In article ,
"Bob Petruska" wrote:

"Amos Nomore" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Bob Petruska" wrote:

This is the second year that it looks like my vegetable and flower garden
are doomed. I thought it was only the luck of last year when I had crop
failure and not to happen this year but I was wrong.

The problem if that my transplants which look very good were planted 4
weeks
ago in Pennsylvania. My soil was tested and came back with very
acceptable
results for all ranges.

The top leaf photo is of my parsely in a container, there is purple
fringing
of the leaves and the parsely is growing extremely slow.

The nice dark geen plant leaves, especially my Marigolds, are now turning
a
very pale green and with what looks like a splotchy appearance see the
bottom leaf in the attached photo link. They look sick now and not that
nice healthy green leaf. The top leaves look better but not the nice
dark
geen leaf as when they were first transplanted. I have used 10-10-10
fertilizer when I tilled my garden 4 weeks ago and I also included
Ironrite
to make sure that there was enough iron in the soil.


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1132/...fd3d82af_o.jpg

All my vegetables and flowers seem to grown very slow and stay small.
The
same Lady Luck marigolds would always grow 20-24 inches tall and just as
wide for 20 years. Last year they only grew 10 inches tall and 6 inches
wide. This year looks like the same is going to happen. My tomato
plants
grow small and not bushy at all. I tilled in about 10% mushroom soil
this
year hoping for a boost. The parsley is in a container with just fresh
potting soil (no mushroom soil), a little 10-10-10, ironite and a little
limestone.

I'm stumped!


Any suggestions?

Dang. Looks like fertilizer burn. I suspect your soil is overloaded
with soluble salts which are osmotically restricting water uptake in
your plants and possibly directly damaging roots. If the soil drains
well, heavy watering will flush out some of these salts and your plants
may improve. If the soil is heavy and drains poorly, heavy watering may
make the plants even sicker. It's easy to run into trouble amending
soil with chemical fertilizers. I would avoid them and use organics
next year. Good luck!


The parsley is in a container so I can flush the soil very easily. This may
be a very good test as if the flush restores the parsley then the salt over
load would look like the cause. I only fertilized very lightly about 4
weeks ago. Rain here in northeast PA has been low, about once a week and
very light. I only water once a week when plants start to droop.

Do you feel that it would be ok to transplant the parsely into new soil in
the container and still be within the growing season or will the
transplanting just stunt the regrow try?

I would try flushing the parsley pot with two or three times the volume
of the pot with plain water, and see if that helps.