Growing in Vietnam Part4

[davidwood]

Part4.Well all is still well and I am now in total  control of my spider mite problem, in part 3  I said how I was going to pick up my plants take them to the bottom of the garden and shower my cv’s every 5 days, well I soon got fed up with that. I now shower the whole garden every night and the leaves on the cv’s get a good drenching, I am probably a lot more fortunate than most in the fact evening temperatures are never below 80F so standing there spraying away is quite nice, its dark here at 6pm so I switch on the lights and spray at about 8pm, in the morning light at 5am everything is so dry and fresh. I did have a problem with the fact I was flooding the streets of the village every night and people where starting to complain but I just slipped the boss of the village a few dollars and he had the road dug up and a soak-away put in[you can do stuff like that here in Vietnam].

I then encountered a new problem which I as a beginner am quite proud to have figured out on my own, well I hope when Charlie reads this I have got it right but it appears looking at the flowers that I have, and it’s down to my new found knowledge of NPK.
 It concerns HVI special fertilizer, the results I was getting where not what I expected, the plants where looking spectacularly green and luscious [something you would expect to see in a cottage garden by the river in County Kildare Ireland not on a scorching hot roof top in Vietnam], but the blooms where becoming smaller and fewer. Now before I explain how I figured it out I must tell you that everything I know about gardening and growing Hibiscus I have learnt in the last 15 months from the Internet and mostly from this web-site.
 One of the things Charlie says is for best results when fertilizing is use half a teaspoon with each gallon.
 So what I was doing wrong?, there is no way there was going to be something wrong with the fertilizer, and I am sure that must be good advice by Charlie on half a teaspoon, so after a lot of thought I came up with the idea that the problem is not the half teaspoon but the fact its getting half a teaspoon 3 or 4 times a day. Its so hot here some days that’s how much I water, each time adding half a tea spoon of food [I defy anybody to add religiously just half a tea spoon each time, its like plating up you child’s dinner, you will always put on an extra spoonful of mash in case they get hungry later] so in effect getting fed 3 or 4 times a day, and with my extra little bit receiving far to much Nitrogen. So I changed my feeding program to 1 spoonful a week and things are starting to look much better.

Still waiting on my new cv’s so it has given me time to try growing other plants that can take this heat, having very good results with Plumeria[Frangipani] and not quite so good with Canna. Still hoping to have photo’s on the HVI World Garden soon but now I have got fussy and it’s got to be perfect ha ha.  David.

[Charlie]

Hi David,

Interesting post. You are definitely right that feeding every time you water when it is more than once a day has some potential for being too much of a good thing. But, the way I have seen too much fertilizer show up is in the leaves. They can get a wet look before they turn brown or the edge of the leaves may die and show as brown leaf edges. I would not expect it to affect the flowers. That sounds more like a heat thing.

I suggest doing what you have been - using the fertilizer once per week only or reducing the amount used every time so that it equals the correct amount per day total. The latter is actually the best way to go, but may be too much trouble.  I'm wondering if you saw any leaf problems. Unless you did it is not likely the fertilizer had built up to harmful levels. If the pots are watered enough so that some comes out the holes the leaching effect allows you to use high levels of fertilizer continuously since there is little to no built up inside the pot.

If you get that mist system up and running that will help figure out what has been happening. The mist should cool things off and if the flowers respond to that by improving in size and color then it would confirm that high heat was the cause and not an oversupply of fertilizer.

Keep the feedback coming - it's great to hear what you are trying and what the results are.

Charlie