Osmocote

[Simple Gifts Farm]

At 10:58 PM 12/20/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Arisaema-L'rs
>
>Several pots of tubers  Pots without Osmocote seem to be OK.
>
>I know that fertilizer can burn plants, especially young ones, but thought
>that a slow release form like Osmocote should be safe.

As previous postings have mentioned, slow release fertilizers do work on
different mechanisms - water content, temperature levels etc.
Our experience here in the nursery is that we'll get burning with Osmocote
but not with Nutricote.  Perhaps its the dust in the osmocote but whatever
the reason we no longer use this particular product having burned everything
from perennials to fuschia baskets with it over two seasons (the first
season we thought it was something we did).  We have not experienced a
burning with the Nutricote.  The Osmocote sales people of course tell us
that burning is impossible but the plants sure didn't agree. Burning is not
uniform and not consistent across any plant population within the greenhouse
or nursery so we were unable to track the particular combination although I
suspect a reduction in available soil water may have been one cause.  We
didn't feel compelled to do the basic research and simply switched products.
We have not had a problem with the nutricote in the past ten years.
Doug.
Douglas Green
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Simple Gifts Farm Greenhouses
Athens, Ontario, Canada. USDA zone 4
Home page www.simplegiftsfarm.com
"The national flower of Canada? Ogilvie flour, of course"
William Van Horne (Gen Mngr of CPR 1884)
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