Hi All new to this board, definitely not a professional gardener but i research everything ask lots of questions and experiment on my own, do the best i can do with the resources available to me Buy my first question is regarding Epsom salt on tropical plants such as palm's, banana and elephant ears. are there real benefits? my plants seem to do o/k but never seem to be as green as pictures i see or as some in conservatories. what can i do. also most web sites never give a straight answer. Regards Rick H.
A good read on epsom salts http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda Chalker-Scott/Horticultural Myths_files/Myths/Epsom salts.pdf
We use Epson Salts, Borax, Messenger and alpha pelets beside all the rain water we can catch in our gardens. You can see what this does on our website.
You will have demonstrated benefits from Messenger when you have conducted organized and systematic trials using control groups and methods that quantity results, like digging and weighing all the plants at the end of the study to see which ones are bigger. In the meantime I'll assume the multiple university studies that presumably have used scientific methods to find the active ingredient not consistently beneficial to be the lead to follow. With nutrient sources like epsom salts what appears to produce an improvement on your soil will only be relevant to someone else with the same soil. Soils vary widely in mineral content, sometimes right on the same home site.
Hi Ron! I dragged my feet in using it and decided after someone shared a package to test it on a couple of 6" Mandevilleas that were obtained at the same time. Not identical but close enough. To this day the one we first tested it on has out grown and bloomed the other all these years. I use this on every thing during the growing season, even my grass. I have photos that I shared with the company so I'll try to find them to share with you.
One plant is not enough to go on. You don't know if there was a difference between the two for some other reason. Numbers of the same batch of plants receiving the same treatment except for the Messenger, with half getting it and half not is the kind of trial that needs to be set up to discover a pattern.
Thanks Ron, I see your point but ya know I wasn't going to use it on more as these are my babies I'm dealing with. I noted after the first week the grow was more and then started using what was left on other plants. That year the yard went nuts by just using it and nothing else. I didn't use much last year and can sure tell the difference from using it regularly here this year. Matter of fact I'm not using any Peters, just a little alpha pellets and the borax. As you can see from the recent photos on our website the yard is growing like crazy. Even the grass is thicking up earlier in the front where Messenger was used to empty the tank. I love what it does for the roses and it's almost ranks up there with the RAID! I'm no scientist but I see what works and will use it and waste my money?
