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Boosting Transplants

There is a great new garden up at the National Gardening Association in South Burlington and it's run by a non-profit group called The Root Center.

These young friends got together and decided to raise food for the food shelf. Last year they produced 3000 pounds of food from various gardens in Burlington. This year they've a one-half acre garden at National Gardening Association and are going to produce 25,000 pounds of food, all donated to the food shelf! They are ambitious, growing on newly cultivated clay soil during a rainy summer. They've got lots of plants and lot of work to do. And they need a little help too, especially their plants!

When you plant warm season plants like peppers, tomatoes, and squashes as transplants, they have a small root system. They can't take up water and nutrients very well, so the plants yellow. It's usually a nitrogen deficiency. To help them along, you can boost up their nitrogen level with a quick source of nitrogen. There are a couple of different products you can use.

One is dried blood, which is what it sounds like, and another is cottonseed meal, which is can by an organic source of nitrogen. Just sprinkle these on the soil and they will feed the plants slowly over time.

If you want something that is really a quick release fertilizer, you can put some of this fish emulsion in some water, and then you water your plants with it. You can also use worm poop. Worm poop is like compost tea made from worm castings. Just spritz this on the plants and you'll see in a few days or so, these plants will go from a pale yellow to a bright green as it feeds the leaves.

By Charlie Nardozzi