Re: Fertilizer Mixture

Hi

You did an excellent job and I would imagine several on this mailing list will
thank you for this answer.  I have always been of the opinion
that more is better.  I just sent out an E-mail to the Group inquiring as to the
toxic range for Atlantic Giants.

Thanks again for taking the time to break this down like you did.

Ron in WV

Pumkinguy wrote:

> Ron,
>    Normally you keep the same concentration whether you are putting on 1
> gallon or 500 gallons. 500 gallons would be applied to an area that is 500
> times bigger. Lets say you were watering a tomato plant with Miracle Gro. You
> might find that the plant gets a good drink with a half gallon of solution. It
> would do no good to water the plant with 500 gallons of water\ fertilizer
> solution, it would float away. That may be a little bit of a ridiculous
> example, but anyway. Lets go back to how a root basically works and why it is
> counterproductive, if not deadly, to your plant to over fertilize. A plant
> will only take up a certain amount of inorganic fertilizer ions(salts). You
> can't force the root to take up 3 times the amount of fertilizer than it
> needs. How does a root know , how much fertilizer water to take up? A tiny
> root hair is made up of tiny cells that act like a membrane. A membrane will
> allow water and fertilzer ions to pass through it and get into the plant, if
> conditions are right. The ionic concentration must be higher inside the root
> cell than outside (in the soil) in order for water to flow from the soil into
> the root. So water will flow from a less salty to a more salty area. Now here
> is a real example for you. Lets say you had a condom that was not made out of
> latex (non permeable)....lets say you had a condom made out of a semi
> permeable membrane and you filled it with a solution of 10 tablespoons per
> gallon of salt water. Now put that condom into a jar of water that only had 1
> tablespoon per gallon of salt in it. You would have a condom filled with very
> salty water immersed in a jar of weak salt water. Water would flow from the
> less salty water in the jar, through the membrane into the condom. Now if you
> switched things around and put the weak salt water solution in the condom and
> immersed it in a jar of very salty water, just the opposite would
> happen.....water would flow out of the condom into the jar. Always, flow goes
> from less salty to more salty. Now that root cell behaves like the condom and
> water flows into the root cell the same way. So now we take a watering can
> with 20 tablespoons per gallon and soak the roots. You have surrounded the
> root with saltier water than there is inside the root. The root says  NO WAY
> MAN!!!! I'm not going to suck up that salty garbage. So if you overfertilizer
> to the point of toxicity, less water will be taken up by the plant or it might
> not take up any water at all and croak. A plant may wilt when you've
> fertilized the hell out of it because the roots refuse to take up large
> quantities of the salty stuff. Now back to the question of 1 tablespoon per
> gallon or two, etc. 2 tablespoons per gallon is pretty strong. Sometimes you
> are better off to use 1 tablespoon per gallon and water two times with the
> weaker mixture. Or a half a tablespoon per gallon every time you water. A
> plant will like it better, if it receives a consistant low dose, rather than
> getting a big jolt of fertilizer every two weeks. It all gets back to the old
> soil test. If you have loaded up your soil with preplant manure and granular
> fertilizer, you may need no fertilizer and just plain water. Hope I didn't get
> too far out with my examples.
>                                                pumkinguy@aol.com
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@mallorn.com with the
> message text UNSUBSCRIBE PUMPKINS



---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@mallorn.com with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE PUMPKINS
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index