France in Focus

I may have mentioned before, that my garden is where plants come to die but this is a new one. Having given up on growing pretty much anything apart from tomatoes and runner beans we thought we would have a good chance of a useful result. Beans came from a reliable seed source in UK and well established tomato plants bought locally were started off in our polytunnel. The tomato plants are growing well and up to about a metre tall but with only a handful of flowers so far. The beans sprouted and grew nicely (about 22 out of 26 planted). At about 25-30cm tall we planted them outside in nice molehill earth that had been treated to a little liquid feed beforehand. Three days later the leaves have gone from a healthy green to sickly yellow-green. Something is wrong but we haven't a clue what. Should we plant some more seeds now to hedge our bet to try again?

From my experience it's due to too much water - or maybe too little.

Nomoss wrote: ↑Sun Jun 16, 2024 4:47 pm From my experience it's due to too much water - or maybe too little.

Yes, I agree.

It may be as an indirect result of the rain - washing minerals from soil - though 3 days seems rather quick for that. Try a foliar feed containing Magnesium.

It probably is an issue of watering but if you have fertilised the soil before planting, that will probably not have helped. A too rich soil can impact on the roots as they try and push into the fresh soil. I tend to avoid using fertilisers liquid or solid but if I were using them I would not have used a liquid fertiliser for the first couple of weeks while the plants are establishing themselves. Unless you were planting in pure sand, there should be plenty of nutrients in the soil to get the plants going and it is only later that a boost might be needed.

+1 I was thinking the same

Although a notoriously wet area, we haven't had a great deal of rain in the last few weeks so soil being too wet is unlikely. I added some fertiliser thinking as we planted in molehill earth from the large grassy area it would be pretty poor stuff. ie. I planted a pair of metre high Cypress Lleylandi that are said to grow a metre a year. It took about 8 years for one of them to double its height and the second one died at year three.
We are total crap at gardening. Thanks for all your helpful replies.

Bayleaf wrote: ↑Sun Jun 16, 2024 8:33 pm +1 I was thinking the same

Me too.