Help! I have a couple questions.

[nassrif90]

I ended up buying that Espoma Tomato Tone. I will let you know if I see any results. I also bought some worm castings and top dresses with that also along with my hydrolysate.

I transplanted some squash and cucumbers and used the tomato tone and worm castings when I plantrd them and they seem to have responded well and are growing.

 

[nassrif90]

Chuck is right.
Woodchip is great as a mulch, on top of the soil, as it suppresses weed by two methods; 1) by denying light so fewer seeds germinate, 2) by nitrogen sequestration, which means that annual weed seeds germinate & starve due to nitrogen deficiency. As a mulch that's great, because the sequestration is only over a very thin layer where the soil and woodchips interface, & your plant roots will be out of that range, so fine, but if it is mixed in, the nitrogen shortage can go deeper and cause problems.
Add some nettle tea or urine diluted 10 water to 1 urine & some hen's blood, in order to help the nitrogen levels. Either of the first two will give you a quick fix, whilst the hen's blood will help in the longer term.
The woodchip uses the nitrogen in the decomposition process.

So I ended up buying some blood meal that is a 12-0-0 and top dressed the jalapeno and serrano plants that were having trouble yesterday and today I go out and they have black marks along the stem. Is this normal? Is it nitrogen burn?

They were not like that before I top dressed them.

 

[headfullofbees]

That just looks like pigment, although the photo is a bit blurred.
Keep us posted on development.

 

[Chuck]

So I ended up buying some blood meal that is a 12-0-0 and top dressed the jalapeno and serrano plants that were having trouble yesterday and today I go out and they have black marks along the stem. Is this normal? Is it nitrogen burn?

They were not like that before I top dressed them.

View attachment 64911

Yes, it is normal. Sometimes there is a dark purple area on the stem, sometimes black. Don't be surprised if some of the fruit has dark streaks on it too..

 

[nassrif90]

That just looks like pigment, although the photo is a bit blurred.
Keep us posted on development.

That picture might be a bit better.

I thought that there had to be a correlation between the blood meal and the black marks since they werent there before that.

 

[Chuck]

completely normal