March 17, 2013

Garden Update- Tomato troubles, Phosphorus deficiency

March 17, 2013

Mellissa over at Something Like Life is a great friend, we chit chat all the time, and we usually end up talking about food or gardening. It’s a non stop circle with us it seems.  She just recently put her seedling plants outside, transferred her tomatoes but there was something noticed when she did it.

 The stems and leaves to the plants were purple or turning purple. I’ve never seen this, but I pulled my books out and found the answer surprisingly an easy fix.

Pictures courtesy  of Mellissa at Something Like Life. 

   Phosphorus deficiency happens when the soil is too cool early in the season. Mellissa mentioned she had just brought them from inside where the soil would probably be cool unless directly heated. Without direct sunlight nothing warms the soils. There’s also probably a high amount of iron in the soil which can be corrected with lime ( there is organic gardening lime) . It can be either soil OR the water is high iron so you should test it. Another easy fix is to plant Valerian which will stimulate phosphorus activity in the soil. 
 As for the cool soil, you can put black mulch cloth down to keep the heat within the soil if the plants are too big to keep inside util the weather warms up. 
 The best thing about this is, the purple should go away. Once the plant is outside long enough the color should fade, if it does not then the soil content is off, you should really test it. Being purple won’t harm the seedling and it has been seen in older plants so you should test the soil to make sure the plant is getting enough nutrients it needs, again the purple will fade it’s not totally harmful to the plant.

Picture courtesy of Mellissa at Something Like Life. 

Both are easy to fix and the plant should correct itself so there is no real worry. Good news right? Let’s hope Mellissa’s Tomatoes grow! You can check out all her garden posts here, and catch up on the tomatoes health. 

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