Magnesium deficiency... hmmmm

[BonniePepperRob]

I find this "food for thought" if u'll pardon the pun Been on this site less than a week now and already its paying off...

I'm in Perth, Western Australia... winter has arrived. For us here that means rainy crappy days, with the occasional frost in the morning although we haven't had any yet.

My two large orange habs live together in a 30cm by 70cm planter. I keep em trimmed to about 18inchs by say 2 foot wide. Each is just LOADED with habs...one has about 70 pods and the other about 130 pods! All pods are unusually small (especially on the 130 pod plant), but are hotter than any pods they've put out before.

Recently, after each plant started pumping out this huge number of lil pods, pod growth slowed dramatically, the leaves went a lil yellow, leaf tips browned and many leaves fell off, especially on the 130 pod plant. I put this down to the sudden arrival of winter as it coincided nicely (we had a long gloriously warm autumn).

Well since i've been on this site i realise they both have magnesium deficiency! It had never occured to me that this would be the case as i give em tomato food, and seasol every two weeks! and fish poo once a month! Also the leaves on these two plants are tiny compared to pics of other orange habs i've seen on this site. With the exception of one plant, all my other chilli's seem ok.

Just goes to show that regular feeding with commercial products are sometimes not enough when ur plants decide to pump out sh%t load of chilli's. U need to tailor ur ferts to ur plant. I've since bought mag sulphate and have applied it liberally. Am very keen to see what happens next.

Will the leaves green up? will the pods get bigger? will the new leaves be big or small? hmmmm very interesting...

I'll try to post some pics if i can work out how to do it...

Rob

 

[BonniePepperRob]

just took some pics n tried to attach em, but it says below in my posting rules that i "may not" post attachments... does anyone know why this is?

 

[caroltlw]

No one can post pics to the board - gotta use a photo hosting site (I use photobucket) and you can link to them with img tags.

 

[Blister]

I've been doing a lot of reading about plants and plant nutrition. There's a whole lot of research out there and I've really learned a lot (this is my first year growing anything). Yes, sometimes commercial products don't have all you need. There's a whack of other helpful nutes that aren't in many of the standard commercial fertilizers. Supplementary B1, for example, is not necessary, but is a very helpful vitamin that's found in Seaweed/Kelp products. It's also found in products like Superthrive.


You can also use Epsom Salts (Mag. sulfate) as a foliar spray to get a quick shot of green. Just give them a mist either early morning or later in the evening.

 

[RichardK]

New Growth should show signs of greening up, however the older growth may or may not recover, so dont take this as a sign that it wasnt working, and do not give them more epsom salt if the new growth is showing signs of recovery!

Good luck!