Well this is becoming increasingly interesting! I’ve never done a sap analysis on peppers to know what are good targets, but I have done tomatoes and I think that they should be similar.

Your nitrate levels standout as a red flag. Clearly the plants are getting a lot of nitrate, because plants can’t make nitrate. I don’t know why novacrop set the nitrate targets so high, but it’s common for me to get nitrate levels less than 100ppm. And I would say that getting nitrate below 100ppm is probably a sign of health. I suppose it makes sense that there’s more nitrate in the old leaves that are shaded because the photosynthesis is going to reduce the nitrate. But overall it does look like you have an oxidation problem. and/or possibly a carbon shortage. You need both carbon and photosynthesis to create reduction energy/sugar.

Notice that your sugar levels are low and nitrate level high in old leaves…which i think would lead to low sulfur levels in old leaves too. You could have 10ppm of nitrate and 300ppm of sulfate in your soil solution and your plant will still accumulate far more nitrate….for some reason that I don’t understand that plant very aggressively takes up nitrate, but resists taking up sulfate. And then it requires more energy to reduce the sulfate. So I think you need to get your nitrate levels down before you’re going to start seeing an uptake of sulfur.

a)How shiny/glossy are your leaves?

b)What were the CO2 levels in the greenhouse?

c)What is the carbon content of your soil?

d)Why are your calcium levels impossibly low? They must be wrong

e)A lot of the sap targets seem weird. Who set these targets?

f)Have you done a tissue analysis? I recommend always doing a tissue analysis, for every sample you do a sap analysis.

g)is your irrigation overhead or drip or? Are the leaves getting wet from your pond water? if yes, how often?

h)What aquatic tests are you doing on the farm (not sending to a lab)? With the amount of changes you are making to your water source, I would DEFINITELY be testing ammonia/ammonium, nitrate, pH, TDS, ORP…on the farm, not sending out to lab.

1) immediately before adding nitrogen to water

2) 4 hours after adding nitrogen

3) 24 hours after adding nitrogen

4)48 hours after adding nitrogen

Sending out samples to a lab, isn’t good enough. The changes in nitrogen from urea, to ammonium, to nitrite, to nitrate, (to possibly N2). Happen very quickly, and change the pH very quickly. So sending out water samples to a lab could give you a very distorted sense of what is happening.

Trying doing a high carbon/energy foliar spray on a small section of your farm.

4 L water, 5g 5% acetic acid, 0.5 g citric acid, 0.5 g lactic acid, 5g sugar, 5g fructose, 5g pectin, 5g Vodka (or other 40% drinking alcohol)

Two applications/week during daytime, when the humidity is high. Sunrise usually meets that criteria.

Then do a sap analysis.

https://cropwatch.unl.edu/research-sugar-application-crops

Don’t do a molasses or other sugar source because it has other nutrients. The point of this test is to only apply carbon and reductive energy. To see if a carbon/energy deficiency is your main problem. There 7 types of reduced carbon listed above, it’s quite alright if you only have like 4 of them. My theory, is that it’s safer(ecologically diverse/stable) to have a more diverse carbon cocktail, than just sugar.

• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by  Benny Thompson.
• This reply was modified 6 months, 2 weeks ago by  Benny Thompson.
• This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by  Benny Thompson.
• This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by  Benny Thompson.
• This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by  Benny Thompson.

cropwatch.unl.edu

Research on Sugar Application to Crops

Research on Sugar Application to Crops