T
Teddybrae
Good Morning
I have this organic garden bed … quite a lot of soil … that I suspect has been overdosed with Kelp. The type of kelp is Ascophyllum nodosum, useful as a pre-flowering spray to optimise flowering. Its analysis is: 17% organic potassium, with less than 2% Nitrogen, plus small amounts of Sulphur, Boron, Calcium. The bed grew uniform 4 meter Haze plants but growth stopped suddenly in the early stages of flowering.
Another person (who has left here in a hurry!) had access to the garden bed. During discussion with him about soil ingredients I disagreed that Kelp should be added to the soil in granular form. But I suspect he went ahead and applied Kelp in granular form to the soil because I had never previously seen such rampant early stage growth … and I ‘ve been growing for a very long … while at the same time these large plants flowered so poorly (see photo … lots of stem small flowers).
So, if I ‘m correct in my suspicions there would have been an excess of Potassium available to the plants which threw soil mineral balance totally out of whack. (The basalt soil garden bed had previously been amended with animal manures and rock potash as I have successfully done many times previously.)
I don’t understand why the plants seemed to stop flowering suddenly as if they just ran out of energy one morning. The harvested heads also dried out very quickly as if they had no density (altho they look and feel solid). There was very little smell and the heads were not sticky.
Am I on the right track? Are these symptoms consistent with over use of Kelp?
Can anyone explain this?
Thanks in advance … Cheers ...
I have this organic garden bed … quite a lot of soil … that I suspect has been overdosed with Kelp. The type of kelp is Ascophyllum nodosum, useful as a pre-flowering spray to optimise flowering. Its analysis is: 17% organic potassium, with less than 2% Nitrogen, plus small amounts of Sulphur, Boron, Calcium. The bed grew uniform 4 meter Haze plants but growth stopped suddenly in the early stages of flowering.
Another person (who has left here in a hurry!) had access to the garden bed. During discussion with him about soil ingredients I disagreed that Kelp should be added to the soil in granular form. But I suspect he went ahead and applied Kelp in granular form to the soil because I had never previously seen such rampant early stage growth … and I ‘ve been growing for a very long … while at the same time these large plants flowered so poorly (see photo … lots of stem small flowers).
So, if I ‘m correct in my suspicions there would have been an excess of Potassium available to the plants which threw soil mineral balance totally out of whack. (The basalt soil garden bed had previously been amended with animal manures and rock potash as I have successfully done many times previously.)
I don’t understand why the plants seemed to stop flowering suddenly as if they just ran out of energy one morning. The harvested heads also dried out very quickly as if they had no density (altho they look and feel solid). There was very little smell and the heads were not sticky.
Am I on the right track? Are these symptoms consistent with over use of Kelp?
Can anyone explain this?
Thanks in advance … Cheers ...