Agreed: nitrogen is fairly unique. I was reading up on several university produced pdfs from wsu, umn, ucdavis, uw, etc. to make sure the assertions I will be making here are correct, but I also found that nitrogen is easily available to plants in soils of pH 4-8. That's a huge range. (Remember pH 8 is 10,000 times more alkaline than than pH 4!)
Which makes me wonder what "floodgates" would have opened to release so much nitrogen in your anecdote that started this whole conversation. Obviously, there is more than just pH in relation to nutrient availability involved. How things become "unbanked" or "unbound" is more than one simple chemical reaction in many cases. Nitrogen in the form usable by plants leaches easily, so I suspect your ensuing problem was related to the change from unusable (and non-toxic) to usable. All speculation here.
Nitrogen as a bad actor:
I am always a little more hesitant than most to take accepted wisdom as fact without back up. Remember how we used to think it was bad to fertilize your lawn in fall with high nitrogen? It was based on preconceived notions that certain nutrients are predominantly used for certain functions, and therefore applying these nutrients at the "wrong" time of year is inherently bad. what a farce that one turned out to be.
Likewise, with lilies in the fall, do we really know what a 10-10-10 fertilizer will do compared to a 0-10-10? I'd love to see any data on that, but I doubt anyone has scientifically tested it. Of course, there are always lots of variables. Frankly, I think that even in the fall a 10-10-10 will do better, even for lilies, than a 0-10-10. With nitrogen so mobile and soluble in the soil, it"s hard to believe that there would be
excess nitrogen left from summer fertilizing that would carry over into fall, unless one was overfertilizing to begin with (and yet another topic for discussion). Again, compost can go a long way in buffering such a predicament. (Edit:be sure to continue reading to get the whole story...)
If you know of any data that backs up the nitrogen as a bad actor in bulb wintering preparation, I'd love to see that, too. Nitrogen probably is the limiting nutrient for all lilies in the wild
all of their lives. More likely, nitrogen is just not used so much or used differently in the fall, whether it is in the soil at low or medium levels and perhaps even high levels.
Iron:
Homeowners buy a LOT of iron additives for their lawns because of the instant greening. If only they knew that the liming (that they also do) does the opposite!!
Remember, applying lime raises the pH and iron becomes less available.
There is more to iron availability than just pH, too. Late this spring I had over a month of triple normal rainfall. many of my lilies, especially martagons, showed defficiency (or toxicity) symptoms. I didn't want to apply anything to the soil as I know that in waterlogged soils, toxicity is more common. So I tried foliar sprays, and that would give more immediate and verifiable results, too. An Epsom salt spray was first, and I don't think it did anything. Then I bought a solution that contained Fe, Zn, B, Cu, Mg and Mn. The element that was needed was one (or more) of those, perhaps even in conjunction, because noticeable interveinal greening occurred within two days. During the following week soils were still wet (and still raining), the greening had stopped, but still not even near complete. I sprayed again with mixed results - some improved and some had no change. Obviously, the spray was not the total answer, and taking a queue from mother nature (who does not fertilize in doses), I quit my applications, fearing it might make it worse. A little deficiency symptoms are not the end of the world. Plants, and lilies in particular, can deal with it. It's just us humans that have to have everything perfect.
Moby, I'll bet you'll have better results spraying with a multi-trace element product as I did, since all those elements are in extremely low availability in high pH. Mine was called "Liquid Iron +micro nutrients" by Bonide, with the "+micro nutrients" in tiny lettering. If you ever go the barrier route, I would rent a gas powwered trencher.
Roosterlorn said:One question I have (for Rick) is: If there is so little soluable Iron at pH levels above 7, then how is it that Martagons can be so green?
It's the nature of the beast. Martagons (and other plants that can grow in high pH) have adapted their physiological/morphological/chemical growth systems. Why can desert plants grow with so little water, when blue grass will die? Same reasoning. Keep in mind, too, that there are always multiple factors involved, known and unknown.
Getting back to pH, Gypsum
does not change pH. There are always a few discrepancies now and then from paper to paper that I read about multiple subjects, but this conclusion is universal in the scientific community. However, it is certainly not inert, and I would assume a tiny (even scientifically measurable) change is possible, but for any practical purpose, gypsum does not change pH.
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:greengrin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
