langbeinite For tomatoes?

[karstopography]

https://www.cropnutrition.com/resource- ... ngbeinite/

Anyone use this fertilizer for tomatoes? Good results or something else?

[MissS]

Funny you asked. I have not used it but I just got some to use for next year. I am hopeful that it works out well

[Shule]

Sounds cool. Never tried it, but I have tried potassium sulfate and magnesium sulfate plenty of times. That's cool that it's not as soluble; so, it would probably be great for pre-fertilization.

[karstopography]

I’ve got crab shell meal fertilizer, 4-3-0, and feather meal, 12-0-0, bone meal, but nothing really with much K. Langbeinite might be just the thing for a desirable source of Potassium.

Everything I have read lately about tomatoes indicates tomatoes use a lot of K and K in sufficient amounts is vital to fruit quality along with the plant’s ability to fight foliage diseases. Yara has a ton of information on tomato plant nutritional needs and what different forms of nitrogen have on yield and fruit quality. Yara and other sites cover all the other major and minor nutrient’s role in getting quality fruit.

Next season I want to set up, pre-transplant, the beds to have more of these slow release types of fertilizers like langbeinite, bone meal, feather meal and the crab meal. Maybe I’ll do a bed or two with composted chicken manure to see how that makes a difference.

Get the beds pretty dialed in pre-season with slower release types of fertilizer and then tweak nutrients as needed mostly with soil level liquid or foliar feeding.

[Uncle_Feist]

When maters are setting and growing they need K and fast in a readily useable form. Kno3 is the best hands down for addressing K requirements. Feed weekly and keep the soil moist during this critical period!

[MissS]

I normally use blood meal, bone meal and wood ash. My source of wood ash is gone so I will be trying this as a replacement for that.

[karstopography]

When maters are setting and growing they need K and fast in a readily useable form. Kno3 is the best hands down for addressing K requirements. Feed weekly and keep the soil moist during this critical period!

Do you have a favorite brand or source of Potassium Nitrate? Pricing from the little I’ve seen seems all over the place and high except in large quantities.

[pepperhead212]

Another thing that is good to use for a foliar K feed, which I use more as a disease deterrent, is Potassium Bicarbonate.

[Uncle_Feist]

When maters are setting and growing they need K and fast in a readily useable form. Kno3 is the best hands down for addressing K requirements. Feed weekly and keep the soil moist during this critical period!

Do you have a favorite brand or source of Potassium Nitrate? Pricing from the little I’ve seen seems all over the place and high except in large quantities.

Potassium nitrate has always been more expensive than other fertilizers because it's a high quality form of nitrate nitrogen and potassium that is totally water soluble and almost instantly available to the plant. No salt buildup in the soil either because the nitrogen is carried by the potassium, and both are beneficial nutes unlike commercial fertilizers. Even the popular off the shelf water soluables like Miracle Gro contain mostly cheaper forms of nitrogen like urea along with the nitrate nitrogen in their formulations.

My supplier carries Yara brand Kn03 in 50lb. bags. This past spring it was around $40/bag. For as long as I can remember it was always around $30/50lbs. It stores well in a 5 gallon bucket with a snap on lid and will keep indefinitely. All fruiting crops greatly benefit from the extra boost of nitrogen and especially K during fruit set, growth and ripening. Calcium nitrate is another form of nitrate nitrogen no one should be without. Like Kno3, there's no salt buildup as N and the calcium are benificial. I alternate weekly feedings between the two, increasing the amount every week according to plant response starting just as the first fruit starts setting. No commercial melon, mater or pepper farmer who knows or cares anything about quality would be without a supply of calcium nitrate, potassium nitrate or epsom salt.

[Uncle_Feist]

Of the sulfur content of the langbeinite.

I always have high quality great tasting maters using the Kn03. But when the stars align, and my creek irrigation source stopped flowing during unusually dry spells, the water hole I pump from turns into a natural sulfur spring. That's when I got the perfect cocktail to make the crops that memories were made of! Magnesium, potassium and sulfur are a crop finisher flavor booster like no other!

[Moth1992]

https://www.cropnutrition.com/resource- ... ngbeinite/

Anyone use this fertilizer for tomatoes? Good results or something else?

Im not educated in the matter but sounds incredibly unsustainable. Are there more sustainable alternatives?

[karstopography]

https://www.intrepidpotash.com/about/

https://www.blm.gov/programs/energy-and ... als/potash

More on the mining of langbeinite.

https://www.thermofisher.com/blog/minin ... ertilizer/

Mining of the most common forms of potash.

https://investingnews.com/daily/resourc ... of-potash/

The four primary forms of potash

[FatBeeFarm]

When maters are setting and growing they need K and fast in a readily useable form. Kno3 is the best hands down for addressing K requirements. Feed weekly and keep the soil moist during this critical period!

Do you have a favorite brand or source of Potassium Nitrate? Pricing from the little I’ve seen seems all over the place and high except in large quantities.

