In article ,
Kay Lancaster wrote:

I think you may have hit at least my problem. During our early drought,
I have used my "Hard Line" an awful lot from my well. The TDS level on
my hard line is 2300. As for fertilizer - only compost / cow manure.
If I use the soft line, salt usage will go up some and also I thought
the soft line would be worse for the plants.


Well, I've gardened with a lot of chewy water over the years... the only
place I've really had trouble was in S. California, and you could taste
the salt in the water.

When you let soil dry out, does it form a white or brown crust on the
soil, like you see in houseplants that haven't been repotted for a
number of years?

If you're not seeing that, I doubt your soil is heavily salinized.
I was sort of expecting to hear something like you used 2x the recommended
concentration of Miracle Gro twice a week. g On the other hand,
some manures can be quite loaded with soluble salts.

I can think of a couple methods to check this... one is to actually send
in a soil sample for analysis, and the other is to do a quick and dirty
bioassay.

Timothy is fairly intolerant of salinized soils, so you could take a couple
pots of soil, leach one with copious amounts of water, and then plant
timothy seed in both. If both pots do about the same, salinization is
probably not the answer. On the other hand, slightly salinized soils
and heat stress could be causing the issues you're seeing. So can
bad heat stress. But edge browning is not typical of a fungal disease
in about any crop I can think of (though I'm not a pathologist, just
a general-purpose botanist). Typical fungal problems show up as rusts,
mildews, scabs, pustules and downright wilts and blights.

Anyhow, were I you, I'd submit a soil sample this fall. Or a plant
sample now to the extension plant path folks.

Kay

I am also not alone, almost everyones gardens and farm crops are not
doing very well around here.

Heat stress has been bad around you, as well as drought, right?

I have not noticed any white or brown crust on the soil. However, it has
been much warmer here than usual, in the mid 90's for most of the summer
and very little rain. I will make some changes next year, gardening is a
learning curve, at least for me. I will probably take soil samples next
spring and make adjustments. Somehow I think it is just too late for
changes at this time. I do like okra and I have heard okra loves hot
weather.....

Hmmmm .... Okra in Michigan, Global Warming ..... hmmmm.
I just might have to take good look at those southern vegies.

Thank You for your help Kay. So I am now thinking it may not be over
watering. Time to put away my Computer, Calculus and Physics books and
get some books on horticulture. I see need to do more reading on keeping
a healthy garden and how to leach a plant.

Where did the original poster go, sooorrry.
Enjoy Life .... Dan

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Email "dan lehr at comcast dot net". Text only or goes to trash automatically.