What does it mean to "burn a plant"?

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ErinErsatz Chicago, IL May 05, 2009

I've read this phrase before on gardening sites, and I don't really know what it means or how it happens. Before putting my seeds in soil, I put them into plastic baggies with water & liquid fertilizer [I follow the directions and put 7 drops per quart of water], and leave them somewhere sunny. So far my cucumber seeds have responded well to this and have sprouted little roots. Could I be "burning" these plants or others? How do I know?

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ecrane3 Dublin, CA(Zone 9a) May 05, 2009

If you give something too much fertilizer, it can burn the roots--this will typically show up by the leaves getting brown around the edges (or possibly over the entire leaf if it's bad enough). For seedlings, I typically use about 1/4 to 1/2 the amount of fertilizer that the directions say since seedlings can be more easily burned than a larger plant (unless the package has specific directions for seedlings). Also you don't typically fertilize seedlings until they've sprouted and get their first set of true leaves (the very first leaves you see come up are the seed leaves, the next ones after that are the true leaves). I'm not sure what happens if you fertilize them sooner than that. They definitely don't need fertilizer before they get their true leaves, but I'm not sure if it would hurt anything as long as it's dilute enough.

Here's an example of fertilizer burn symptoms on leaves: http://www.extension.umn.edu/yardandgarden/YGLNews/images/fertburn.jpg It can look a little different depending on the plant, and on seedlings I would expect the leaves would go completely brown and shrivel up pretty quickly since they're so small.

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EllaTiarella Portage, MI(Zone 5b) May 05, 2009

I can't comment about seedlings, but you may also want to be aware that some plants can have an adverse reaction to fungicides, etc., if not applied properly. It's important to follow directions carefully for those types of products.

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