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GOOD Morning brothers and sisters, can you stand pain? Pain, abject, horrible, excruciating pain, unrelenting, unbearable, unspeakable pain. With each slash across Jesus' back with every muscle – burning step up golgotha's hill our savior received the punishment for our sin. In our lets – make –everything – okay world we often look at sin and wonder what's the big deal? After all, our sin isn't so bad, If we lie a little or cheat just a bit – what's the harm? If we gossip or use bad language a few times – whom will it hurt? What so bad about sin. Its bad because of what it put Jesus through. Yes, our sin was the reason for the torment Jesus suffered as he made his way to the cross-and as he hung on that cross and ultimately died a horrific death. Just remember, if we continue to sin, we are turning our backs on Jesus and his pain. As true Christians can we do that? Lets pray: See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down, did ever such love and sorrow meet or thorns compose so rich a crown? Jesus took our sin so that we might have his salvation.

Our topic We will continue this week with Potassium. This is the third major nutrient, it resembles phosphorus. In being absorbed by the soil clay, but it is less strongly held, and can be leached from very sandy soils if they are over manured. In contrast to phosphorous it is often deficient in Sandy soils and very often abundant in clays since it is a constituent of clay minerals. Crops will absorb a large amount of potassium during the early stages of growth, and on rock soil this can be considerably more than the crops requirement. This “luxury” uptake is wasteful when the crop is harvested green as in silage kale, or vegetable crops, on the other hand, in cereal corps or root crops most of the potassium returns to the soil with the levels or by leaching from the leaves. Basically, potassium is “cent” by the soil and after repayment it is ready for loan to the next crop.

Root crops are highly responsive to potash fertilizer while cereals are less responsive unless the land is deficient, most areas here in Bohol are very deficient in potash. The symptoms of the deficiency fast appears on the older leaves of the crop, initially it appears as chlorotic spots near the leaf tip and margin developing into a negrosis between the leaf veins all fruit crops in particular respond to potash. It has been noted that in coconuts it encourages the tree to produce more flowers which in turn means the tree will produce more nuts. While it is important to supply adequate potash, it must be remembered that over-generous applications can be harmful, for example, germinating seeds may be damaged unless the fertilizer is thoroughly incorporated into the soil. Excessive potash can accentuate a deficiency of magnesium and also to some extent boron deficiency.

We will now move on to magnesium, this is our next major nutrient. Although a major element, it is required by crops in considerably smaller amounts than nitrogen or potassium and it does not become strongly absorbed in the soil like phosphorus, consequently, it is never necessary to apply magnesium to every crop and the majority of the soils have reserves large enough to make it unnecessary. Magnesium is slowly lost from the soil in drainage water as well as in crops, so soils without large reserves gradually become deficient.

The depletion will be accelerated if the supply of farm yard manures is cut off. Sensitivity to magnesium deficiency varies greatly between crops. Root crops are very susceptible as are many horticultural crops, on deficient soils magnesium must be applied regularly. The symptoms of magnesium deficiency are very characteristic and consist of yellowing between the veins mainly on the older leaves, the yellow areas turn brown when the deficiency is severe. The occurrence of magnesium deficiency symptoms can be transitory and doe's not always follow than applications of magnesium is necessary, damage to the root system can induce the symptoms, and yellowing due to temporary magnesium deficiency is quite common under adverse soil conditions. This occurs during the early stages of growth before the surface feeding roots have properly developed. It must be remembered that the amount of available potassium in the soil affects the ability of plants to extract magnesium. Excessive amounts reduce its uptake, and it is possible to induce or aggravate magnesium deficiency by the liberal use of potash. Fruit trees suffer quite a lot if magnesium deficiency is severe in the soil. But this can be overcome by spraying with epsom salts. Well friends next week we will look at the last remaining major nutrients. I hope you have found this series interesting. Until next week, Take care, see you then.