Am I using too much nitrogen?

[Errol]

Hi there Luches,

Just a followup from the help you gave me some time ago. I've persevered (well, it wasn't hard ) with the changes you recommended to my formula and all is going very well indeed. I've noticed particularly that root crops (carrots and beetroot) seem to be developing earlier than usual. Strawberries are very flavoursome despite a lower EC (1.8) than in previous years. Tomatoes are colouring nicely and I'll be interested to see whether they have a good flavour too or whether I'll need to give them an occasional individual drink at a higher EC. All other crops (cucumber, beans, leeks, capsicum and silver beet are doing exceptionally well. We've had a warm summer in Tasmania this year and I guess that's helping.

Hope is all well in your neck of the woods.

Cheers,

Errol

[Luches]

Glad to hear you doing fine with your culture (and with my recommendations) - that's for sure. Also good to have some clearly positive feedback for a change. I am actually growing tomatoes with this very same concentration of 1.8. And other setups with so called semi domesticated peppers and some local capsicum frutescens between 1.4 and 1.6 only. They're all doing very fine. My various seed amaranths seem to be happy with high potassium formulas as well.

I guess it wouldn't do any harm to feed your (or my) toms at a bit higher EC, but the question is indeed if they'd do better or taste better at that end of the equation. From my understanding it's (as mentioned earlier) genetics in combination with weather conditions, temperatures etc., that does 80% of the taste. To really be sure if there would be a difference, you'd have to run two very same setups near each other with different nutrient strengths. And then again I guess you'd need to go higher with one group, as I suspect there would not be much difference between 1.8 and 2.0 EC anyways, if ever there would be any.

Sorry for the delayed reply, I've been off duty for a while here, because of some rather pointless beefs