Espoma Fertilzer

25 Jun 2023

I planted a fruit tree. The new leaves were yellow, so I tried to research what was wrong. Either it is a nutrient deficiency or pest/disease. I narrowed assumed it was iron deficiency in sandy soil. After adding iron and waiting few month, the new leaves are green.

I looked at Espoma fertilizer and they have 15 different mixes to get different npk ratios. They are all basically different combinations of feather meal, poultry manure, bone meal, alfalfa meal, green sand, sulfate of potash, sulfate of potash magnesia, and optionally elemental sulfur.

Nitrogen is for leaves, phosphorus is for root and flowers, and potassium is for overall health. Magnesium is for chlorophyll. One Mg surrounded by 4 N atoms. DNA has a phosphate backbone. Potassium is used in ion transport.

Greensand is for iron and potassium.

Calcium is used for cell walls and needs to be balanced with magnesium.

Garden lime is calcium and magnesium. If you have blossom end rot, you should add lime, but too much lime increase pH. High pH prevents nutrient absorption.

Sulfur lowest pH and is used to make amino acids. Blueberries like acidic soil.

Iron helps to make chlorophyll. The pH needs to be acidic for iron to be absorbed, so iron-tone includes sulfur. Soil acidifier is elemental sulfur and gypsum. Gypsum is calcium and sulfur.

If a plant has the proper nutrients it is less likely to be affected by disease.

A lot of the fertilizer components are waste products like feather meal, bone meal, and blood meal.

People used to go to war for guano, but now we spend 1-2% of the world’s energy to pull nitrogen from the air using the Haber process to make fertilizer. Advances in quantum chemistry using quantum computers may lead to a better process. Bacteria near the roots of legumes do this at ambient conditions.

Most the Espoma mixes are the same. I think you will probably due pretty well with just chicken manure (N,P,K), iron-tone (Fe), garden lime (Ca, Mg), and gypsum (S). The Espoma products also have bacteria.

It is hard to grow plants to produce food, but I can at least learn to diagnose and treat.