If you are watering every day, you may be over-watering, which leaches nitrogen out of the soil and can cause your plant to have yellow leaves.

Here’s a photo of my tomato “blooms” You can probably see how I first confused it with blooms, rather than bright yellow new growth.

All my tomatoes are this way, AFAIK. I just a few days ago added about 1/3 a shovel of compost to each plant, around the stem, except one, when I ran out of compost. I’ll take a look at that inadvertent “control” plant tomorrow to see if it’s yellow-tipped.

In the photo, the compost shows as black over the red wood-chip mulch.

I just went out in the dark and the rain with a flashlight. It does not seem to have the yellow new growth that all the others have. So at the moment, I"m suspecting the compost!

Earlier this evening I mixed up some water-soluble fertilizer with water, well duh! and put it on 3 of my plants. Hopefully in a few days I can see the difference that makes, if any.

Wow! That photo sure seems to nail it.

Now why would adding compost and watering it in cause an iron deficiency?

If anything, the compost with lots of used coffee grounds in it ought to make the soil acidic, not alkaline.

Tomorrow I’ll do some poking around with my new pH meter and see if that tells me anything helpful.

And I’ll look for something to add iron, if necessary. Ironite?? — Update — Seeing the next post and the links therein about heavy metals in fertilizers based on mine tailings etc., I guess NOT!

I learn something frequently here on Folia, and today is no exception!

Thanks for that info on iron fertilizers!

An update – My tomatoes don’t have any noticeable additional yellow new-growth. It’s now more white and somewhat brown. Then again, the Tomatoes don’t seem to have much if any growth at all. And in fact, my whole vegetable gardens and my flower gardens seem to be just sitting there, waiting for what, I don’t know.

So several days ago I used a hand-crank fertilizer spreader to spread some urea all over the gardens just before several days of rain was forecast. The rains have come, OK, so it’s too soon to know the results of my fertilizing.

I was running out of patience just watching nothing seem to happen at all! I’m hopeful that eventually my composting will help my gardens. But for now I want some flowers to grow and to bloom and for my vegetables to grow and to produce!

I hate hurry up and wait.

not sure exactly when/how I want to apply it again, should a batch complete the hot part of the process.

In a perfect world, you would like your pile to heat up. Get to a temperature to kill weed seeds and then to slowly cool down. After it has cooled down a bit, empty it from our composter and let it sit on the ground for a week or two until the temperature of the pile is plus/minus 5 degrees of the outside temperature and it smells earthy. In a perfect world, while the pile is resting worms will repopulate the pile and start to grow really big. The longer you let it sit the more worms you will find. The piles which I let cool for 2 plus months are filled with worms.

After this cooling off period you can apply the pile to active beds.

Another method is…. As fall approaches and you garden is winding down, build a pile on top of your current bed. It will heat up and cool down well before you are ready to sow your next crop.

Here is the life cycle of my most current compost pile. It is called 2012c because it is the third pile this year. I make a lot of compost because I really subscribe to the “feed the soil, not the plant” mantra from years of reading OG magazine.