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Post by mikuláš on Apr 29, 2010 5:10:11 GMT -10
Michael-- Thanks, that was helpful information. And regardless of the instrument you used to measure pH, the BOWS statement corroborates that. Rich-- Absolutely. However, if you use RO water, or if you live in a region with relatively "good" water, then pH is one of the few water issues we have left to talk about I've never had any of the streaking you mention, but you do make a good point. It sounds like even before you noticed this your tap water caused your plants problems? As for rainwater dissolving/reacting with CO2 (and perhaps other things) as it falls, that makes me wonder if installing an aquarium air pump in my water tank would mimic that effect. Completely unnecessary, of course, but just fun to think about.
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 27, 2010 12:07:24 GMT -10
You're right, boris -- rainwater is a mysterious thing, and I may have indeed inadvertently been fertilizing my plant. I have photos of it, but they are really bad, and I'd have to scan them to show, which might only make things worse...Interestingly, I never fertilized the plant, only fed it Campanotus ants. Not to sound pompous by quoting myself , but just a few minutes ago I learned something that surprised me: I know that the pH of pure water is 7. So I assumed that my RO water, being pretty pure, had a pH of around 7. BUT it turns out that pure water, after being exposed to air for a while, drops to a pH of about 5.5! The reason is that CO2 mixes with the H20, resulting in carbonic acid, which lowers the pH of the water. So you see how just reasoning things out ("The pH of pure water is 7, so my RO water must have a pH of about 7") can lead you to the wrong conclusion! Hence my annoyingly anal-retentive insistence on measurement
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 27, 2010 9:42:06 GMT -10
Michael, DynaGro is not "high" in micronutrients, it just has all the micronutrients, in appropriate ratios. All plants need micronutrients, even Nepenthes. The issue with Nepenthes growing in nutrient poor (or "nutrient compromised" as you once said) soils is that they are more sensitive to their absorption, so having large amounts of nutrients available over prolonged periods leads to over-absorption and thus toxicity. "Regular" plants can control their nutrient absorption better than plants adapted to nutrient-poor environments, which allows them to avoid the toxicity that can occur in plants like Nepenthes. Hence the flushing after you fertilize -- Nepenthes need nutrients, but they can't just have an abundance of them sitting around in the pot all the time*. If that were the case, I could grown them like my Passiflora and just fertilize them with Miracle Grow at every watering and never flush them out. As I was careful to mention in my post, I am growing in 100% inorganic medium. So I cannot rely on break-down for acidity. And break-down is the reason for my choice of medium -- I like the idea of a medium that will last 20 years, as opposed to +/-3, with no compaction. I can certainly see your reasoning, but until you measure your water pH with a reliable measuring device, you don't actually know this -- it's just an educated guess. And actually you'd have to measure the water that drains out of the pot to know the pH of your soil solution -- the medium components could affect the pH. Regarding water, about a decade ago I grew a Miranda that grew unbelievably fast, using only rainwater. This past year I grew a Miranda using the same medium as before (perlite + LFS) and distilled and RO water. The plant did not grow as big or as fast as the first, even though they both started at roughly the same size -- and the second plant had much better light! From this very limited sample size, I surmise that water may have at least something to do with how your plants grow. Both were grown in grow chambers indoors. You're right...if you're using organic media. I'm not trying to make waves and say that all growers need to start worrying about the pH of their water/soil solution. I'm just doing something a little different with an inorganic medium, and I'm trying to tweak to get optimal results from my plants, that's all. Personally I get frustrated sometimes by the theorizing about acidity/alkalinity without measurements to back it up. I've read where people talk about acidity or alkalinity before, but no one takes measurements to verify what they say about their water or soil solution pH. People have grown beautiful plants using fertilizer -- the results speak for themselves, and I agree 100% that Nepenthes need fertilizing; I'm not disputing this. Rather, I'm just trying to understand more about the details of what's going on, what's factual and what's speculation, what's true and what's "myth". Rob Sacillotto (sp?) wrote a well-documented article on seedling tolerances for pH and nutrient concentrations, but I think there's a lot missing from the picture he paints. For that reason I want to know my water & soil solution pH, not just speculate about it, if only to contradict Rob's assertions and prove what others have been saying all along to be true. *This is my speculation, an analogy from what is known about acid-loving plants: The problem with acid-loving plants is that they cannot control calcium absorption, so growing in more alkaline environments (often rich in calcium) leads to toxicity and poor health -- they absorb way more calcium than they need, which causes chemical imbalance. Acidic environments tend to be calcium-poor, so their inability to turn off absorption is fine in those environments. I suspect Nepenthes have a similar relationship to nutrients in general.
