Fertilizer burn/damage

[CromulentKevin]

Hey y'all! I went a little nuts fertilizing the palms (with apex palm plus) in my front yard. I'm afraid I might have used too much. And I'm curious what symptoms I should look for if that is the case? And how long these symptoms would take to show up? I used an amount that was what they recommended for a medium level of fertilization. However, they suggested going all around the dripline. In my yard, much of the dripline is concrete, so I'm afraid I put an amount of fertilizer that should have been spaced out in a large area, instead condensed too heavy in a smaller planting bed. Anyway, I've never burned anything before, so I just want to know what can happen to palms if you go too nuts with fertilizer.

[Kris]

Dear Kevin Ross

Even i have those expereince,the effect will be visible in 3 weeks to one month's time in our tropical hot weather...but if you are living in cooler regions it will take some time,but browing of leaf,drying of the spear will all be evident...

but in my case i wanted to use all my old fertz so i mixed variety of fertz to gather and made a liquid fertz solution and started to water this mix right to the palms & plants stems...many had died in this fashion..

this event took place around 12 years back we i did not know how to use fertz on plants...

but as far remidy goes,start watering your palms heavily,if you are in your dry summer,but if its raining already there, all you can do is wait & watch...even if its cold you can't water in excess,since it will lead to root rot & fungus grouth !

keep us updated...if you have a camera,better take stills now when its healthy & also post stills after few weeks or in the comming months...

But we have one option in our hand other than wait & watch,is to pray...

All the best,

Kris

.

[Davidl]

I would water water water and that might help them from burning to bad.

[kahili]

Kevin-is this a liquid fert that you applied or a slow release granular fert? Sorry, I am not familiar with it. How large an area did you put it in, and how many plants in that area and how large are they? I am thinking that you probably did not burn the roots if you went for a medium dosage.

[CromulentKevin]

I should have clarified, the Apex brand is a slow release granular palm fertilizer. So I figure this should be safer if overdosed then a liquid fertilizer, correct?

See, I think my palms have been UNDERfertilized thus far. So I wanted to increase the dosage. But now I'm having cold feet because I know it will be worse to overdo it then underdo it.

I just did the ones in the front. So I kind of wanted to see what happened before I did the ones in the back. But I don't want to wait too long because it is already rather late in the growing season to be fertilizing.

[osideterry]

The nice thing about Apex is it releases based on temperature. If the ground temp is below a certain temp (I think in the upper 60s?), it just sits there. No worry about late season fertilizing, but I wouldn't go crazy and throw it around in December.

Just how much did you over-do it? Double? I've probably pushed it a bit myself with ApexPlus, and never seen damage on palms. However, I had bamboo leaves turn yellow practically the same day when over-fertilized.

[ellidro]

No need to worry! I use this stuff all the time on some planted trees and all of my potted trees. I don't even use a measuring cup, I just grab a big handfull for big trees and a small handfull for small potted plants. I'm sure at times I have probably used double the heavy dose and have had no ill effects. like Terry mentioned the granules are coated with a substance called polygon which slowly releases the nutrients into the soil based on temp. The amount of watering has little to no effect on the amount of nutrients released in the soil. You should have no problems!!

[FRITO]

with a low realease I think it is hard to overfertilize. you will be fine. the other water soluble stuff on the other hand set a nice 3 gal sylvetris I had back by overfertilizing.

symtoms: oldest frond turn brown one after the other starting from the point working down the base.

[Davidl]

I don't know that type of fertilizer so I was assuming it was fast release. That should not hurt your palms. To much fast release can hurt your palms and water is all I have found that can help to leach the "nitrogen" from the soil.

[CromulentKevin]

Thanks everyone. It sounds like the consensus is that I'll probably be fine.

However, I do have some smaller plants surrounding most of my larger palm trees, which may not handle the excess fertilizer so great. To fully fertilize the root zone of the big palms, I had to go around the surrounding plants pretty heavy, but I tried to keep it a little lighter right up against the other plants that maybe don't need such a heavy dose. I figure the apex should be fine for most other plants, maybe even a little weak for them though, so it probably will be okay.

I'll post if anything goes wrong! I'm hoping that upping the food for the plants will make some of my scraggly looking palms perk up eventually, though I know it'll take quite awhile to really notice results from this change.

Kevin

[CromulentKevin]

The nice thing about Apex is it releases based on temperature. If the ground temp is below a certain temp (I think in the upper 60s?), it just sits there. No worry about late season fertilizing, but I wouldn't go crazy and throw it around in December.

Just how much did you over-do it? Double? I've probably pushed it a bit myself with ApexPlus, and never seen damage on palms. However, I had bamboo leaves turn yellow practically the same day when over-fertilized.

Out of curiosity, when you overdid it on the bamboo, did it recover fine and just grow new green leaves? Or did it take some sustained damage from it?

[osideterry]

I think I seriously overfed them last Summer during the long heat wave. The leaves were all yellow-tipped, but all replaced with new leaves. No damage to the culms. I now use Bandini lawn fertilizer on the bamboo. It has the lowest nitrogen percentage of any lawn fert I can find, so I don't worry about burning them.

[CromulentKevin]

My bamboo seems to grow pretty quickly and look green with no fertilizer (just lots of water), so I'm not even sure I'll bother fertilizing it. If it grew any quicker, it would consume us all!

[osideterry]

I was fertilizing more at the beginning stages, to get Oldhami from 5ft tall to 20ft. Now that I'm about there, I'm pretty much done with feeding it also. I have some Alphonse Karr I'm want to get as big as possible, and I'll keep feeding it. It has more room to spread also.