Umm. Epsom salts doens't contain iron. It's magnesium sulfate.

Umm-I know its magnesuim sulfate-someone suggested they NEEDED iron. See other post on yellow leaves.

Magnesium deficiency looks the same as iron. Yellow leaves with green veins on the new growth.

Well, there are no green veins, only yellow, so what do I need??

Hi ~ thanks for posting your experience. My yellow leaves do have green veins. This info helps!

What will happen to Flowergirl's Clem now ~ will it bounce back just like in the case of 'sudden wilt syndrome'?

Good luck F-girl!

If you put too much salt (any combination of ionic compounds, i.e. epsom salts or anything like fertilizer) and you're getting "burn" symptoms, you need to flush with soft or plain water to dilute the salt, which basically is too strong.

What happens is that the "strong" bonding minerals (salts) attach to the roots and draw out moisture, like plant diarrhea, you need to give it lots of plain water to compensate.

Nutrient deficiencies are rarely the cause per se, usually it's access to those nutrients, usually too high of pH, too low of pH etc... my preference, is to use the osmocote like little pebbles of fertilizer after adjusting pH. It's almost impossible to burn with those things since they're slow release.

pH lockout is usually what people are seeing when they claim a "nutrient defiency" adding more of the required nutrient rarely fixes the problem, as an over riding problem with the soil is blocking it from getting whatever is already there in the first place! Too high a pH or too Low a pH converts the nutrients into a particular form which is inaccessible to the plant.

You probably don't need to do a test if you know your soil, i.e. if you're in the northeast, you most likely have acidic soil, so you add lime (a calcium/magnesium blend). If you're in cali where it's dry and calcerous, you want to probably use peat moss and/or other "organic" acid things, maybe hollytone etc... (I've never lived in a calcium rich place, so I'm not sure about that).

Hope this helps, you can see basically "iron deficiency" occurs with a higher pH, but realistically it's not lack of iron, but a high pH which has converted it into a non-useable form. Sometimes people use chelated minerals, which is just an organic compound to make the minerals available over a higher pH range. Although this is helpful, it's a better idea to add organic materials into your soil because those do a similar thing. All nutrients for a plant only can be absorbed in an inorganic form, but the organic compounds help to slow down the release of these necessary minerals (i.e prevent burning or nutrient lockout).

{{gwi:604848}}

I noticed your from Kansas (presuming ks means Kansas) I have family there. You probably have a high pH soil, as the entire midwest used to be an ocean! Try some soil acidifying treatments instead, if you can work peat moss into the soil, and maybe some garden sulfur but you have to go slowly, work the top inch or two in, and water gently. If you use garden sulfer, use 1/2 the reccomended amount if it's on top of live plants, i.e. before bed preparation.

Yes, I'm from southwest KS. I've lived on this gyp hill for 44 years. I have dug in enough peat to take a trip. In all these years I have managed to lower the ph from 8.3 to 7.2. I add sulphur every fall. I had some acid lovers fertilizer, 31-11-11. I watered some in the beginning of the week, and they look better now.About 2 spades deep, I have white clay. Hard to garden here.