In recent years, the switch to high analysis, quickly soluble, complete plant foods by thousands of gardeners and commercial growers of food and ornamental plants is an outstanding development of twentieth-century agriculture.
Oddly enough, with but a few exceptions, the manufacturers of these concentrated plant foods first offered them as supplements rather than substitutes for the dry fertilizers like 5-10-5.
Various Factors For High Analysis, Soluble Plant Foods
I believe the following factors, in addition to extensive advertising, account for the increased popularity of the high analysis, quickly soluble plant foods:
1. They are quickly available to plants through roots, bark, or leaves, depending on how they are applied.
Plants respond more quickly, thus enabling the gardener to see improvements sooner.
2. They are easy and pleasant to handle. Most of them are sold in dry form, a few as concentrated liquids, but they must either be dissolved or diluted in water before use.
They are practically odorless—those of us who have worked with animal manures really appreciate this characteristic.
3. They are more efficient, and hence there is less waste.
Years ago, Dr. S. H. Wittwer of Michigan State College found that one ounce of liquid phosphorus applied to the leaves of a plant will do the work of 16 ounces applied to the soil.
The phosphorus in the concentrates is more readily available to plants than the phosphorus found in superphosphate or dry mixed plant foods containing superphosphate.
4. They can be distributed more evenly than dry fertilizers and can be applied at times when the size of the crops or the season prevents applications of dry fertilizers.
In short, their use fits in more closely with our modern way of doing things—getting more done with less struggle.
Hight analysis plant foods are more expensive, but some of the ingredients, particularly the instantly soluble phosphate, are more expensive than the ingredients used in dry fertilizers.
Moreover, practically every particle in them is usable—they contain no fillers or oilier inert materials.
Packaging them in neat, easily handled containers also adds to their cost.
How To Use Concentrates?
At this season, when dissolved or diluted in water, the concentrates can be used to great advantage in any of several ways.
1. As a transplanting solution around newly set plants. The usual dilution is a tablespoon of the concentrated salts dissolved in a gallon of water.
A cupful of this diluted solution is poured around each newly set tomato, pepper, celery, or annual or perennial flowering plant.
Larger plants will take several gallons of nutrient solution. Treated plants survive transplanting shock better and go on to make vigorous growth more quickly.
2. As a starter solution to be applied to seeds as sown. This is two or three times stronger than the transplanting solution, or 2 or 3 tablespoonsful per gallon of water.
Use a cupful for each foot of row before the soil is filled over the seeds. When pouring the liquid, be careful not to wash light seeds out of the furrow.
3. As a booster solution over the soil around already established, partly grown plants to boost their growth or hasten their maturity and increase yields.
This is the same strength as the starter solution. The number of applications varies with the crop.
Long-season vegetables like tomatoes and eggplants and certain flowers and shrubs require 2 to 3 applications, 2, 5, and 8 weeks after the plants are set out.
4. As foliage sprays. They are used in more dilute strengths than the others, the exact amount varying with the brand used.
The usual dilution is a level tablespoonful in a gallon of water or a pound in 44 gallons of water.
The number of applications varies with the crop, with long-season ones requiring more. However, about one spraying every 3 weeks is usually recommended.
Foliage nutrient sprays should be applied either with a pressure sprayer or with a specially designed fertilizer spray gun.
The latter have a siphoning device and are attached to the garden hose.
For best results, the nutrient sprays should be applied either in the early morning or in the evening, and the leaves, particularly their lower surfaces, should be thoroughly drenched with the spray.
Gardeners are cautioned that not all fertilizers quickly soluble in water are necessarily safe to spray on leaves.
However, all those recommended as foliage sprays can safely be used around the roots.
The manufacturer will state whether his product can be used in foliage sprays on the label.
Most of the concentrates safe to use as foliage sprays can be combined with the newer organic pesticides such as ferbam and DDT, thus enabling the gardener to feed and control pests in one operation.
Here, too, the plant food manufacturer can advise gardeners as to which pesticides are compatible with his product.
Oak Wilt Fungus On Chestnut
The recent report that two researchers had succeeded in infecting young American chestnut (Castanea dentata) with the oak wilt fungus, Endoconidiophora fagacearum, suggests that history is repeating itself, but in reverse order.
Nearly a half century ago, when the chestnut blight fungus, Endothia Parasitica, was raging unchecked through the eastern United States, research workers found that the blight fungus was also capable of infecting dead or dying white, black, and chestnut oaks.
The blight fungus attacks only the above-ground parts of chestnuts, leaving the roots unaffected.
This accounts for the presence even today of young chestnut sprouts in woods throughout the eastern states.
The young trees have developed from the roots of old trees, which succumbed to blight years ago.
Should the oak wilt fungus prove capable of infecting chestnuts in nature (thus far, it has resulted only from artificial injections), it might mean that the complete disappearance of the native American chestnut is not far off.
Mainly Conversion Chart
Too frequently, gardeners find it difficult to follow directions in gardening bulletins on using dry fertilizers and lime because the amounts are given in tons per acre or pounds per 1,000 square feet.
Some gardeners cannot easily convert these weights into measures needed for small plots, single rows, or even single plants unless mathematically inclined.