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Entry Date
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Nick Name
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Location
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Thursday, August 07, 2025
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Little Ketchup
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Grittyville, WA
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Entry 214 of 214 |
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I followed John Kempf's advice about reducing free nitrate in the plants and you know what happened? It cured my verticillium issue! Which is great, because it was taking down both the squash and the tomatoes. His formula was to add sulfur, magnesium, and molybdenum. This should work for aphids and other leaf pests, too. Now, the drawback is that I don't think magnesium is great for fruit size so I probably should only apply this later on in the development of the fruit??? I could add just the sulfur and molybdenum though...
All of this is a bit sketchy. Take what you read here with a grain of salt. Even at my best, I don't bat higher than about .500. If true, I wonder if the bugs were spreading the verticillium or if both the bugs and the verticillium were happily thriving side by side, and lowering the free nitrate knocked them out simultaneously but separately. Anyhow, seems to have worked like a charm.
Overall, I probably shot myself in the foot with too much magnesium, nitrogen, and potassium recently... which is too bad because I have some absolute monster tomato blossoms (and these ones are fully pollinated!), the three biggest are on the 6.02 La Rue's, plus a couple stragglers on the 2.38 Elaine and 8.68 Clayton.
The pumpkin/squash gains have been very inconsistent so its hard to tell if the gains increased. A 1,000 lb squash is a stretch of the imagination maybe, but it did some more 15 lb days. I think the availability of water is causing the gains to fluctuate more than any one or two (or three) nutrients.
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