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Fwd: plant communication

Dan,
I read your communication about distance on the pumpkin vine. What you say
may be correct if you agree with Norm Craven's thoughts about pruning your
pumpkin vine in a Xmas tree like fashion. By the same token though you could
say that really tall people aren't very smart because their brain is so far
from their heart compared to shorter people. Has anyone ever really done any
kind of a study on how best to prune pumpkin vines because I wondered about
Craven's thoughts but also heard that Paula Zehr had a huge plant supporting
the growth of her pumpkin?
Marv Meisner in Central PA
---------------------
Forwarded message:
From:	dgs@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dan Shapiro)
To:	pumpkins@athenet.net
Date: 97-05-27 12:39:43 EDT

Does anybody know how much of the root and leaf system actually feeds a
given pumpkin?  I would expect that there is some distance, say 10-15 ft,
beyond which the pumpkin and the roots/leaves are simply not in
communication. No fluid flow, no transmittal of nutrients, nothing.
If you lopped off everything further away, your pumpkin would grow just as
big.

One piece of supporting evidence is that fact that 700 lb pumpkins can come
off of 450 sq ft plants - you don't need more leaf mass under some growing
conditions.   The rule of thumb "don't grow green" gets at the same
intuition.

Any plant biologists out there want to run a test?  Add a radioactive
tracer (or a powerful dye) to your water, apply in a specific spot, wait a
few hours (days?), walk 10 ft and measure.

If we knew the answer to this question we could do a better job pruning our
vines.

	Dan Shapiro
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