needrain said:

@sooby
Not much available locally. I really wanted the liquid iron, but one place had some chelated iron. That didn't work when I lived in a place where many plants needed iron. As I understood it (a long time ago) the iron was actually in the soil, but other structures tied it up so it was unavailable to plants. When you used iron chelate, it promptly was bound up and didn't do what was needed. Liquid iron, on the other hand, was absorbed via the foliage and the effect could be seen overnight. There was another product today called 'Ironite', but it was only 1% iron and there were no instructions for using it other than as a hose-end application plus it had a LOT of other minerals included. I ended up buying iron pills. How much water to a crushed pill? For a spray or drip application to the foliage?

As far as I remember, and this was about fifteen years ago, I crushed one pill in a regular glass of water and poured it over a section of the leaves. Didn't do all of them because I wanted to see if there was a difference after the application. It didn't dissolve very well but it worked.

Yes, iron is usually in the soil in adequate quantities but gets tied up by a higher soil pH. That's why in that situation you generally use chelated iron rather than iron sulphate for a soil application because otherwise exactly the same thing will likely happen. Chelation is supposed to prevent that, that's the purpose of using iron chelate rather than iron sulphate. That's also why I suggested above that if the plant was in the garden then you could water once a week with a teaspoon of vinegar in a litre of water because that temporarily lowers the soil pH making the iron (and other micronutrients) available to the plants again.

However, a plant in a pot will only have access to whatever elements you have included in the medium/fertilizer, so the vinegar treatment won't necessarily work there if you haven't added sufficient iron for fussy plants, If significant lime has been added to the pot but no iron then you have a double whammy.

I'm assuming the human iron pills you got are iron sulphate. For a soil application that would be tied up by soil pH in the garden whereas iron chelate should still work. Iron sulphate might work in the pot if there is nothing antagonistic in it like high lime. It's better to pour the dissolved pill and water on the foliage for the test just in case because that by-passes the tying-up issue..

Iron chelate is what is usually sold for plants exactly because it should avoid the soil pH problem. It works here where sensitive plants like calibrachoa get iron chlorosis in potting mix most likely due to the high pH of the irrigation water. They go almost white at the branch tips and an application of chelated iron fixes it very quickly.

Sooby,
I have used human iron pills crushed in water on two different plantings. One is a rugosa rose that is near a roof valley where the water comes off the roof heavily. I think the soil gets nutrients washed away. The other are Oriental poppies that sometimes come up in the spring looking very yellow with iron deficiency. I have crushed the pills, and put them in a watering can and watered all around the plant. This has greened them up. If I remember correctly, I believe the dosage used was one pill crushed and put in a 2 gallon watering can of water. Would it be better to water directly over the foliage?

You used it much more diluted than I did, Valerie! But it worked, which is the main thing and better to go with the lowest dose that works. Pouring it on the foliage may give a slightly quicker result but it sounds like you don't have a soil pH that interferes too much, or else your soil is just iron deficient (rarer). The main idea for pouring it on part of the foliage for a test is that you can see if it did anything, because the part you "ironed" should be greener than the rest of the plant in a couple of days. Once that's been determined to be the problem then other ways can be figured out to deal with it. Rugosa roses do prefer an acidic soil, for sure. If it's a pH issue then the teaspoon of vinegar in a litre of water poured on the soil around the plant should do the same thing by releasing the iron that's already there. Do you get any interveinal chlorosis in daylilies there?

No, the daylilies are fine. I have extremely sandy soil. When I plant my daylilies, I dig a very large hole and used my own compost liberally in the hole, with some well rotted manure, mixed with the soil. That gives them a good boost. The Oriental lilies were planted 24 years ago now, and they were basically planted in the worst imaginable soil. It was pit run from when our house was built. So basically sand with various sized stones mixed in. They thrived! Except every now and then they get interveinal chlorosis. Not every year. The rose under the rain from the roof valley was probably planted about 20 years ago, in slightly better soil than the poppies, since it was a prepared flower bed. It get chlorosis every year. The only other plant that shows iron deficiency is one pulmonaria cultivar. The other pulmonarias are fine.

