Out with the beans and in with the broccolis

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Quyen Orange, CA(Zone 10b) Oct 18, 2005

I just planted sugar peas and broccolis into containers that were used for snap beans.

Question: what should I add to the soil to replace what the beans had used up? composted manure? composted mulch? fertilizer?

Post #1822421
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spectrum (Zone 2b) Oct 18, 2005

Beans should have actually added nitrogen to the soil. When you pulled the beans up, did you notice any nodules on the roots? If so, there's a good chance that they have indeed added nitrogen. Peas should be doing the same thing, so you shouldn't need to add much if any nitrogen to peas (1st number on the fertilizer bag). Of course, if the right bacteria aren't present, then the whole adding nitrogen to the soil thing won't happen. So it's a good idea to innoculate legume (peas, beans, etc.) seeds with the appropriate bacteria when you plant :)

Did you fertilize the beans at all? In a container, it's easily possible to overfertilize. If you didn't fertilize them, you might want to add some phosphorus and potassium (those will be the 2nd and 3rd numbers on the package) Broccolli may also like a little bit of sulphur (4th number in brackets if present).

But as I said already, be careful not to over-fertilize. If your plants start showing deficiency symptoms such as yellowing, those are pretty easy to take care of by adding a bit of fertilizer. But if you burn them with too much fertilizer of any kind, there's not much that you can do.

Post #1822470
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Quyen Orange, CA(Zone 10b) Oct 18, 2005

Ah, that's what those lumps are--nodules.
I have been very careful not to overfertilize my plants because I read somewhere that it's easy to do that to container plants, especially the ones that don't have good drainage. I will definitely be looking for signs of deficiency. Most of the fertilizers that I have on hand do contain some Nitrogen but I've seen the zero N ones at the store. What's the best way of adding sulphur if that's all that I want to do?

Thanks, spectrum.

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