One of my broccoli seedlings looks kind of bad:
A fuzzy photo, but maybe you can see. The leaves have been turning purple and dying. The stem of this plant turned purple, then rotted out at the base.
The other three plants don’t look as bad as this one, but I can see their leaves are also starting to look sickly. I have been trying to figure out what’s wrong, but I have only guesses right now.
First guess is that this is some kind of fungus. Apparently there are a lot of different funguses that broccoli can get. And I did use some soil from last year that had sat around and got waterlogged, so it could be something kind of nasty grew in there. I potted up the three better looking plants (the one above is too far gone to save) and did a little experiment. Assuming there is some kind of fungus in the soil, I shook all the old dirt off the roots and rinsed them off. The best looking plant I re-potted in my homemade compost, the theory being that the multitude of beneficial bacteria and microorganisms in there will outcompete the damaging fungus and the plant will get healthier. The other two plants got potted up in some organic potting soil out of a bag that PK gave me, the theory being that it presumably has no funguses or bacteria in it, beneficial or otherwise. Hopefully, one of these strategies will work and I will have some broccoli this year.
After this I went back to the interweb and tried reading more about broccoli diseases. And realized that the other thing that could be happening is some kind of mineral deficiency, namely phosphorus, which apparently turns the leaves and stems of plants purple. So I broke out the ol’ fertilizer bucket. I don’t usually use any kind of fertilizer on my plants, I have this romantic idea that my super duper compost has everything any plant could want. I got this "natural" fertilizer from my farmer friend, so it must be OK. I put some in the dirt with the potted up broccoli, and now we wait and see how they do.
Today I also planted some new peas. The ones I planted last month didn’t come up – either the seeds were too old, or the weather was too cold for too long. The new ones are freshly-purchased this-year’s seeds that I soaked overnight, so I’m sure they will do great. I just hope I get some peas out of them before it gets too hot for them, it’s a little late for planting peas.
