Sorry guys I originally posted this in the photo section.

[marclupish]

Soil Test
Hey, guys and gals I just finished a soil test and the results are not so good, i think. PH level are good it's in the neutral range and from what I have read it seems to be ok.

NPK on the other hand.....almost non existent. We just started fertilizing this spring and i'm sure that is contributing to the problem.

Does anyone have a really good fertilizer that they use? can you recommend one to me? Keep in mind as I said before they are all almost non existent. Should I use blood meal (I heard that works well)

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks everyone

Marc

[lucky1]

Hi Marc,
NPK virtually non existent? strange, even with a neutral pH.
Neutral is 7, and most palms prefer a little more acidic than that, say, no more than 6.2 (except for Brahea which like it alkaline).

Anyway, instead of pointing you towards the very expensive palm fertilizers which are basically the only good fertilizers left on the market, why not start with dilute applications of any balanced fertilizer of the correct ratio.

Palms like a ratio of 3-1-4 + mg + mn (manganese trace element is very important for palms, as is P...potassium).

So a 12-4-16 etc would be fine; so wood a 6-2-8 (same ratio).

If you want to go with palm-specific fert, many people like the Carl Pool's palm fertilizer avail over the internet.

Barb

[marclupish]

Hey barb, thanks for the reply. I picked up fertilizer spikes that have a ratio of 12-6-12 with manganese. I wanted to go with a slow release and i figured that the spikes would work well.....any thoughts on that??


Thanks
Marc

[lucky1]

Before I bought my palm special fert, I found some palm spikes in a drawer and used them on one of my 3 Triangles.
They work well, although I believe the newer Lutz spikes are preferred because they have manganese, which a lot of people confuse with magnesium (epsom salts).

But anything's better than near-zilch N P K

Barb