Is it possible to overdose organic ferts?

froufrou

Everything I've read says you can't burn the roots with organic ferts. Do they really mean it's very difficult, or just impossible?

Is it possible to overdose on organic ferts? Or does extra decomposition not hurt the plant or outcompete it for some resource or another.

Advertisement

froufrou

Hmm looks like it is possible.

http://www.improve-your-garden-soil...lizer-burn.html

Fletch

Short answer... Hell Yes! and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar or a fool.

In fact, being in a confined environment like a pot makes root burn from fertilizer even more likely if misapplied, no matter what the source. Also, as you mentioned, organic source fertilizer adds the complication that the decomposition process first uses nitrogen from your soil before the organic matter breaks down into a form readily absorbed by your trees. So in effect over fertilizing could first starve and then burn your trees, a very nasty double whammy.

__________________
Advice worth every penny you paid for it.

Regards
Fletch

froufrou

Thanks for the info, I'll try to be careful then. A little slower growth is better than dying on me.

PatArizona

G'day frou...

Whatever product you are using...ALWAYS read the label...follow the label instructions. If you are using a home brew, get instructions from whomsoever turned you on to the brew.

If you brewed it your self, all bets are off...you may lose a few plants while you learn figure out how to use it.

Good luck...

Pat

__________________
BONSAI isn't about surviving in a storm, rather, how to dance in the rain.
THE ONLY WAY: Always remember, and don't ever forget, that whatever you read here is not cast in concrete... the intent of any advice is to help. In no way should you feel that I’m saying that my way is the only way…heaven forbid! I've seen far too much of the "my way or the highway" attitude in bonsai as well as in other areas of life.

bonsaikc

Perhaps you should ease up on the emphasis. Maybe you could tell us about your fertilizer regimen and show us your results.

The correct answer to this question is, "It depends." It depends on the tree, the soil, the fertilizer, and many other things.

If I were to take uncomposted manure and put it two inches thick on each pot, yes, it will rob nitrogen and probably hurt my roots. But the odds of my doing that are nil.

Question 1: What "organic" fertilizer do you mean? Is it commercially produced?
Question 2: How are you applying it?
Question 3: What is your soil made of?
Question 4: What species are you growing?

This is such a general question that your answer makes little sense, Fletch.

For instance, here is my fertilizer regimen for almost all my trees.

I use a soil mix from a recipe I got from Boon, so there are no organic components to the soil.

I make my fertilizer cakes from the following ingredients, and they are not completely organic:
Bone meal
Blood meal
Cottonseed meal
Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly before moving on.
Then I mix together fish emulsion and full strength liquid fertilizer like Peters 20-20-20 as a mixing solution, and add just a bit of liquid sevin to kill maggots.

Then, adding just a little liquid at a time, I mix with a trowel until the mess is the consistency of oatmeal. I pour it out on aluminum foil (a discarded cookie sheet is good for this, lined with foil) and use my trowel to get it abot a half inch thick. Then I score it with the edge of the trowel and let it sit. In the sunshine, it will dry fairly quickly, and then I separate them and turn them over to dry more fully.

Using the soil mix I do, on say, a six inch pot, I will place four of these cakes. I may even add just a smidge of osmocote across the soil, depending on how hard I want to push the growth. These cakes last about 4 weeks, after which they are ineffectual. So in two weeks, I add four more cakes between the first four. Two weeks later, I take off the first four cakes and replace them with four more.

For a tree in development, especially one that needs a lot of new growth, sometimes the entire pot surface will be covered with cakes. I have yet to burn roots or harm a tree.

The real question is why Americans are so afraid to fertilize their trees. We give just a little here and there, waiting until the foliage is yellow to give some more. This does not keep our trees small. It keeps them weak.

Michael Persiano is where the recipe came from, and it's in Bonsai Today issue 47. He calls it superfeeding and it's quite controversial in the U.S. In Japan it's called feeding.

So generally, the answer to the question should be, it's quite difficult to do so if you are following common horticultural principles with your bonsai.

__________________
Chris Johnston
"She was a critic, and lots fo critics who aren't called to do what they write about grow jealous and mean and small in their disappointment." - Stephen King, Duma Key
Sashi-no-eda.blogspot.com

froufrou

Appreciate the information everybody.

In the superfeeding recipe, it mentions using "roots with iron" and "roots without iron".

Where can I get this fert? Typing in roots in Google, as you can expect, doesn't help me find the product.

Can I use normal rooting powder or solution as a normal root fertilizer/stimulant instead?

Fletch

Point taken KC. I guess this topic just hit a nerve . Several years back I tried some 'All Organic' feed that a local nurseryman swore would never burn my trees, no matter what. I happily took the stuff home (coarse granules that looked sort of like large rodent droppings...) applied it as directed by the nurseryman (the packaging wasn't very informative as I recall) and left my trees in the care of my daughters while I was out of town on contract for a number of months that summer. Within the first few weeks I had a panicked phone call from my eldest saying several of my older trees had just sort of shrivelled up and died 'over night'. As the story finally came out, the girls had tried to be helpful by giving everything an extra dose of fertilizer and shortly thereafter the trees started dropping leaves and shrivelling up. By that time the damage was done and even after they scraped what was left of the fertilizer from the soil and soaked the pots to try to rinse out as much as they could several of my trees continued to get worse and eventually died before I was back home for a break.

Since that incident, I've been very leary about using organic fertilizer at all and even tend to underfeed rather than risk damage to my remaining trees.

__________________
Advice worth every penny you paid for it.

Regards
Fletch

bonsaikc

You know, I have looked for this "roots" but can't seem to find it either. I gave up years ago. The recipe is very well balanced without it.

Another option is to buy rapeseed cakes (they are available in the U.S. from Joshua Roth) but I use so many that it's cost prohibitive.

__________________
Chris Johnston
"She was a critic, and lots fo critics who aren't called to do what they write about grow jealous and mean and small in their disappointment." - Stephen King, Duma Key
Sashi-no-eda.blogspot.com