Cabbage has purple leaves: why and what to do, how to fertilize

So, your cabbage leaves have acquired a purple hue, and you want to quickly understand what happened, how to proceed.

In fact, there are not many reasons for such "blue discoloration" of cabbage, more precisely, only one. Let's figure it out!

Causes of purple leaves in cabbage

You planted cabbage seedlings in open ground and after a while noticed that its leaves began to turn blue - to acquire a purple color. However, cabbage leaves can often turn purple (turn blue) even before the seedlings are planted in the ground.

A reddish purple coloration along the veins on the underside (back) of the leaf is a clear symptom. phosphorus starvation.

Interesting! If the color of the leaves becomes dark green with a bluish tint, while the edges of the leaves -
brown and brown (so to speak, "red cabbage leaves"), Then this speaks of lack of potassium.

Lack of nitrogen in the seedling period manifests itself in the form of a yellowish-green color of the lower leaves, and in
mature plants lead to formation at the edges
leaves pink or purple spots.

Now let's look at the reasons for the lack of phosphorus:

• The most common is commonplace in the soil lack of phosphorus, in other words, you initially forgot to bring in for digging phosphate fertilizers or have contributed too little.

Obviously, in this case, you need to urgently perform phosphorus feeding.

Note! As a rule, the leaves turn purple early cabbage, more precisely, at planted early... The fact is that despite the already relatively warm days, the nights are still cold and the ground cools down very much and does not warm up during the day. And despite the fact that cabbage is a cold-resistant crop, it can still "turn blue" (so to speak, "freeze").

• Therefore, an equally common cause is cold weather, in other words, too low soil and environmental temperature, due to which the root system of the plant is simply unable to assimilate the phosphorus in the soil.

What to do in this case? It is clear that you will hardly be able to raise the temperature, however, you can try to make a greenhouse on arches, in other words, a warm shelter for cabbage. Better yet, make a liquid top dressing with a warm solution of one of the phosphorus fertilizers. Moreover, you can try to carry out foliar spraying directly on the leaves, only some adhesive must be added to the solution (the same soap). Through the leaves, cabbage will be able to assimilate phosphorus even at relatively low temperatures.

• It often happens that there is a sufficient amount of phosphorusah, but he inaccessible (inaccessible) to the plantsince it was blocked (tied) by another nutrient due to increased or decreased acidity of the soil.

Phosphorus needed mobilize (= turn into plant-accessible form).

How to feed, what phosphorus fertilizers to use

You can feed the cabbage with the following quickly digestible phosphorus fertilizers:

• potassium monophosphate solution (phosphorus - 50%, potassium - 33%);

Moreover, you can carry out foliar dressing (spraying on the leaves), but always with an adhesive (add soap to the solution).

• to cook superphosphate infusion (preferably double) and shed at the root;

By the way! The site already has an article about how to prepare a fast-digesting superphosphate extract (preferably double).

• use any other fertilizer with a high phosphorus content (for example, Plantafol - 10% nitrogen, 54% phosphorus and 10% potassium).

However, if there is enough phosphorus in your soil, but it is blocked, then you can apply the drug Phosphatovitewhich contains bacteria that convert insoluble compounds of phosphorus (as well as potassium) into a form available to plants.

Important! If you do not feed the phosphorus, then the head of cabbage can become small and loose, in other words, the lack of phosphorus will negatively affect the yield.

Features of the variety

If your cabbage looks like the picture below, then everything is in order - this is such a variety, more precisely, its red-headed variety.

Well, now you know why cabbage leaves change color, what are the causes of this problem (lack of nutrition, namely phosphorus), and what can and should be done in this situation. Good luck!

Video: purple leaves of cabbage - what to do

By the way! Also very often acquire purple color leaves of tomato seedlings... In general, the reasons are similar.