That is interesting about pouring it on the foliage and seeing it green up. I am going to try that with the rose this year as an experiment.

I get interveinal chlorosis here in daylilies, worst when the soil is cool in spring. I had the leaves tested and it was actually manganese deficiency rather than iron, but the remedy is the same - lower the soil pH. It sounds like your soil pH may be lower than here, do you know what it is?

No, I don't know what it is. I am in a pine forest so I always thought it would be acidic.

Milorganite is sold here in Milwaukee at Stein's Garden Centers. Usually around $7/bag. I don't know if they ship and how pricey that would be. Comes in 36# bags by the looks of it.

http://www.shopsteins.com/expl...

I've been doing a lot of ironing. I'm about ready to go to wash and wear and forget ironing altogether!

I got some iron pills, crushed them as fine as I could and then watered the seedling. It wasn't magic, but I ended up with concentrated green spots on the leaves. I guessed, whether right or wrong, that was where a little iron granules stuck and then got absorbed. I hope you can see it in the photo.


But that's as far as it got. Then when I was at the feedstore picking up cowfeed, it turned out they had one bottle of liquid iron on clearance because they aren't going to carry it anymore. I got that and mixed a solution carefully following directions and did a foliage spray. No help again. After a day or two I took the original solution I had made using the iron pills and drenched the soil with it. I can't tell if any of that is doing anything. The plant is getting greener, but so are some of the few that show yellow foliage that I'm not treating. I'm inclined to credit warmer temperatures. Something isn't right, but now the seedling is growing a scape, so it's managing the deficiency better than I am. It has a long way to go to reach what I'd consider a normal color, but at least the paleness coming out on new growth is uniform and not interveinal. Any suggestions? Anyone? @sooby Sue? I haven't, at this point, done anything to the little almost white seedling.

The three nutrient deficiencies that typically cause interveinal chlorosis (which is still there on the older leaves) would be magnesium, iron or manganese. You've already tried magnesium (Epsom salts) which would usually affect the older leaves before the younger, and iron which is the other way around. That would leave manganese which would be harder to test for unless you can get some in a small quantity from a drug store or a garden centre that carries unusual items, or a hydroponics store.

There was some response to the iron, though, judging by the green spots.

Can you try planting it in the ground to see what happens? As I mentioned before, I know someone who had a daylily seedling that stubbornly stayed yellowish even into "adulthood" while all around it were normal. I'd be inclined to put it down to some problem within the plant that causes it to be unable to have normal green leaves. Whether that's a problem with chlorophyll production, maybe related to an inability to utilize certain nutrients, I have no idea.

I could plant it in the ground, but I'd rather solve the puzzle. It's something that is cropping up growing them in pots. I consolidated seven big containers of registered plants. The one seen on the left and the new acquisition in the smaller pot in front weren't part of the group, but there were seven behind and to the right of the one still showing a lot of yellow foliage that looked like they were suffering from chlorosis. Most of them are getting greener every day. Some started greening up earlier and are a normal shade. I may have to learn to accept it, but I'd rather figure out a solution. By far the majority of the daylilies, including the seedlings, stay green. I may put the seedling in the ground after it blooms if it still is yellow and see what happens.

I was thinking putting it in the ground would help solve the puzzle, because if it turns a more normal green it suggests there's something lacking in the pots that it needs more of than the others. Sometimes adding a nutrient doesn't have an immediate effect, although iron on the foliage should do if that's the problem. I don't remember, but do you spray for rust?

No, I've never had rust that I could detect. I have sprayed for aphids and thrips this year. Which I don't think worked very well at eliminating them. I don't use detergent on daylilies after my experience using it last year. I used both it and a sticker and I think the detergent had the same effect as the sticker. And neither one of those did a good job at getting rid of the aphids either. The lady bugs are coming out in force now, so they'll probably do the best job. But it wasn't only the yellow ones that got the bug spray. The green foliaged plants were sprayed as well. I agree there's something lacking, but on some I've changed out the potting medium completely and they didn't improve.

