Treating Sulfur Deficiency with Alfalfa and Kelp Tea

kalikush · Sep 11, 2017

So to make a long story short, I've been busy with work and saw yellowing so I thought it was a Nitrogen deficiency and gave 2 Alfalfa and Kelp teas as outlined below. After about 10 days and no improvement, I had a closer look and realized that only the new growth was yellowing and I believe it is a Sulfur deficiency now.

If we just assume that it is a Sulfur deficiency only, (no pH issues, etc..) and these teas were applied about 7 days apart, would an Alfalfa and Kelp tea (I used CC's recommendation which I believe is: 1 cup Alfalfa, 1/4 cup Kelp per 5 gallons water) brewed for 12 hours and another Alfalfa and Kelp tea brewed for 24 hours contain enough Sulfur to treat the deficiency?

redlaser · Sep 11, 2017

To answer your question, I don't know if alfalfa and kelp would help with a sulpher problem.
Have you looked through Joe Fresh's thread in the infirmary section? It has a lot of deficient plant pics and some good charts in post 5 showing different types of yellow leaves.

As far as sulphur, if you had some powdered gypsum you could try that, it has 18% sulphur along with the calcium.

kalikush · Sep 11, 2017

redlaser said:
To answer your question, I don't know if alfalfa and kelp would help with a sulpher problem.
Have you looked through Joe Fresh's thread in the infirmary section? It has a lot of deficient plant pics and some good charts in post 5 showing different types of yellow leaves.

As far as sulphur, if you had some powdered gypsum you could try that, it has 18% sulphur along with the calcium.

That's exactly the post I looked through when I had some free time the other day. I learned that sulfur can take a few days to move through the plant so I wanted to give the stronger brew a chance to work, if it was going to. I have been spraying them with a 1/4tsp per gallon Epsom Salt foliar over the past couple days but that doesn't seem to be helping. I do have some granular gypsum that could be crushed down, any idea on the dosage?

Weird · Sep 11, 2017

I have never seen a sulfur deficiency and I do not recall cc leaving a ratio for a tea like that here but I may be wrong

imhe alfalfa is hot and I would never use that much in a tea

Budley Doright · Sep 11, 2017

Weird said:
I have never seen a sulfur deficiency and I do not recall cc leaving a ratio for a tea like that here but I may be wrong

imhe alfalfa is hot and I would never use that much in a tea

I recall some years ago on overgrow.....at that time canna had a sick plants site ..... they covered sulfur deficiency....

For this site they actually manipulated the medium to cause the defs...

They said the only way they could cause sulfur def was by using water for the medium.... they said in any other medium it was virtually impossible....

They even joked....sulfur deficiency was so difficult to produce a truck driving by had enough sulfur to keep the plants happy....

Boyd Crowder · Sep 12, 2017

ive heard a foliar with magnesium sulfate works good for that
its aka epsom salts

redlaser · Sep 12, 2017

After re reading your post again, it sounds like it's only young or newer leaves. According to one of those charts in Joe's thread that's more likely iron or manganese.
Could be a deficiency or too much of something else like zinc causing uptake issues.

I would make sure there isn't an excess of water(standing water or poor drainage), and that there is enough water on average for the plants. Watering issues can affect uptake of nutrients.
Then I would consider if it's an excess of something or a deficit, then consider environmental situations like low light or temp.

Only so much you can do without seeing the plant and situation, but applying a foliar of whatever sounds logical would give the quicker answer as to if it was correct.

As far as the gypsum, for foliar of the water soluble type is 1-10 lbs per acre, not sure what per gallon that would be. 1/2-1 teaspoon per gal is what I'd do.

@Weird, haven't seen it on this site, but cc does say it on one of his podcasts with Tad of kisorganics. Microbeman started a thread pointing out the podcasts, he's on one, coots on there three times, along with Jeff Lowenfels, David Perron, and Steve Solomon.

kalikush · Sep 17, 2017

Boyd Crowder said:
ive heard a foliar with magnesium sulfate works good for that
its aka epsom salts

Yup, made a foliar with the Epsom salts and sprayed several times.

redlaser said:
After re reading your post again, it sounds like it's only young or newer leaves. According to one of those charts in Joe's thread that's more likely iron or manganese.
Could be a deficiency or too much of something else like zinc causing uptake issues.

I would make sure there isn't an excess of water(standing water or poor drainage), and that there is enough water on average for the plants. Watering issues can affect uptake of nutrients.
Then I would consider if it's an excess of something or a deficit, then consider environmental situations like low light or temp.

Only so much you can do without seeing the plant and situation, but applying a foliar of whatever sounds logical would give the quicker answer as to if it was correct.

As far as the gypsum, for foliar of the water soluble type is 1-10 lbs per acre, not sure what per gallon that would be. 1/2-1 teaspoon per gal is what I'd do.

