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Phoenix Az

Today I woke up and my boyton looked a bit wilted. A few hours later the plant looks completely dead! what could cause this? The ground was sizzling and foamy. I think mabey my nighbor put something on it to kill it. Could it be some thing beside the idiut nighbor?

6/24/2003 8:09:06 PM

canal winchester ohio

Is there a dog around??

6/24/2003 8:23:33 PM

New Brunswick

What kind of neighbour do you have????

6/24/2003 9:15:39 PM

[email protected]

Sizzling & foamy? What if anything did it smell like? Scoop up a small quantity of soil & place it in a baggy quick before it rains. You may need to have it anylized.

That's about as low as it gets if this is a case of sabotage.

I can think of no natural cause for this condition.

Steve

6/24/2003 9:33:14 PM

Kansas

strange.........

6/24/2003 11:01:59 PM

Paradise Mountain, New York

If the ground around the plant was sizzling and foaming, I would say someone put something on the plant

6/24/2003 11:24:58 PM

Pulaski Tn [email protected]

sounds like dow scrubbing bubbles to me..

6/24/2003 11:38:46 PM

Arizona

It sounds to me like “lye”. Did this happen after you watered your plant? Lye is a vary strong acid that will eat at anything organic (roots, cotton shirt, SKIN). That stuff is real bad, you can get 2nd or 3rd degree burns from it. In the dry powdered form it is harmless but once you get water on it, it will easily eat though a metal spoon. You think no one could get this stuff, wrong you can get it at any grocery store. Just my two cents.

BTW if it is Lye, don't smell it! Lye’s by produced is hydrogen, that’s not the best stuff to be breathing it.

Maybe it is just soap.

Jeff

6/25/2003 12:17:07 AM

porterville,california usa

baking soda will make foam when it gets wet if you`re using a foliar fert. blew the tip off of my sprayer yesterday. last year one of my best went from 3 feet high to 2" high in 6 hours. nothing over 2" above the ground. i still don`t know why.

6/25/2003 1:20:46 AM

Phoenix Az

Where could I get the soil tested?

6/25/2003 2:48:05 AM

Utah

I use UMass for my soil testing-
http://www.umass.edu/plsoils/soiltest.html

there are lots of other places around.
Your local county extention could tell you if there is
any place close to you that does testing for soil and or plant.

6/25/2003 9:44:18 AM

Sydney, Australia

David,
Sorry to hear about your plant. :( And it was going so well. If it was your neighbour a soil test may reveal the culprit. Look out on the BP.com seed distribution as you soon will be able to get some more 950.4 seeds. There will be 100 packs of 2 available soon. Hope your 840 picks up the pace and grows you a very big one in your first attempt........ Ben

6/25/2003 5:17:28 PM

syracuse, ny

man, 950.4 seeds!
i swear i will be growing it next year, as well as whatever seed is the (Mike Frantz) CONTEST seed!

6/25/2003 5:21:22 PM

Garden State Pumpkins

drano foams real good...when in contact with organic matter.

6/25/2003 6:27:05 PM

[email protected]

Not just any soil testing lab can perform this test. A standard soil test might very well idicate the use of a strong acid or alkaline material. But we won't know what that material was. I am occasionaly called on to test dying trees (property disputes, blocked vista or driveway view, cheating spuses, that sort of thing). Too often we find there is a potential reason for accidental (or intentional) herbicide damage, The lab I use for this sort of testing charges $175 for each element I want to test for. Then we get a positive ir negative result. Needless to say, I do a lot of sleuthing around before I make an advisory statement.

Doesn't Drano contain Lye? I'm thinking that could be the case here. If so, then a radical pH change would be taking place. So perhaps the standard soil test would be OK in this situation.

Steve

6/25/2003 9:54:17 PM

Pulaski Tn [email protected]

tremor..what line of work are you in?????

6/25/2003 11:29:30 PM

Montoursville, PA

Unfortunately without pictures or witness to the act one has absolutely nothing to work with in any man's court. The testing without any way to prove anything factually would then be wasted money. Talk is cheap but there isn't anything worthy of testing. So what would one do with the expensive test report? What possible good could come of the proof that some foreign chemical was put on the plant?
...Most likely be very inexpensive to remove a few shovels full of soil and bring in some new. A bale of peat moss would replace your bucket full or two to get rid of a posible ugly situation.

6/25/2003 11:36:49 PM

Chico, Ca

Hey folks Lye is Sodium Hydroxide. It IS NOT ACID as some-one had stated. The pH is around 13- 14. Very basic.It also known as "Caustic" or Caustic soda. It is absolutely not to be underestimated in its ability to cause severe skin, mucous membrane,and eye damage. We use this material extensively as a cleaning agent in the brewing industry. Alot of time the cleaning version as opposed to the "drain"
version is also chelated and or chloronated or mixed with very strong hydrogen peroxide to boost its oxidizing ability. The liquid is used for cleaning in the 120-170 f range. It should never be mixed with any ACID as it will react very quickly and explosively.

If you see foaming in your soil it probably is not lye.
sodium hydroxide does not foam by itself. We have to add a foaming agent when we use it in hand cleaning operations to see where we cleaning. The automated cleaning systems have problems if its foams up.

Sorry to hear about your plant and Good luck in your detective work. If you have any acid/basic/ pH questions feel free to ask.

Robert

6/26/2003 12:13:20 PM

Chester Co., PA

Growing AG pumpkins in Phoenix is still an experiment. These growers have been dealing with temps of over 110 degrees for weeks at a time and nighttime lows above 90. This is about as far from orange zone climate as you can get. Is it possible to see a picture of this foaming? Could it be some kind of vine and root fungus that has gone bezerk in the wet soil at these high temps? The leaves of normal ornamental plants and trees will literally 'cook' on the plant in July.

7/2/2003 12:58:14 PM