Potassium nitrate has always been more expensive than other fertilizers because it's a high quality form of nitrate nitrogen and potassium that is totally water soluble and almost instantly available to the plant. No salt buildup in the soil either because the nitrogen is carried by the potassium, and both are beneficial nutes unlike commercial fertilizers. Even the popular off the shelf water soluables like Miracle Gro contain mostly cheaper forms of nitrogen like urea along with the nitrate nitrogen in their formulations.

My supplier carries Yara brand Kn03 in 50lb. bags. This past spring it was around $40/bag. For as long as I can remember it was always around $30/50lbs. It stores well in a 5 gallon bucket with a snap on lid and will keep indefinitely. All fruiting crops greatly benefit from the extra boost of nitrogen and especially K during fruit set, growth and ripening. Calcium nitrate is another form of nitrate nitrogen no one should be without. Like Kno3, there's no salt buildup as N and the calcium are benificial. I alternate weekly feedings between the two, increasing the amount every week according to plant response starting just as the first fruit starts setting. No commercial melon, mater or pepper farmer who knows or cares anything about quality would be without a supply of calcium nitrate, potassium nitrate or epsom salt.

This is exciting to me, I was thinking of adding fertigation to my garden for next year and KNO3 and CaNO3 seem the way to go. Thank you for this. Do you know of any good suppliers in the US or in New England?

[karstopography]

What @Uncle_Feist is paying for KNO3 must be some wholesale arrangement or maybe there are competitive pricing direct to farmer stores where he is as I haven’t found pricing and/or availability like that anywhere in my area. I am going to travel through some farming intensive areas soon and will have to remember to look for cheap sources of KNO3 when I do. Retail small quantities KNO3 are impossible to find locally and the online vendors are exorbitantly expensive. My local area is more cattle ranching and less farming, but there are some cotton, sorghum, soybean and rice operations not that distant, but they likely use some other cheaper form of Potassium and Nitrogen. I’ll take a 50# bag at anywhere close to $40. Online sources I have come across are minimum many multiples of that price.

[FatBeeFarm]

I just found Calcium Nitrate at https://www.7springsfarm.com/ for $23 for 50 lb. Shipping would be additional and based on your location. I've ordered pallets of goodies from them before and was very happy with them as a company. They don't seem to have Potassium Nitrate though.

[Uncle_Feist]

What @Uncle_Feist is paying for KNO3 must be some wholesale arrangement or maybe there are competitive pricing direct to farmer stores where he is as I haven’t found pricing and/or availability like that anywhere in my area. I am going to travel through some farming intensive areas soon and will have to remember to look for cheap sources of KNO3 when I do. Retail small quantities KNO3 are impossible to find locally and the online vendors are exorbitantly expensive. My local area is more cattle ranching and less farming, but there are some cotton, sorghum, soybean and rice operations not that distant, but they likely use some other cheaper form of Potassium and Nitrogen. I’ll take a 50# bag at anywhere close to $40. Online sources I have come across are minimum many multiples of that price.

I was wrong about the price I had quoted KNO3 had went up a little this year. This is the current 2023 catalog. The owner of Martin's produce supplies is Mennonite and they have been in business for years, but have just recently started a website.

https://martinsproducesupplies.com/

[Uncle_Feist]

I worked for a guy years ago who was owner of a munition's demilitarization operation in LA. The guy was interested in self sufficiency and talked to me on many occasions about how to achieve it. He bought a lot maters and other produce from me to can and store. One time he mentioned how red and flavorful my maters were and wanted to know my secret.

Over the years in his frequent commutes from KY to his factory in LA he stopped at multiple, seasonal roadside produce stands to buy produce. He told me of all of the maters he had purchased, he had never bought any with the flavor and vibrant color like the ones he was getting from me. I told him it was the potassium I was feeding during the critical growth periods. He looked at me and said potassium, huh? I said yes, it's the most important one for quality and flavor.

About a month later I got a call from the guy to come to his house he had brought me something. When I got there he had 2, 50lb. boxes of SOP for me. He said it was used in rockets and munitions as a flash suppressor. He said they had tons of it and couldn't find a market for it. He said that he had sent multiple samples of the stuff for testing on multiple occasions and results had always come back as 99.9% pure pharmaceutical grade sulphate of potash. He giggled and said the military spared no taxpayer funds when it came to building bombs. He told me to try it on my maters as a K source and let him know when and how much more I needed. I used it as a water soluble source of K the next year an that stuff was the BOMB! Shame the guy was busted the very next year and went to prison..

[strawbaleking]

I used langbeinite and azomite (though I have used azomite for years) and finally my tomatoes had flavor this season. I think since potassium leaves the soil more easily with watering, it fixes that. I was always careful with my watering and couldn't figure it out. I do grow using 20 gallon fabric grow bags so even with timed careful drip watering it wasn't enough flavor till I used langbeinite and azomite. I tried other potassium products that should have been water soluble but barely were. I think the langbeinite is more naturally well rounded anyway. Plus I had more even ripening and smaller more tender core areas on beefsteaks for the first time ever.

[Cole_Robbie]

Morgan County Seed is where I bought my calcium nitrate and master blend 4-18-38. They say to alternate those in drip irrigation. If anyone is doing side by side with organics, that salt recipe would be a good control to test against. I add a little worm castings to my mix to get some organic benefits for cheap.