THE PROBLEM SOLVER
Professor Buczacki is a horticultural expert, writer and former chair of Gardeners' Question Time
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Stefan says: You say you’ve read that Epsom salt makes ‘a good all-round fertiliser that will improve the quality of vegetables, tomatoes, flowers and other plants’. But you ask for confirmation this is correct as you don’t want to risk many valuable plants. You go on to say that at the moment you usually use fish, blood and bone with sulphate of potash for fruit trees.
I don’t want you to risk losing plants either, so may I start by suggesting you steer clear of Epsom salt, or at least steer clear of using it as any sort of all-round fertiliser. I say this because of its simplicity.
Epsom salt is a chemical compound called magnesium sulphate and it obtained its name because it was originally obtained by the evaporation of water from a spring at Epsom in Surrey. Magnesium is certainly important for plants, principally because it is a constituent of the green colouring matter chlorophyll, which is needed for plants to manufacture nutrients. But it is essential to provide plants with supplements of the many other chemicals they need – both major nutrients, like nitrate, phosphate and potash, and a wide range of minor and trace nutrients that may be deficient in certain soils. This is why Epsom salt shouldn’t be used as an all-round fertiliser; it doesn’t actually contain any other nutrients.
The fish, blood and bone you mention is a fine, all-round, essentially organic blend and will serve yo
