Monday, August 3, 2015

Watching the Vine Tips to Figure Out What the Plant Needs

Over the last week or so I noticed the the vine tips on the 282 Scherber plant hasn't had much mass.  Often times that indicates that the pumpkin is sucking the life out of the plant (which is a good thing) as the plant starts putting all of its energy to growing the pumpkin.  In this case, the pumpkin is only the size of a football because of the late pollination, so I knew that wasn't the case.  In most cases I would have given the plant some nitrogen earlier, but I didn't want to do anything that could cause the fruit to abort so I've held of on giving it nitrogen. 

Today I have it a foliar spray of RAW Nitrogen with some liquid fish fertilizer.  The RAW Nitrogen will give the plant an instant nitrogen fix, while the nitrogen in the fish will be a slower release and also give the plant some phosphorus and potassium as well as micro minerals along with it.  In the next couple of days I should see the vine tips on that plant perk up some and see more leaf mass in the head of the vine tip.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I was behind as well only pollinating a few days before you on one of my plants. I took a gamble and terminated all growing ends. The plants big and healthy so I figured why not. Maybe I can make up for some lost time. It's a learning year for me anyway so I don't have much to lose :)