Is There a Practical, Organic Way to Counteract Excess Nitrogen in My Garden Soil?

Reader Contribution by Staff
Published on June 19, 2008
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I’ve added too much nitrogen to my garden this year as is evident by lush plants but small or no fruit on my yellow squash and pole beans. Is there a practical, organic way to counteract this mistake? Should I simply let time pass, conduct a soil sample, and start over?

Nature’s plan for removing excess nitrogen is to harness the hunger of plants, and squash is often used as a “mop-up” crop in soil that is holding high levels of nitrogen. After a few weeks, your squash may exhaust the nitrogen supply and produce a good crop, so you may want to wait to see what happens.

Your beans’ prognosis is less promising because beans remove little nitrogen from the soil. With abundant nitrogen to fuel rampant growth of the vines, they are likely to produce a small crop very late in the season, and the soil will still be holding excess nitrogen. To set things right, put heavy feeding crops like cabbage, broccoli or spinach to work in the fall, or mulch over the site through winter, and plant it with sweet corn next year.

As for emergency measures, gypsum is sometimes suggested as a cure for this problem, but research shows that it has no special talents for dissolving nitrates and other salts. As a last-ditch effort, you can try root-pruning the plants by pushing a spade into the ground at a couple of points within each plant’s root zone – a trick used in flower gardening that sometimes shocks overfed plants into initiating blooms. 

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