I find Mike's link to be useful, about epsom is ONLY best used in high-crop production, such as tomatoes on old soil: Here's a paragraph from Mike's link: "Excessive levels of potassium contribute to a mineral imbalance that causes magnesium deficiency in a variety of species, even when soil levels of Mg are adequate. High levels of soil potassium apparently interfere with root uptake of recommended to overcome this indirect magnesium deficiency; trees high in nitrogen were found to be less susceptible to magnesium deficiency than those with reduced nitrogen levels." My clay soil tested very high in potassium, next is phosphorus, and least is nitrogen. Plants short on potassium are more prone to fungal diseases. I have zero blackspots on roses, but have problems with magnesium deficiency esp. in my tomatoes, grown in the same bed for 12 years. Fifteen years ago my other garden had a different soil: no clay, just good black dirt high in nitrogen. We never had to fertilize the lawn, everything was green, but I had the worse blackspot on my roses. I have never used epsom salt on my tomato, but last year when I mixed bagged cow manure in, we had a bumper crop of tomato. This year I didn't do that, and we have the worse crop of tomato and very small fruits. I'll do an experiment next year growing tomatoes in 2 different pots, water one with epsom salt, and let's see if the fruits get bigger.

If you put too much salt (any combination of ionic compounds, i.e. epsom salts or anything like fertilizer) and you're getting "burn" symptoms, you need to flush with soft or plain water to dilute the salt, which basically is too strong. What happens is that the "strong" bonding minerals (salts) attach to the roots and draw out moisture, like plant diarrhea, you need to give it lots of plain water to compensate. Nutrient deficiencies are rarely the cause per se, usually it's access to those nutrients, usually too high of pH, too low of pH etc... my preference, is to use the osmocote like little pebbles of fertilizer after adjusting pH. It's almost impossible to burn with those things since they're slow release. pH lockout is usually what people are seeing when they claim a "nutrient defiency" adding more of the required nutrient rarely fixes the problem, as an over riding problem with the soil is blocking it from getting whatever is already there in the first place! Too high a pH or too Low a pH converts the nutrients into a particular form which is inaccessible to the plant. You probably don't need to do a test if you know your soil, i.e. if you're in the northeast, you most likely have acidic soil, so you add lime (a calcium/magnesium blend). If you're in cali where it's dry and calcerous, you want to probably use peat moss and/or other "organic" acid things, maybe hollytone etc... (I've never lived in a calcium rich place, so I'm not sure about that). Hope this helps, you can see basically "iron deficiency" occurs with a higher pH, but realistically it's not lack of iron, but a high pH which has converted it into a non-useable form. Sometimes people use chelated minerals, which is just an organic compound to make the minerals available over a higher pH range. Although this is helpful, it's a better idea to add organic materials into your soil because those do a similar thing. All nutrients for a plant only can be absorbed in an inorganic form, but the organic compounds help to slow down the release of these necessary minerals (i.e prevent burning or nutrient lockout).

Hey MileHigh I got a cocktail lime/meyer about the same time you got your tree last year too. The lemon side has gone through two flushes already but this past week is the first that the lime side has started new growth with two new shoots of leaves. Still no blossoms, but they can't be too far behind. I keep mine outside on my back lanai, so it gets the max amt of sunlight. Hopefully you are seeing new growth by now too? Right now I'm worried about the life of my plant since when I first purchased it it had strange looking bugs I thought were aphids. Now that I'm reading up on HLB and ACP, I'm worried that might be what I saw. They were similar but honestly my memory isn't strong enough to rely on. I guess I have to just wait to see if it develops any symptoms. There is a bit of yellowing on a couple leaves but soon to tell. Blissfully ignorant before of the blight those who grow citrus have been facing, it is rather daunting.

A woman after my heart! Growers soo often think because a little is good, more must be better. Applications of Epsom salts can only help when there is a deficiency of MG (or S, but that is rare). All other applications have only the potential to limit. In their haste to "green their plants up" growers will resort to applications of Mg or Fe that do indeed make the plant greener, but they can also cause antagonistic deficiencies of other nutrients. Too much Mg can cause a Ca deficiency, too much Fe a Mn deficiency, too much P an Fe deficiency + several other elements. I might suggest you run the same experiment with a flowering plant in a container and fertilize one with a bloom booster like 10-52-10, and the other with a 3:1:2 ratio fertilizer like Foliage-Pro 9-3-6. The results will be eye-opening with the 3:1:2 ratio fertilizer producing better growth, better eye appeal, and more blooms; that because the excess P you're being sold as an inducement to bloom is actually extremely limiting. I can pretty much tell you how your experiment will turn out if you outline how you're going to go about it, but there's nothing like seeing it for yourself. Have fun! BTW - just happened to see your post in the "Most Recent Posts" field & thought I'd look at what you're up to. .... my first post to this forum. Al