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nafex - Re: [NAFEX] Calcium tying up boron???

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  • From: "Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Calcium tying up boron???
  • Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 22:41:02 -0600

Yes, raising pH and organic matter make boron less available. We did it, and it sure did a job on things that needed boron. Mind you, southern clays are seriously deficient in boron to start with, but when we got done, beets would not grow, period. We also managed to make Mn less available by doing both of those things PLUS God provided some heavy rainfall. I couldn't stop the rain, wouldn't have wanted to reduce the organic matter even if I could have, so only the pH was under my control. I'd add sulfur and the yellow stripes on the corn leaves would disappear within days. I rescued the corn like this every summer for about 5 years. Unfortunately the effects of severe boron deficiency can't be easily gotten rid of; stunted warped growth that looks like a virus infection, cracked apples. Neil Kinsey in his book HANDS ON AGRONOMY says that a foliar boron spray greens up crops so fast that a farmer can quit anywhere in the field, go home for lunch, and the line between green plants and yellow plants will tell him right where he quit. Their level of deficiency was obviously minor compared to ours. Donna

P.S. Though calcium can prevent Boron uptake, boron controls calcium transport in the plant. Without boron, the plants show Ca deficiency symptoms. Since Calcium slows the spread of viruses, I have bugged some rose nuts to throw borax around wild multifloras infected with rosette virus to see if it stops the "virus" or maybe a real virus. It looks like a very exaggerated version of what happened to my tomato plants in the bad old low boron days.




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