3:35 pm

October 30, 2010

Hi everyone,
I am growing tomatoes and would like to know
1. from where I can get NPK salts for the tomato plants?
2. what is the ratio of NPK to be used?
3. Should I spray them on the foliage or add them to the soil?
4. How frequently should I spray them?
My plants have started flowering, a few flowers have given rise to fruits but they are still very small.
Cheers,
Aarthi
6:55 pm
May 1, 2010

Hello Aarthi,
You can get NPK in many of the shops in New Tharagupet. I am planning to stock them in some time for convenience.
I have used NPK 19:19:19 successfully with tomatoes. Generally any fertilizer thats high in potassium is preferred for tomato.
See if you can get NPK 5:15:30 or 6:12:36 these ratios work well for plants that are in yielding phase.
A foliage spray can be used as a supplement but a soil application is essential. You can use it 2-3g/litre per week.
Thanks
gg
2:15 pm

October 30, 2010

If you are into container gardening and you dont actually own a big farm, you could use these handy packs of "Maxi Grow" available at Indam and Varsha enterprises. Not endorsing them in any way, I'm new to container gardening myself thanks to GG and I find these small packs amazingly easy to use and my plants seem to be loving them.
They cost RS 6 and NPK is in the ratio of 5:15:30. All you need to do is mix the contents of a single pack in 5 liters of water and water your plants.
Hope this helps
3:30 pm
May 1, 2010

8:37 pm
May 1, 2010

1:37 pm

November 5, 2010

3:06 pm
May 1, 2010

7:56 am

November 5, 2010

10:50 am
May 1, 2010

3:38 pm

November 5, 2010

Thanks gg! That brings up more questions... when using coco peat, what would be the primary source for nutrients if panchagavya could be at best a supplement.
I am still on the look out for a bottle of panchagavya, have contacted Sai and Hari, I might get lucky by end of Nov.
My medium now, after 2 months in to terrace farming, is a mix of pot mix+coco peat+enriched vermicompost+neam based organic manure. Would panchagavya work in this medium.
Regards,
STS
9:33 pm

STS said:
Thanks gg! That brings up more questions... when using coco peat, what would be the primary source for nutrients if panchagavya could be at best a supplement.
I am still on the look out for a bottle of panchagavya, have contacted Sai and Hari, I might get lucky by end of Nov.
My medium now, after 2 months in to terrace farming, is a mix of pot mix+coco peat+enriched vermicompost+neam based organic manure. Would panchagavya work in this medium.
Regards,
STS
9:57 pm

Hi STS,
I have met one of the manufacturer of Panchagavya in Mumbai and he told me that it is very good but if we are only using Panchagavya then we should use it with Organic manure as Panchagavye has little "N" i.e. Nitrogen and to fulfill that requirement we should use Organic Manure little bit with coco peat to get good output.
I have still not tried this but will give a shot in next few months.
Thanks & Regards,
Deepak
2:49 pm

October 28, 2010

Panchagavya is not to be treated as fertilizer
sporlac (powder is a probiotic of lactobacilli) => humans - you take this after you had a course of antibiotic. antibiotics kills good bacteria in your body too
Panchagavya => plants
Panchagavya when sprayed will give a coating of good bacteria/fungus on the plant; protecting the plant from diseases.
you can add Panchagavya to the roots too, you just increase the population of good bacteria in the garden
Panchagavya & compost tea does the same job.
10:40 pm

October 25, 2010

11:59 pm

November 5, 2010

Hi pr4d,
I was at Lalbagh 2 days back, they have a product from Vital Plant Products called "N.L" which stands for Natural Liquid. The description says Panchagavya+Herbal... picked up a 100ml bottle just to test it out. I sprayed it today on the plants which just started flowering - bitter gourd, tomato and chilli. Lets see how it goes.
I have used neem oil as well in the last few weeks to save my plants from spider mites. The bitter gourd leafs all of a sudden developed some white and grey spots, and that seemed to spread not only to other leaves but to tomato and chilli plant as well. Neem oil slowed down the damage but did not clear out all the mites. Finally I decided to cut off all the leaves that had damage and probably the heavy rains saved my plants from total disaster.
Have anybody been to the Krishi Mela 2010 at UAS? There must be few stalls which should interest container farmers.
-STS
7:18 pm

October 30, 2010

I just came back from the Kirshi mela. This was my first time and I was awe struck at how big the mela was.
Here are some of my observations -
The stalls are well arranged based on themes like 'hitech', 'organic', 'organic products', etc. It made very easy to identify where to spend time. As such there were too many people (probably because it was a weekend) but there was definitely space to move around.
Coming to the interesting part of the stalls, there were stalls from Maharashtra, Andhra, Karnataka and few other states also.
Some stalls were put up to spread awareness about hi-tech machineries used in agriculture, irrigation. There were also stalls by banks, which I guess was for loan information, etc.
Varsha enterprises, Indo-American, Ashoka, Metabolite, Mangala had put up stalls to sell seeds, fertilizers, nutrition supplements and other things.
I could not find anyone selling panchagavya 🙁 and lesser quantities of NPK for soil application. Many stalls had NPK for foliar application.
And there was just too many variety of products that I was throughly confused on what to buy. I finally stuck to GG's suggestion of NPK 19-19-19, but could get only foliar application.
Another interesting thing was huge banana cluster (not sure what it is called in english, referred as vazha kola in tamil) and big pumkins.
Overall, it was a very different and informative visit for me.
BTW, there is a garden exhibition/sale conducted at APD, Jeevan bhima nagar this week till Nov19th.
Guess that was too much of krishi mela from me 🙂
Cheers,
Aarthi
9:50 pm

November 5, 2010

Hi Aarthi,
Thanks for summing up Krishimela, I was there as well early today and spent close to 3 hours. Yes I agree with you, the organizing team has done a good job!
I picked up some seeds at the Monsanto store, they were selling in small Rs. 10 packet, which is what I was looking for. You probably missed the Vital Plant Product store, they had 100ml bottles of "N.L" which as I mentioned in my previous post is Panchagavya based. They claim all their products like Nisarga liquid, NCG Liquid etc has Panchagavya in it but may be with some processing to enhance shelf life. I picked up a bottle of Nisarga Liquid which according to the label is a mix of Neem, Caster, Honge and some Ayurvedic extracts. Have never used this before, will give it a try soon.
The banana clusters were too huge, I saw two... one 80kg and another 70kg. I wish they shared the secret behind their success, I could have tried that on my bitter gourd or tomatoes.
-STS
1 Guest(s)
