Browning Top Leaves

[TRA]

I'm a newbie on trying to grow my plants and possibly selected more difficult seeds to start from: Blueberries.

 

Conditions:

The plants are grown in green house. It's supposed to be high summer here (66th latitude north) but for the last week temperatures have been hovering at bearly 10 degrees Celcius. Inside the green house however it's been rather constant 16 degrees even during this cold period.

 

 

Fertilising:

 

For fertilising I've used chicken manure pellets.

 

Water here is without any lime and I did not add any wood ash or dolimite lime.

 

Plants have been growing for two months without any problems. Until last week when brown leaf tips started appearing without any and are now increasing in number. It first appeared in one plant, and now in the second one as well.

 

I have not found any pests, hence it must be either a) the nutrients too cold temperatures c) something else but what?

 

Chicken manure pellets are slow dissolving. Too much?

 

 

Please help!

 

Rgds

 

From

[Rose Gardener]

First thing that sprang to my mind were fertilizer, maybe too much?

 

Tho, I'm probably the least qualified to comment!

 

Check out WantDaChronic's thread too. It might help...

 

~Rose.

 

*** oops. buggered the code.

Edited June 27, 2008 by Rose Gardener

[Stoney]

hey there

 

welcome to the site noice looking plants ya got there tiny bit stretchy but ya get that sometimes in hot houses

 

now first off let us know how much your watering them as they look quiet droopy and im thinking you maybe over watering and also looks like your foliar feeding as well if so what are you feeding them with??? if you are adding any fert to the spray this maybe your issue

 

to me it does look like over fert but could be underlying issues as well. what is your waters PH over there and also what is your run off PH and do you have either an EC tester or a PPM tester???

 

cheerz

[Radic]

yes fresh chicken manure will burn and curl the leaf tips everytime

 

did u apply the chicken manure pallets at the recomended rate?????

chicken manure has too much available N when is fresh

chicken manure has to be 1yr old, or be well composted to be safe

and so the safest way to use chicken manure is to put it thru your composter first

 

store bourght chicken manure palletts can be sus with hormones, vitamines, wormisides and other medications that the checkens get fed

the only way to get rid of all that is to break it down in a compostor

thats why a composter is a must

 

unless it has organic cert

 

imo

i would

 

flush the pot with pure water for 1hr

then

i would repot

 

add some course sand or fine gravel to the mix to improve drainage

 

then i would flush her again

alw

keep a close eye pon her

she is very vonerable to insect attack right now

 

guidance

[TRA]

Water PH is 7 and I've let the water stay at least a day before watering.

No lime at all in the water here.

 

I have not used any leaf fertiliser. The plants in pics were wet just because I sprayed them some minutes before taking the photos. And the chicken manure is composted with added sea weed. Hence should be safe.

 

I repotted the plants yesterday to even bigger pots and gave no water. I learned that the problem might be over watering - and possibly too much chicken manure. So I added no more fertiliser. Let's see what happens...

Edited June 28, 2008 by TRA

[Radic]

over watering

yes ic

well that is a drainage problem

the water must be able to drain away and let the root get oxegin from the air

if the water is not able to drain away the roots will rot

so did you add some corse sand to the repotting mix????

 

if lack of O is the problem then

 

add some h2o2 to some water and pour it in the pot

this will help to save any dammaged roots and get tingz working again

 

irey guidance

[danoz]

i respect dazed n confused experiance but i have a diff opinion

H2O2 hydrogen peroxide is not so good for soil as it is for hydroponics. Some soil microorganisms are more sensitive to H202 than plant roots are so i would not advise it seen as soil MO's are so important in soil culture.

 

Too much water i recon dude the key to growing anything in pots is that everything has to be done often in very small doses. potting mixes do not react strongly with ferts and so ferts are leached therefore use small amounts of fert often . Chicken manure is awesome but its best used to complement a well balanced quality synthetic fertiliser. i know some people are against syn ferts but nitrate is nitrate no matter where it comes from. use chicken manure for it s organic matter, but a syn for K and P. Sea weed concentrates are a scam many many trials have been done to verify their efficacy on many types of plant and many ways to apply it and in 99% of trials it fails to ellicit a response, its a case of good marketing. look on CSIRO website and search it for youself

 

i grew some weed by taking some seedlings deer hunting with me i found a very small spring fed creek cause its so dry here and i planted some a few inches from the moist soil near the bank and others further up. The plants furtherst away grew into amazing adults when i looked at rainfall records on the web these plants got the best part of fuck all water but maybe had wet feet from ground water. while the ones closest the spring lived but were very very sad. Moral of this long boring drawn out story is they call it weed for whateva reason but its fitting cause its tuff. dont over water let the soil completely dry out before u rewater.

i dont mean to sound arrogant the above is only my opinion.

Edited June 28, 2008 by danoz

[Radic]

irey danoz

thanx bro

that is the first i have heard of h2o2 killing microbes

yo

i have noted that the worms dont like h2o2 either

but they do come back it does not kill them

btw

both worms and microbs will leave a water loged soil

[TRA]

Ok... cheers for the advise.

 

I repotted the plants to bigger pots adding even more Hydroton, Leca, clay pellets or fired clay pebbles - what ever those are known for in differents parts of the world - to the soil. Drilled as well more holes to the pots (to the sides of plastic pots). And I have not given the plants any more water.

 

The browing has not advanced.

 

Additionally I gave the plans some leaf fertiliser - or actually it's not a fertiliser but rather a growth enhancer (ethanol, buthanol, triacontanol, urea, usea phosphate, iron gelatin, amino acids etc).

 

Plants seem to like it a lot. New leaves and stems are sprouting out only after three days after spraying.