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Nitrogen deficiency

Spotted yellowing leaves on your plants? It might be a sign you have a nitrogen deficiency in your soil.

My fennel isn’t looking very healthy this year. Its leaves are yellowing, and the plants aren’t as bushy as they were last year. What’s going on?

yellowing nitrogen deficiency

nitrogen deficiency

We have had some very dry spells this summer, but this shouldn’t be a problem for fennel, a plant accustomed to flourishing in dry Mediterranean soils. Its tap root should be drawing water out well.

What is far more likely is that this is a case of nitrogen deficiency, which causes a yellowing in leaves. It is a sign of how poor our soil is, and a call to action.

It isn’t really a surprise that the soil is so poor, given this herbaceous bed was cut out last year, and given we had very little compost to add to it when we started out. And the soil itself had been churned up by the digger that the previous owner used when he landscaped the garden, which means it is very poor subsoil, though I’m not sure the topsoil is much good either.

nitrogen deficiency

So the only thing to do is to feed the plants with liquid comfrey and chicken feed over the summer and then in the winter mulch the entire bed with well-rotted manure. I will re-mulch in March with compost and hopefully this will begin a proper process of improving the soil.

Take our series of Better Garden tutorials on improving your soil here.

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