North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["kieran or donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Looks like Charlie has the right idea.  Neal Kinsey says zinc is generally
one of the best trace minerals you can add to your soil, about the only
thing it won't help is wheat.  It improves uptake of water, and pumpkins
like LOTS of water.  However, too much zinc can reduce uptake of P, which
will reduce fruiting.  He tells of a case of a farm downwind of a glass
factory that had 5X the lethal level of zinc for many plants, and though the
guy got crops, he always showed P deficiency symptoms.  they added a lot
more P and things did better.
However, Neal says that he's never seen a soil that required more than 30
lbs per acre of zinc, unless lime was applied, which can reduce
availability.  This is elemental Zn, and the sulfate is 1/3 zinc, so you are
talking about 5/3 or 1 and 2/3 lbs of zinc.  That would do, at maximum rate
of application, what, about 1/20th of an acre?  He also says that if your
Ca, P or K are high, it can reduce Zn availability.  That's all for now.
    I'm glad I looked bacause I came across more on dealing with our boron
deficiency.  It was causing "virus" symptoms in our tomatoes, and after
talking to our wonderful co agent about the local "virus' in tobacco that
turned out to be low boron, I remembered that I had decided about 8 yrs ago
that it was boron deficiency, and I spread a box of 20 mule team borax, VERY
thinly, and the "virus" was gone for about 5-6 years.  The soil is probably
the most important thing that we can deal with in terms of producing crops,
seeing as we have little control over temps or rainfall.    Donna