Well it's in the title... They were growing great but in the last days or so the leaves started wilting. They always showed some yellowing and I thought about nitrogen deficiency so I fed them with slurry but without success... Any tips?
this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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Is "slurry" the same as Fish Emulsion? If not, try watering with Fish Emulsion diluted in, and give it a few days. It's not like concentrated Nitrogen fertilizers which can burn leaves and such. You also just may be at the limit for what containers can do for cucumber plants, which have large and fast growing taproots. Make sure you have really good drainge in there as well, as you may be hitting rootrot if you don't let the soil dry out a bit between waterings.
No I don't think so. In German it's called "Jauche" and is a natural fertilizer that you get when you let plant parts (often nettle or goutweed) sit in water for a few weeks.
I thought the drainage of the soil was good enough. It's potting soil mixed with ~ 10 % perlite for drainage. The pots I use are textile pots with good drainage and I try to wait wi watering until the soil is at least 3 - 5 cm dry.
Maybe you got have a point with your suspicion that the container maybe limiting the plants... Next year I'll definitely plant my cucumber plants in a raised bed.
That probably won't be a good enough fertiliser. My cucumbers needed watering every day in the heat. 10% perlite will aerate the soil but is unlikely to change the drainage very much. Just a few things to think about. Good luck!
Thanks for you thoughts! I didn't know perlite didn't do anything for drainage. I honestly thought aeration and drainage were more or less two sides of the same coin.
It will help, but depending on what's in the organic part of the mix you could put perlite in at 50% and still find it was going anaerobic at the bottom of the pot, particularly with the new peat-free mixes. The best way I've heard it explained is that if you took a bucket of Angel Delight (like American "pudding"), how much grit would you need to add before it drained properly? A lot of these newer retail mixes just wet out into a slurry with zero structure to it. Making a free-draining mix is actually a huge challenge.