Humic Acid

Question from Maureen:
How often do you recommend applying humic acid? I did purchase from Peaceful Valley. I put it in my veggie garden before planting seeds. Thank you!

Answer from Pat:
Humic acid seems to have a strong effect as a planting fluid. It affects the soil by unlocking nutrients already there but also it stimulates the production of roots, making plants have larger root systems with a greater proliferation of roots. It is most effective when used the way you did, prior to planting or while putting in transplants. If I were you I would apply it once again as a liquid two or three weeks after germination when plants are up and growing. I have never used it on carrots and am not quite sure what it would do to them.

You do not say what climate zone you live in or what variety of apple you have. It is possible that vagueries of the weather failed to provide the tree with the temperatures it needed in order to bloom.When apple trees that usually bloom fail to bloom or when trees that never bloom are suddenly seen to bloom it is usually a result of day and night temperatures being different from what the plant needs in order to bloom or from vagueries in the weather. For example if you have a low-chill variety, a sudden frost at the wrong time of year might kill buds instead of stimulating their growth. Or a variety that needs winter chill in order to bloom might not have had adequate chill in order to bloom. Very often when apple trees don’t bloom it’s a result of trying to grow a ‘Delicious’ apple in the wrong zone. These are still sold to the unwary and some gardeners who don’t know better sometimes buy mail-order trees that are all wrong for their climate.

The other possibility is that something else happened to damage the buds, such as a borer or other pest eating out the bud before they could open. These are other mechanical reasons, for example, flower buds might have been cut off by bad pruning. To give you an example with apple trees. Apple trees bloom on spur wood. If someone came along who was ignorant of this and cut off all the spurs in winter then you would get no bloom or so little that it would not be noticeable.

There is one final reason that is often the case when a fruit tree does not bloom and that is when the tree has been pruned so heavily or when the tree was given so much nitrogen fertilizer that all it wanted to do was to grow and it put on a whole lot of green growth at the expense of flowers. Be careful not to over-fertilize deciduous fruit trees by giving them too much nitrogen since they will sometimes grow much green growth and many leaves instead of flowering.

I have heard of trees failing to bloom when they were growing in heavy clay and rains rotted some roots. Root rot can cause a tree to drop off the flower buds.

There is not much you can do now to stimulate flowering since flower buds should have already been made but if you have a low-chill variety such as Anna it might bloom later on in the year. You could try soaking the ground under the tree with a solution of 0-10-10 but I doubt it would help.