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Water potentials and Howard Dill

Vanessa:

I'm enjoying these plant physiology discussions, please take what I say as
constructive argument.  

First of all I want to say that I feel that myself and many other growers
are very open minded, contrary to what you believe.  If you took a survey
(if you could get everyone to fess up) we've all done some pretty
outlandish things to try to grow the big one.  My criticism is scientific
debate, not scepticism.   Mean while I want to say that neither this
discussion group  nor what goes on in most of our gardens revolves around
Howard Dill.   No offense intended.   Howard is very respected for what
he's done, but our growing practices are not in any way inhibited by what
Dill does or recomends.  

My philosophy on giant squash growing, and vegetable growing as well, is to
have a good genetic background, and then help nature do what it naturally
does best.  In this light I become more of a facilitator than playing an
acitve role in how the plant grows.   My goal is just to give the plant as
much of what it needs and keep the things the plant doesn't need away as
much as possible.  

Nonetheless I'm interested in wierd growing techniques, and open to this
friendly discussion:

My concern with your idea would be that you have the potential to get and
air lock in the xylem, unles you where able to do the insertion in a sealed
environment.  With the xlem having a negative vapor pressure as soon as you
puncture the xylem it will intake as much air as needed to equalize with
atmospheric pressure.  Then if you insert your wick or other injection
device there will be a vapor lock.   And any rose grower would attest to
the problems with a vapor lock when you cut xylem.  

My other arguement would be that I feel our plants are producing enough
photosythate.   This is only a feeling, and by no means scientifically
based.   When we have fruit that are splitting because they are growing too
fast, I'm lead to believe that the limiting factor in our giant endeavor is
the ability of the cells in the fruit to divide and expand.  And this I
think is mostly genetics, but also culturally related to a lesser extent.  
As a whole it just seems like we are already pushing the line of how  much
photosynthate we can force into the fruit.  

What leads you to believe that the developing fruits that we are growing
need more sucrose?  Do you think the plant is not producing enough?  Or are
you saying that the plant is not able to transport enough to the fruit fast
enough?  

A couple other concerns:

The introduction of pathogens into the plant is simply a concern, I imagine
you have some sort of sterile technique.  

The other is damaging the existing xylem.  I assume you are doing this
insertion somewhere near the fruit.   In this case there is only (X) amount
of xylem area in any given stem.   If you cut a fraction of that, I don't
know how much, but lets say 10%.  I don't know the number for pumpkins, but
you would agree that before you make the cut there was a certain amount of
water moving through the xylem.   My question for you is:  can you do
better with a wick, than the plant can absorb from 10% of its root system. 
 In theory most of the water the fruit gets is coming from the basal
direction through the xylem.  Most of the water of nutrients that the fruit
gets is coming through that one stem from the entire root system (which is
pretty large in competition plants)  Can your wick put as much water and
nutrient into those same xylem tubes as they plant was previously moving by
itself???
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