What's up with my "baby"?

Hi, All -

Here are two views of my only seedling baby (I have 6 more still sprouting, but this one I started on October 30). This is from seeds given to me by Picturelady (the hybridizer was J.T. Sessions - Pink Beauty X RK). She is now in this 4" pot and stands about 3.5" above the rim of the pot. She's been doing great - but in the last couple weeks has developed these curved leaves. Now..I haven't fed her, but she is potted in MG potting soil and is under my grow lights 16 hrs a day. I have been PLAGUED with spider mites on some of my other plants and brugs - but have not seen anything on her. It looks a little like the "calcium deficiency" I saw described in another post here, but how do you tell if that's her problem for sure?? And if so, how do you fix it? I have a meter that measures light, PH and Fertillizer levels. The PH in the soil is 5.6 and the fertilizer meter only says "too little" on the fertilzer scale...don't know how to interpret that.

What do you experts think?

Diane Krny

I'm not an expert, but I would feed those babies. If you don't have any liquid calcium, maybe grinding up some egg shells and working them into the soil would help. It would take longer, but might work. Make sure you use a fertilizer with calcium added if you can. I'll bet they will pop out of it. Remember that soilless mixes don't have much in the line of nutrients in them. If your MG soil is one of those, they need to have fertilizer added to them often. JMO.

My Brugs seem to like a PH of 6.5 - 7.5.
I would do as Brugie said and start feeding them. If the leaves continue to curl and you can't find a fertilizer with calcium you can get some Gypsum (landplaster) at your local feed and seed store. Add a tbl. to a gal of water and water them.
Don't use too much though, I'd only water once a week with it for 2-3 weeks and you should see improvement in the new leaves.
Hope this helps.

Diane,

I have found a good source of minerals and all of the other things that we use for the brugs is a Hydroponic store. The one I found has everything. I mix up the minerals and water with it about every other week. I use Peters fertilizer, a weak one every time I water. This time of year it is only about once a week.

Jeanette

I just called my coop and asked about the gypsum and they do carry it, but they only carry a 50# bag. It sells for $6.15, the price doesn't bother me but a 50# bag. When you only use 1 tbl once a week. Can any one tell me where to go to find a smaller quantity.

Linda

http://merrifieldgardencenter.com/products.php?pid=217

I found this on the internet is this what I want.

This message was edited Mar 2, 2005 12:04 PM

Linda 2 summers ago I had a terrible problem with curled leaves. I posted pictures in the fertilizer thread.
I think it was from the peat based ProMix I used and pushing the fertilizer to them.
Last year I sprinkled gysum in each hole when I planted the Brugs in the ground and had no problems with curled leaves.
I also changed my fertilizer from MG to Peter's Cal/Mag.
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