@Weird, haven't seen it on this site, but cc does say it on one of his podcasts with Tad of kisorganics. Microbeman started a thread pointing out the podcasts, he's on one, coots on there three times, along with Jeff Lowenfels, David Perron, and Steve Solomon.

I guess that still begs the question, would the tea mentioned contain enough to fix the deficiency be it sulfur, iron or maganese?

And that's exactly where I got CC's recipe from, I'll have to find that thread because Tad has some great guests with a ton of knowledge on Organics.

I switched to Organics and really want to stop being concerned with pH but I think this is my issue again and I'm getting locked out. My tap water has a pH of 8. I've started using 4 drops of phosphoric acid per gallon and that brings my pH down to about 6.2 or so.. for a day, then the pH starts rising back to around 7.1 and that's what my soil is testing at.

Coot told me to try aerating my water for 24 hours then check the pH so I'm in the process of doing that now. It has dropped some all ready so hopefully a few more hours will get my water into range. If not, I'll have to upgrade my water storage facilities and monitor the pH until it stabilizes and then use it for watering.

Weird · Sep 17, 2017

if he has you addressing your water as if the PH would effect the uptake he doesn't question the need for sulfur in the medium

if you need to adjust ph your medium is dysfunctional

my preferred method of remediation of dysfunctional soil is ewc teas

good luck

Scrappy-doo · Sep 17, 2017

Maybe i am too high but did I read you're growing organic and using tap water? What are you doing to take out chlorine/chloromines?

When I had my boston op going the tap was ph 8. I was growing organic and using molasses to take out chloromine. Didn't turn out great, I guess molasses every feeding is overkill. About to start up there again and no way in hell I'm using the tap again. I'll haul 10gal up 3 flights of stairs every damn day if I have to.

PH is not relevant in organic gardens, but there's plenty other reasons to avoid the tap water.

redlaser · Sep 17, 2017

I finally got my water tested after having two sets of plants gradually yellow from the bottom up at 80-90 days, after being planted in four gallon pots. New promix both times with vegbloom ferts.

It was ok except for chloride being 396 ppm, way high.

It's from a well that works 50% of the time, in an area of ongoing drought, possibly concentrating the chloride. Luckily there is a creek I can pump from, test on that was good.

kalikush · Sep 17, 2017

Weird said:
if he has you addressing your water as if the PH would effect the uptake he doesn't question the need for sulfur in the medium

if you need to adjust ph your medium is dysfunctional

my preferred method of remediation of dysfunctional soil is ewc teas

good luck

So aerating for about 30 hours, my tap went from 8.1 to 7.0 so that's better but with the added oyster shell flour, that would raise my pH if anything correct? I have pure peat in there (copied Coots Mix) but my soil still doesn't seem to be able to buffer down with the high pH water. How often do you apply ewc teas to dysfunctional soils?

I applied some ewc recently but now am waiting on my worms to make more. I have been using Recharge, which seemed to help initially with the pH but I've had to rig up a passive wicking watering system (10G full of perlite/water) that 2-3G smarties rest on top since I can't always water manually when they need it. The pH in the Rubbermaid goes in at 6.2 but creeps back up after 30 hours or so.

It's weird, my veggies outside get the high pH water straight from the hose and seem to be doing fine with just compost top dressings.

Scrappy-doo said:
Maybe i am too high but did I read you're growing organic and using tap water? What are you doing to take out chlorine/chloromines?

When I had my boston op going the tap was ph 8. I was growing organic and using molasses to take out chloromine. Didn't turn out great, I guess molasses every feeding is overkill. About to start up there again and no way in hell I'm using the tap again. I'll haul 10gal up 3 flights of stairs every damn day if I have to.

PH is not relevant in organic gardens, but there's plenty other reasons to avoid the tap water.

I use tap water but run it through a chlorine/chloromine filter before use. This filter doesn't affect the pH.

I guess I'm stuck then because last run, I paid careful attention to the pH and had decent results. Now I'm trying to let all of that pH stuff go but I'm getting lockout again. I'm not sure what to do :thinking:

kalikush · Sep 17, 2017

redlaser said:
I finally got my water tested after having two sets of plants gradually yellow from the bottom up at 80-90 days, after being planted in four gallon pots. New promix both times with vegbloom ferts.

It was ok except for chloride being 396 ppm, way high.

It's from a well that works 50% of the time, in an area of ongoing drought, possibly concentrating the chloride. Luckily there is a creek I can pump from, test on that was good.

I checked the county water report and it looks ok which is why I only got the chlorine/chloromine filter instead of RODI. I couldn't imagine having to pump from a well or a nearby creek but it would be nice to live on that kind of property.

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Treating Sulfur Deficiency with Alfalfa and Kelp Tea

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