North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Mathew Waehner" <waehner@gmail.com>]

The NC Extension service says "Soil analysis does not measure levels of boron because no reliable tests are available. However, a report may recommend applying boron for crops that are known to respond to it..."

 

I assume that it is relatively easy to determine how much boron is present is a soil sample, so the difficulty must be in determining how much is bioavailable.

 

The link is here; sorry it's a PDF, the relevant part is on the ninth page.  http://www.agr.state.nc.us/agronomi/pdffiles/essnutr.pdf

 

 

On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 11:41 PM, Donna &/or Kieran <holycow@cookeville.com> wrote:

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.

_______________________________________________
nafex mailing list
nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Reproduction of list messages or archives is not allowed.
This includes distribution on other email lists or reproduction on web sites.
Permission to reproduce is NEVER granted, so don't claim you have permission!

**YOU MUST BE SUBSCRIBED TO POST!**
Posts from email addresses that are not subscribed are discarded.
No exceptions.
----
To subscribe or unsubscribe, go to the bottom of this page (also can be used to change other email options):
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/nafex

File attachments are NOT stripped by this list.
TAKE STEPS TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM COMPUTER VIRUSES!
Please do not send binary files.
Use plain text ONLY in emails!

NAFEX web site:   http://www.nafex.org/