The effect of Monty's Plant Food on Roots

Tomato Test in South Africa
Swakopmund, 30^th March, 2004

Because we’ve a big problem with blossom-end-rot in tomatoes (because of very brackish irrigation water), we decided to take part in a test of Monty's Plant Food.. A big part of our harvested tomato harvest can not be sold just because of blossom-end-rot. So the purpose of the test was to find out whether Monty’s has a (positive) influence on the amount of marketable tomatoes. In February/March 2004 we did the test.

The Test

We had 4 rows planted with young tomato plants, all of them were transplanted on the same date (12^th of January). All were from the same cultivar.

Average height at the start of the test was aprox. 20 cm and they then just started to make their first blossoms. Two out of four rows were sprayed with Monty’s 8-16-18.The other two rows got a different foliar application (recommended by a vegetable-seed dealer).

The first foliar applications of Monty’s started on the 5^th of February. The second foliar application was on the 19^th of February. The third foliar applications was on the 4^th of March. So every 14 days. All the time the concentration of Monty’s 8-16-18 was a 100 ml on 18 ltrs of water.

From the 18^th of March, two weeks after the third application, the test population still got Monty’s 8-16-18 but in a different dose, 20 ml per 18 ltrs of water. Again every 14 days.

The 25^th and the 30^th of March we picked tomatoes from the two populations. For each population the good tomatoes without blossom-end-rot and also the tomatoes which did have blossom-end-rot were weighted.

Percentage of good and bad tomatoes (affected by blossom-end-rot) from plants sprayed with Monty’s and plants sprayed with a different fertilizer. First harvest at the 25^th of March:

	Good tomatoes	Blossom-end-rot
Sprayed with Monty’s	41,7	58,3
Not sprayed with Monty’s	6,4	93,6

Percentage of good and bad tomatoes (affected by blossom-end-rot) from plants sprayed with Monty’s and plants sprayed with a different fertilizer. Second harvest at the 30^th of March:

	Good tomatoes	Blossom-end-rot
Sprayed with Monty’s	67,8	32,2
Not sprayed with Monty’s	27,9	72,1

Conclusion:

Monty’s has a considerable positive influence on the percentage of good, marketable tomatoes. The influence is highest at the first harvest. At the second harvest one can notice that the control population catches up but still the percentage of marketable tomatoes is highest on the plants which are sprayed with Monty’s.

One can expect that the control population will still improve a lot. Also the population sprayed with Monty’s will probably show some improvement at the third harvest (and later).

Earlier, before this test, we weighted good and bad tomatoes on tomato plants of the same cultivar which we sprayed with the same foliar application as the control population of the test.

At the third harvest these plants produced 82% of good, marketable tomatoes !

So it seems that the application of Monty’s in the first 10 weeks will be the most effective.