Soil fertility and types affecting plant growth

Several people have mentioned how certain daffodils are a miniature at one location and a standard at another. Most of you all get tired of me harping on getting soil tests. MOST of the Texas Master Gardeners in my group think that you can buy soil fertility in a pretty bag and have great plants and results in a single year!
The first photo is a “wildlife” planting of Black Oil seed sunflowers from a bag of bird seed. It is at our local master gardeners plant trials area. It was new land not tilled or planted in any crop before this year. I tilled under a nice stand of weeds, grass and Crimson Clover and scattered the sunflower seeds and just tilled them under to plant them.
The patch runs east to west then curls around to the south and half of the patch runs north to south. As you can see my son Shawn is standing in the trials patch that is about three feet tall. One of our master gardeners fertilized the patch with a bag of 10-20-10 when we planted the seeds.
The second photo is showing the same seed planted on my back property line that also runs east to west. These were planted about two weeks later and should actually be smaller BUT we have worked tree chip mulch into this narrow strip for about 4 years. We lime and fertilize the soil. We have used chicken litter once in four years. We add micro nutrients and Boron as needed….
If amount of hours and sunshine and water is the same. Then the difference in the same plants rate of growth and size on your property will be in the soil texture, air in the soil, micro and macro nutrients or pathogens in the soil.
Black Eyed Susan’s and cone flowers are in the same family as the common sunflowers. Notice there is one of our bluebird nestboxes in each photo. Keith Kridler Mt. Pleasant, Texas

1 comment for “Soil fertility and types affecting plant growth

  1. Keith. I have found sunflowers to be aleopathic so refrain from planting them near daffodils. Have you had any problems with them? Denis

Comments are closed.