I never used it either.

Duderrubble, I'm happy at my age that I'm still capable of thinking, so there you go. But you have given me a great idea. Being a diabetic I have one of those things that you use to poke your finger to get blood out to test it for the glucose level. And I have an extra one.

So maybe next year I can spend some time stabbing the small seedlings before Freda puts them out, except I'm not sure how that's going to work with those varieties that don't have red fruits.

Carolyn,

It seems that people do what they observe. I will use it because my grandfather use it and you don't because your father did not. I think this is a deeper issue than just tomatoes here. It's kind of nice to do something that someone you loved who isn't here anymore did. It will be cool to one day work in the garden with my grandkids (I'm 27) and say "I've done this since my grandfather, your great-great grandfather, taught me to do so."

Reed

[duderubble]

You misunderstand, you have to annoint the seedlings with your own blood. Grandpa did it that way and Grandpa is not to be triffled with!

Actually I don't have much of a gardening heritage. I remember one house where we lived that we had a nice garden, but for the most part I've learned on my own and with help from you and others on the GardenWeb forum. But I've learned since moving states twice that what works one place doesn't work in another and it took me several years to get tomatoes (or anything) to grow right here on my ozark soil (and I use the term "soil" loosely).

Finally this year I got fed up and put 3 inches of composted manure (from bags) on top of the previous layers of the same plus the original fill of my raised beds with truckloads of Horse Manure and "topsoil." and it seemed to be what the garden wanted. I also traded in newspaper and grass clippings (which was fine in Illinois) for weed cloth and hardwood mulch, which is actually working against our pernicious weeds here in Missouri.

All of this to say that as long as people live in the same general area as grandpa did, grandpa may have cracked the code for that area and their methods are probably well suited for there. That doesn't mean your grandpa's methods will work for me here.

[Baizanator]

Originally Posted by duderubble

All of this to say that as long as people live in the same general area as grandpa did, grandpa may have cracked the code for that area and their methods are probably well suited for there. That doesn't mean your grandpa's methods will work for me here.

BINGO!

[hoffman900]

I mix 1tsp per gallon of water and give each plant a quart of this solution when I fertilize with calcium nitrate on a biweekly basis. I could probably cut back on the dosage, but I have so much of it laying around and the plants and yields have been looking spectacular so far.

I'll post the rates on the bag (Epsogrow) for other crops tonight.

[Squidgette]

I have 10 heirloom tomatoes that I started from seed in mid-March. We had an unseasonably warm spring here in Nebraska and I transplanted them into the raised bed the first week in May ... the planting hole had Happy Frog Jump Start (myco, bacillus, & humic acid), worm castings, Epsom Salt and an Actinovate soil drench. Two weeks ago I felt the plants were just limping along and did a foliar application of fish/kelp emulsion and 1 T/gal Epsom Salts...the plants looked green and healthy but not overly big and (I thought) were late in flowering (at that time they were 12 weeks since germinating....4 weeks in the ground) Only 3 plants at this time have tomatoes and one plant (Aussie) has yet to flower... some plants have flower cluster "skeletons" where nothing developed. The Kellogg Breakfast tomato is two weeks old is barely the size of a pecan now. Last week I side-dressed with Tomato-Tone and I'm getting depressed looking at lovely green tomato plants without developing tomatoes...no evidence of fungus or bugs at all...I'm tempted to sacrifice one plant just to peek at the root system. We have had an occasional day over 90 degrees but overall mid-80 days and mid-60 nights so I don't think that is the reason for not fruiting....haven't had many bees or butterflies however. Any help would be much appreciated.

[Worth1]

My father was born in 1916 and I was born in1958 so you can see the generation gap there.
He believed in all of the old wives tales and planted according to the almanac every year.

It used to annoy him to no end that when I planted something it would out preform his stuff and take over the place.
I can hear it now, you cant get anything to grow there or you are doing it with the moon in the wrong phase.
Here is another favorite, its not Easter yet you cant plant anything.
One of my favorite things to do was to plant watermelons after he told me not to.
We dont have room for them he would say.
Then in a week or two he would see the plants coming up and tell me I better take care of them.
I did learn a lot from him though, he was a farmer and we had a huge garden and fruit orchard.

None of us used Epson salts.

Worth

[fortyonenorth]

A good soil test will tell you if your soil is deficient in magnesium. If it is, adding epsom salts in the appropriate amount will be beneficial. If you are not deficient--worse, if you have an excess of Mg, especially in relation to calcium--adding epsom salts will cause big problems that are not easily undone.

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by fortyonenorth

A good soil test will tell you if your soil is deficient in magnesium. If it is, adding epsom salts in the appropriate amount will be beneficial. If you are not deficient--worse, if you have an excess of Mg, especially in relation to calcium--adding epsom salts will cause big problems that are not easily undone.

What
Use science to tell what you need to do.
Perish the thought.


Worth