harveyc

Sometimes I use KMag and lately I've been using potassium nitrate, both from a agricultural supplier. My native soil is very high in phosphorus so I don't bother with that except for potted plants (or seedling plants in the garden, etc.).

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Richard

Information on potassium nitrate and a section on "How to Make a Custom Fertilizer Mix" has been added to Info:Fertilizer - Bananas Wiki

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ewitte

IDK I just got 2 3lb bags from them the day after you posted this. I would have ordered 20-5-30 from plantsthatproduce if I had read more before ordering. Still 15-5-30 should help out as I wasn't really using ANY fertilizer

Richard

Ewitte -- I agree 100%! Just about any fertilizer will be an improvement over none. If you want to increase the proportion of Nitrogen you are providing, check out the example "supplementing Banana Fuel with a nitrogen source" on the Wiki page Info:Fertilizer - Bananas Wiki . You don't have to use Fish Emulsion -- just plug in the N-P-K of any nitrogen source you happen to have.

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rscotth

Hello everyone- new guy here from Palm Coast with my first post.
Someone posted earlier about fertilizer from Wellspring. Below is an address to their ebay store where you can buy their banana fertilizer. It's the initial shipping charge that is a bit hard to swallow but each additional bag seems to knock the shipping up by only $.50 so buying multiple just makes sense.
RSH

BANANA FERTILIZER- 3 lbs. Make your bananas happy! - eBay (item 190260777834 end time Jul-16-09 14:44:04 PDT)

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Bob

Thanks and welcome to the org rscotth.

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OrganicBananac

Liquid molasses (blackstrap pref.) is very high in (K) Potassium, as well as magnesium,calcium and iron. Plus it feeds the beneficial microbes in the soil. Kelp meal is very good as well, and do not worry or be concerned about the low (K) value... its good stuff and has loads of trace minerals and hormones. Greensand has (K) value, but it is extremely slow release and I would rely on it more in the form of micronutrients than a potassium source.
Go organic!

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Richard

There is a USDA (and historically California) Certified Organic potassium supplement in liquid form. It is 25% potash suspended in citric acid. Some manufacturers refer to it as "liquid potassium", others correctly as potassium citrate, and some as "potassium in citric acid chelate".

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OrganicBananac

Interesting Richard,
Do you have a name for this product by chance?
Off the top of my head, EarthJuice has a Meta-K that is 0-0-11 i believe.
Not speaking from experience using it, just remembered seeing this product.

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jfern

Hello Organicbananac Welcome To The Forum. You Are Right About The Qualities Of The Molasses But Furthermore I Want To Add Something And Is A Experience That Lives With A Banana Producer. This Equivocal Product Producer And I Am Applied Weed Killer To Its Banana And Logically Recomende Was Damage But Tapeworm Money Not To Buy Amino Acids To Fight The Stress Caused To The Then Plantation Him Molasses And That Replacement To The Amino Acids That Sell In The Agroservice. Furthermore He Is Logical That Activates The Microorganisms In The Ground Because The Sugar That Contains Activates I Verify It To Plaster With The Organic Foliar Fertilizer Elaboration That I Elaborate And I Add Molasses To Them, I Wait For This Helps Ours Friends.

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Richard

I carry it in my online store under "Potassium Supplement". Otherwise I have not seen it online, but often in agricultural supply stores (for commercial farmers) and in hydroponic stores. For example, a local hydroponic store carries "liquid potassium" in quart & gallon bottles.

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OrganicBananac

Comfrey is a great soil ammendment, its properties may be very beneficial for bananas.

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Richard

Dry, composted Comfrey has an N-P-K of about 0.25 - 0.25 - 1.5. The potash content is about half that of dry, composted alfalfa which is 2 - 0 - 3. Comfrey has the advantage that it has a much longer life span and much greater output per shrub than alfalfa. The seeds are invasive, so take care when it flowers. As the sole source of potassium for a fruiting banana, use 60 to 100 pounds of dry composted Comfrey leaf per year.

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OrganicBananac

Using only comfrey would be much like trying to live on iceburg lettuce alone.
Lets use some common sense here. Thanks.

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Gardener972

I wonder if using potassium vitamins that I take would work? I make my own sports drink by breaking open a potassium capsule and putting it in a powdered drink mix along with a bit of salt. Why wouldn't it work on a banana? The capsules are 99 mg. each... how many would it take do you suppose????

BananaBoo

Pill's probably potassium chloride, AKA muriate of potash. I imagine that would be a VERY expensive way to put the potassium on a plant. And the plants don't need the chlorine.

Don't know if your 99 mg is the dose of K or the dose of KCl. Assume it is K.

99mg / 1000 mg per gram =0.099 grams of K
0.099 grams / 1000 grams per kg = 0.000099 kg of K
.000099 kg * 2.2 Lb per kg = 0.000218257677 Lb of K
1 Lb / 0.000218257677 Lb of K per pill = 4583 pills

Someone check my math I don't have my glasses on.

4583 pills per pound of K which is probably close 'nuff to 1.5 Lbs of potash (KO2). (Richard says bananas need 1.5 Lbs of potash a year.)

How much will 4583 pills per year per plant cost you?

Cheap way to get potassium chloride for gardens is the "sodium free" water softener salt. Look for the white bag. Read the label. But look for potassium nitrate at a fertilizer store. Kill 2 birds with one stone and no chlorine.

Richard

True, what other sources would you use to provide 1 to 1.5 lbs net potash per plant per year?

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permaculturekidd

I call moringa leaf as a dieback perrenial mulch source high in K with little input other than minimal nitrogen that a legume could provide.

Richard

O.K., so that's about 40 lbs of Moringa tree leaf plus 40 lbs of Comfrey leaf (both dried) per banana plant per year. By the way, these plants don't manufacture the potash from thin air, so you still have to feed the Moringa and Comfrey potash so that they can pass it on to the bananas. Further, once the bananas uptake the potassium you can't recover more than about 1/4 of it, so you are operating at a perpetual loss. It would be much simpler to feed the bananas a mineral-source potash in the first place.

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permaculturekidd

Well its been mentioned that using banana peels for potassium was useful; moringa has atleast twice the amount of potassium as a whole banana so wouldn't it be quite abit less than 40lbs?