Emma Cooper

4 out of 5 of my Gartenperle tomato seeds have germinated. The first Whippersnapper seedling has emerged this morning, too.

One of my overwintering pepper seedlings, the Sweet Lipstick, has been suffering from very yellow leaves. I fed it, repotted it, gave it a slow release nutrient stick (organic!) to chow down on and saw no noticeable improvement.

A couple of years ago I ran across the idea that peppers can be fertilized with Epsom salts and I bought myself some (although mine are generic magnesium sulphate, because that’s all I could get). I made the mistake of mentioning this on a gardening forum and was pretty much hounded off it – apparently the use of Epsom salts is somewhat controversial, to say the least.

I thought I would give a foliar feed of magnesium sulphate a try (as, according to the article, it is safer and more effective than liquid feeds) and after two applications this is the result.

Not all of the yellow leaves have recovered a good colour – but the new growth is looking very healthy. I suspect that a general nutrient deficiency was the cause, with the plant running out of food before I repotted it. I don’t know whether it grew out of it on its own, or whether the magnesium sulphate helped, but there’s certainly been an improvement in the last few days.

The maximum temperature in the Grow Dome yesterday was 5°C.
The overnight minimum was -2°C.