I was thinking if you sprayed for rust you might have some Mancozeb - it contains manganese. How are you supplying the micronutrients in general?

I fertilize with water soluble Miracle Gro fairly often throughout the growing season. I use alfalfa pellets when they get new soil via repotting or just adding soil. I use granular 13-13-13 on occasion and inconsistently - mostly if something just isn't looking quite right to me. I have now acquired a bag of Milorganite and I will probably use that more consistently because it says it doesn't burn the plants.

For potting the big containers, the mix is usually half potting soil and half pine bark (the smallest I can obtain), but depending on what is laying around I may throw in some raw or dry material that I've chopped up or some coffee grounds but these would be a small, but variable, percentage of what is mixed up in the buggy. It's here that I add alfalfa pellets and usually some granular fertilize also to compensate for it being half pine bark. Those additions to the potting soil and bark mix are a bit variable, as is the pine bark (I hate when there appears to be a high amount of ground up junk lumber which is obviously that - I'm all for recycling but I'm paying for pine bark). This works fine for the plants nearly all the time. Probably less than 10% of the plants get the yellowing aspect. And, so far, it's only appeared in the daylilies (I do end up using the mix for other plants - especially if they require a large container). I kind of work on the assumption that a lot runs out the bottom of a container when it's watered and I catch some of that and will recycle that water on other plants. Mostly the plants grow well. Even the yellow grow, they just look deprived . I'm attentive about keeping the containers watered, too.

I did get more yellowing once when I was using some free tree trimmings given to me from when the power lines had the trees cut back. Those planted in that mix responded to the addition of some nitrogen and that material rotted rapidly. All those pots have had to have replenished soil added under and around because of the rapid shrinkage. But I think only one or two of the large pots with yellowing foliage started out with that mix. Some pre-date that usage. Anyway, I think the effect of using the greener ground up tree material is past now. Even then, not all the daylilies had the yellowing.

I might have asked this before, but does the 13-13-13 have micros, and do you add any limestone?

No and no.

I know Miracle Gro isn't sufficient for micros, or at least iron, under some circumstances because I've had problems with deficiencies in susceptible container plants here, especially in cool wet weather. Plants in pots are totally dependent on what you supply, whereas plants in the ground can find their own nutrients assuming a reasonably balanced soil. With the container mixture it's hard to say what might be missing.

Might you be interested in going the tissue analysis route to find out what the plants have been able to get from the mix? I It looks like this costs $18 from Texas A & M's lab. I'm thinking item 10 although for some reason it omits zinc, you might want to ask if they can add that:

http://soiltesting.tamu.edu/fi...

The probem may only affect some daylilies because they don't all seem to have the same issues with pH and micronutrients. If you check out this image in the AHS Daylily Dictionary, these daylilies were both growing in an area of a garden where the soil pH was relatively high, but only the plant on the left (and a few others) showed interveinal chlorosis while others like the one on the right were a good green. The tissue test determined the chlorotic ones were deficient in manganese because of the soil pH being too high for those specific cultivars. There was plenty of manganese in the soil, but certain cultivars couldn't use it. I see the same thing here and I also had a leaf tissue analysis done with the same result.

http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_d...

I don't know if it can be of any help, the italian grower/hybridizer who sold me my DLs said tha for iron it should take 10 days to show the effect. And in general that DLs absorb nutrients slower than other plants. I don't know if he's right or not, I suppose after many years and many different plants he grows he should know what to say..

I wonder if TAMU has some testing available for ornamentals rather than forage? I think I may check into that.

The 2nd link suggested a cause might be 'over fertilization'. I have, in fact, wondered about that. Especially on the seedlings. But it's true, a container plant pretty much only gets what its given and its hard to know how fast what is given is used up. Especially when they get water as often as the daylilies do. It's not the same as being grown in the ground. There are both positive and negative aspects to container growing.

Donald, the form says plant/tissue samples down the list so I don't think it's confined to forage, but no harm in asking.

Sabrina, it only takes a couple of days or so for a leaf application of iron to show an effect, if it's going to. Chelated iron applied to the soil would quite likely take longer.