I am getting tons of large leaves, but the fruit on the ends are very tiny. Particularly radishes and carrots.
Am I having a fertalizer problem or have I not given them time to grow yet. All planted on May 22, 03.
I'm new to gardening. First time.
Gene
in article snipped-for-privacy@mb-m10.aol.com, GENEVIG at snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote on 7/16/03 3:00 PM:
You should tell us what kind of fruit is being discussed.
Many fruit trees benefit from fruit thinning. You can get a greater useful weight of sweeter fruit. My peaches, in particular, benefit from such thinning.
Bill
Firstly these are not fruits. Secondly you may have an imbalance of fertilizer--these root crops need a fertilizer with emphasis on the PK and less on the N--too much nitrogen can cause lush green growth , sometimes at the expense of the harvest. A basic formula like 5-10-10 is more suitable for this type of crop--if you were growing lettuce whare the foliage is the crop then a higer ratio of nitrogen would be desirable. Youn have not said what fertilizer you have used so this may not be the answer but since the top growth is good stay away fron adding any more nitrogen and see if time will encourage the root crops to develoip.
Usually small size in a root crop is due to the plants being too crowded. If the tops are vigorous the roots need room to expand. Carrots take a while to develop so time may be a factor, however unless you are growing winter radishes, they should be full size, Potassium (K) is a major nutrient for root crops, but overcrowding is far and way the major cause of stunted roots in beets carrots, radishes, turnips etc.
really? I know you are one of the most knowledgeable posters here, but from my irregular readings I was under the impression that K matters with fruits and P with roots (and N with greens). Indeed the USDA nutrient profiles show that P is higher in roots (and potatoes, and seeds, like nuts or corn) and K in fruits (including of course tomatoes and squashes). I appreciate that whole plant health is more than just the nutrients the edible part concentrates, but after all it is the crop that we take away.
When I started growing in my Plymouth garden, I hadn't done a soil test but immediately realized something was wrong. My root crops were horrible; my corn fell over. Tomatoes, peppers, and squash grew fine.
In the fall, I had a soil test done. My native soil was high in P and abysmally low in K. While P might be important for new root growth (and thus found in abundance in 'transplant fertilizer' formulations, K is essential for strength and expansion of roots.
FWIW, the quick summary on hgtv's website pretty much agrees with what I have learned:
'Nitrogen is essential for leaf growth and green leaves. Phosphorus is good for flower and fruit development, and potassium helps to maintain strong roots.'
A Canadian website had a more thorough summary:
Nitrogen: Promotes leafy growth and green colour; organic sources are blood meal, fishmeal
Phosphorus: Aids root health and seed development; organic sources are bone meal, rock phosphates
Potassium: For strong stems and roots, proper water balance and disease resistance; organic sources are kelp and wood ash.
OK, so P and K are both "structural". That much I knew because I knew that wood chips typically have the same (about 200 ppm) P and K content. But on my own I had also computed that the K taken out of a given bed every year was close to the K supply in that bed. Here goes:
assume a bed, 1ftX4ftX20ft=80 cft (some 7 Tons of soil, assuming good organic content). at 100ppm (fertile soil), that is 700 g of K. One Big Boy tomato is 0.7 g K. Harvesting 1000 tomatoes from that bed will completely exhaust the supply (that could be 3 or 4 summers). Ultimately I figured that N (for greens) and K (for fruits) need to be resupplied continuously (I do it every two years). Not so for P, since the P content of crops is much lower (or rather, my underground crops are a lot less than my aerial crops).
Be sure to make allowance for K lost to leaching in sandy soils. It isn't 'bankable' like P, and it may not leave only in your crops. That's one reason that greensand is worth using source of K; it releases so very slowly that it's not easily available to crops but is almost like having K in the bank.
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