For years, I've nuked our raised beds with every kind of fertilizer imaginable. In December or January, I pull last year's tomato plant carcasses out of the bed and then whack it with raw DOW chemical, some LGBTQWERTY organic nutrients and then some PETA-approved, sustainable animal fertilizers. Cumulatively, I use about triple the fertilizer I should.
In January, February and March come the San Diego rains. It's not much for normal humans, but for us, it's a decent amount of water. It turns my fertilizer blitz into a charming tea for the plants, read: Roma tomatoes. This has worked forever. This year, it failed. All we got was monster tomato plants with plenty of fruit that never ripened.
Preparing for my garden in Alabama, I bought this soil test kit.
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| Testing the Nitrogen. |
Here's what I discovered.
Tomatoes want a pH of about 6 and a moderate amount of Nitrogen. They want a lot of Phosphorus and Potassium. I had:
- pH = 8. No surprise, San Diego is known for hard, alkaline water.
- Nitrogen: High. Probably not a problem.
- Phosphorus: High. Excellent!
- Potassium: Low. Oof!
1 comment:
Sounds like you have exactly the opposite problem from what we have. Our soil tends to be on the acid side, and the high precipitation washes out almost all of the soluble nutrients (N, P, K). Plus our growing season is so short that anything that takes more than 70 days to mature is a lost cause.
I understand that either ammonium sulfate or ferrous sulfate (sometimes sold as "copperas") are good soil acidifiers, plus the ferrous sulfate is a good soluble iron supplement.
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