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Macomb County

There is exciting research going-on to find the answer to everyone's biggest question, "Why are organics so much better?" Especially on the University level and especially on the University level in my old home state of Calif. And the reasons organics are so much better is very easy to understand. A plant's roots not only absorb nutrition from the soil, but re-release it's unusable portion back into the soil.
To be further "digested" by the soil biology into plant usable forms and be re-absorbed by the plant.

Now if a plant's roots absorb 80% usable compounds and 20% unusable salts, you can see the tremendous advantage it has over a plant whose roots are absorbing 80% unusable salts and only 20% usable compounds. The 80% unusable salts plant has to expend much more of it's time and energy into re-cycling back through the soil biology to become even. Only the plant that absorbed 80% to begin with has by then jump far out ahead of it.

Salts have "ium" endings. Sodium, Potassium, Lithium, Cadmium, etc. Have you ever seen an AG plant whose leaves with so bloated with N? Add a lot of water and a lot of salt and you get water retention. Why it's not inaccurate to say such a plant is like a person with very high blood pressure. You know the illnesses such a person can have, that's how bad off a plant is too, health wise.

1/4/2009 8:25:02 AM

Macomb County

Have you ever seen a stunted plant? Too much salt and not enough water and you get shrinkage and "burn". The cells simply die from dehydration and turn crispy and brown. Go limp.

This explains why Heavy Hitters have grown big pumpkins using an 1/8 or 1/4 teaspoon Miracle grow per day to everyone else's teaspoon per week. Even though it's inorganic, the soil biology is much better able to "digest" an 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon at a time, then 1 teaspoon at once before the plant's roots absorb it as unusable salts.

It may not sound like that big of a deal on the surface, until you realize when you set a pumpkin, the race is on. The plant's metabolism switches to sending it's reserves to the fruit. However, if the plant spent most it's vegatative time and energy trying to recycle them back through the soil, it has low reserves to draw on at set. Where a plant that spent it's vegatative period sucking up huge amounts of usable compounds starts unleashing a huge reserve.

The real difference between a 400 lber. and a 1000 lber.? Given equal genetics? The 400 lber. simply ran out of steam, exhausted it's reserves. It never had enough reserves to go the distance.

1/4/2009 8:25:43 AM

Macomb County

Once a pumpkin sets, further fertilizing has no effect. This explains why bigger pumpkins are set further out on the vine. Every pumpkin you call to the next gives the plant that much more time to build-up it's reserves.

Of course, the beauty of organics, manure, compost, etc. are the biology has broken everything down, "digested" it, into a lot more plant usable compounds. Growers who work their patches in the Fall and Spring simply have so much more plant usable compounds come time to put their plants in the ground. The soil biology has had time to work it's magic.

You can't fertilizer a plant with a set on it, but you can do akin to giving it Plant Sports Drinks. Compost Tea comes to mind. It's all plant usable compounds. Another is slow release, like Fish. A plant's roots can't absorb it, so it stays in the root zone where the soil biology breaks it down slowly and directly into plant usable compounds. Like a slow brewing compost tea.

Now if you're thinking, "But hey, Potassium is a salt and it's well know to increase the size and weight of a pumpkin in the later stages". That's true, but think about it.
Add enough to overcome the soil biology and the plant's roots absorb it as a salt.
Which causes a pumpkin to retain more water, resulting in thicker walls because it fully hydrates them and more weight in water. I'm not a chemical scientist, so I can't tell you why Potassium is the one exception to the rule as far as fruit goes.

1/4/2009 8:26:17 AM

Macomb County

If you're asking the same question I was, "Why would a plant take in compounds it can't use in the form they're in, even at the expense of it's own health and life?", the answer is simple. Fertilizing a plant is unnatural for a plant. In a plant's natural setting, where it sprouts is what it gets. And it's not going to wait for the soil biology to do it's thing at the risk of a neighboring Oak Tree sending out roots and sucking the fertility out of the spot it's growing in. Only to find itself out of reserves and dead by mid-season from starvation.

Strictly as a survival mechanism, a plant will absorb the unusable portion and hold it in storage for it's own use. As it re-releases it into the soil and re-absorbs it after the soil biology "digests" it for the plant that way.

That's why a soil test needs to be looked at both ways. High N-P-K can also mean devoid of a healthy soil biology. Little of the N-P-K is being "digested". Where, as we know, an organic can have a low N-P-K reading, actual fertilizer salts, per huge volume. However, with it's 1-.5-1 reading, make plant growth and yield explode. It's almost all broken down, plant usable compounds.

Growers on the site almost had it right a couple years ago with the Molasses fad. Cane sugar and honey work as well. However, only broken down by the soil biology into simple sugars, the building blocks of carbohydrates. What do body builders do during intense work-outs? They drink "Carbo Boost" sports drinks to fuel higher energy reserves they're rapidly depleting.

1/4/2009 8:26:57 AM

Macomb County

Therefore, as a plant sports drink after a pumpkin has set means as a soil drench, so the soil biology can quickly break it down or in compost tea, where the microbes do it. However, to do things like spray raw sugar on your leaves is to invite mold, like PM to infect your plants, they just love it undigested too.

Based-on this information, I can see a lot of growers experiencing their personal best at the end of the '09 season. The art and the genius, of course, is how well someone is applies the information. They've cracked the mystery, but are still a long way off from figuring-out the ideal levels and applications. It's going to be fun to see who has the greenest thumbs from now on.

1/4/2009 8:27:33 AM

Ohio

ummm..yea..ok

1/4/2009 9:45:58 AM

brooks you got any more -miracle of biblical proportions grow

1/4/2009 10:46:48 AM

Ohio

DON.... To tell you the truth... I Cant believe I wasted 5 minutes of this guy talking in circles...lol been easier on his fingers by just typing ' dont over or under water your plants and dont use alot of salts,'

1/4/2009 11:05:28 AM

Rapid City, SD

wow.......i need a nap now

1/4/2009 1:37:06 PM

nOVA sCOTIA

Brooks, i could fall asleep reading a fortune cookie. Do you have any idea how i feel right now.

1/4/2009 2:55:36 PM

Macomb County

Great, the challenge is always to post and inform better, clearer and more accurately then. It's just there hasn't been a lot of new breakthroughs in plant growing in the last 10 years and I was hoping there were others who could add, clarify and/or expand on it is all.

1/5/2009 4:49:04 AM

Farmville, Virginia ([email protected])

Yep, I think Brooks clarified it wonderfully!!!

" dont over or under water your plants and dont use alot of salts,"

Now THAT I can understand! lol

1/5/2009 7:11:45 PM

Minnesota

Mycorrihizae is popular now, alot of growers swear by it.

1/5/2009 8:05:21 PM

Rhode Island

the article was a good read especially fore the new growers.

i dont agree that heavy hitter use miricle grow but i do agree that less is sometimes more when applying anything to the plant and/or soil

excess salts are a problem as we all know.for that reason we do not use chemical fertalizers.

pap

1/6/2009 7:36:53 AM