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 27, 2010 5:04:34 GMT -10
Another small observation: I gave most of my plants the coffee treatment recently, and one of them (maxima x TM) has made 2 pitchers since the coffee treatment. The first pitcher immediately after the coffee was twice the size of the previous pitcher. The second pitcher, however, was not nearly so big -- a little bigger than the pre-coffee pitcher, but noticeably smaller than the first post-coffee pitcher. I use RO water in most waterings, and I grow most of my plants in completely inorganic mix (screened Turface, which is calcined clay granules, akin to the burnt earth of some SE Asian growers). I recently started using DynaGro Foliage Pro 9-3-6 fertilizer (no urea, ALL the micronutrients) at 1 tsp per gallon, and I added 1/4 tsp of white vinegar to the fertilizer water and the regular water to bring down the pH a tad. So far the newest leaf of the maxima x TM is turning out broader than the previous several leaves (which were all roughly the same size, despite differences in pitcher sizes). I'll be curious to see if the pitcher also turns out larger. Of course since two variables changed (the fertilizer and the solution pH), I can't be 100% certain which one had the greater hand in making the leaf grow larger. A poster on a thread about Maxsea & DynaGro on pitcherplants.proboards.com speculated that one of the primary benefits of the coffee treatment might be its lowering effect on soil solution pH. He believes that the pH of many people's water might be too high for the liking of Nepenthes,which results in slower growth, and so the lower pH of the coffee might be the factor that is most responsible for the growth boost. I wonder if the well-draining-ness of my medium means that the "coffee effect" is lost more quickly. Turface has a pH of about 6.2, but the pH of the liquid you pour into the pots is a lot more important in determining plant performance. I'd love to measure my soil solution pH, but that means buying a pH meter....regular pH paper doesn't work properly in water; you have to buy pH paper specifically for water or low-buffered solutions (wish I had known that sooner...), or an electronic meter. Anyway, just more puzzle pieces
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 17, 2010 4:12:59 GMT -10
Perhaps the wait will be less if you use the coffee treatment? dvg's plants made that growth in just over a year.
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 14, 2010 4:02:40 GMT -10
dvg- You're right that dosing instructions may play a role, but Maxsea has 160 times the amount of N that GrowMore LS has in the same volume of fertilizer, and the dosing instructions likely don't differ by the same magnitude.
And I'm not trying to hound dvg with my insistence on this topic; if anyone else out there knows an explanation, please do share! I'm just trying to point out a very big discrepancy that is hard to explain (given my limited knowledge of fertilizers).
The results may speak for themselves, but the mechanics behind them seem mysterious to me.
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 13, 2010 5:21:27 GMT -10
dvg - But if we put 1 tsp of Maxsea into a gallon of water, and one tsp of GrowMore Liquid Seaweed into another gallon of water, then the gallon with Maxsea still has more NPK than the GrowMore LS; the dosage the plants are receiving is still very different. But maybe the outdoor plants get a lot of N from the insects they capture, but they do not get enough other trace nutrients from the insects, hence the benefits seen by both Sam & Michael, despite the disparate NPK ratios of their fertilizers? That is, maybe it's the "micronutrients"* that are responsible for the better growth? This still seems like a long-shot to me; I still don't feel like the story makes sense. *by "micronutrients" I'm comparing NPK to fats, proteins, and carbs (the macronutrients for people) and subsuming everything else under "micronutrients". Not a perfect analogy, but it helped me think of things more clearly
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 12, 2010 9:20:10 GMT -10
If Noa's above NPK ratios for GrowMore Liquid Seaweed are correct, then
.10% Soluble Nitrogen .10% Soluble Phosphate (P2O5) 1.50% Soluble "Potash" (K2O)
This is MUCH lower than the 16-16-16 that Michael (rainforest) encouraged Sam to experiment with. It sounds like Sam used his full-strength, and so does Michael. They both have seen good results. Sam expressed doubt over fertilizers with a too-low NPK rating, but it seems Michael is using exactly that and has good results.
I'm not sure what to conclude. Maybe Michael is just fertilizing more often (more than once every two weeks)? The NPK disparity is huge, however. Something doesn't seem right to me.
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 10, 2010 5:32:34 GMT -10
Actually, I don't think it matters. The medium can only hold so much liquid at a time. Anything in excess will just flow out of the pot. So whether you pour one gallon or ten gallons into the pot, the result will more or less be the same (at least in the case of fertilizer solution).
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 8, 2010 8:30:46 GMT -10
Cindy- If you check EP's website, they have a couple photos of larger plants up. Seems the pitchers keep getting more interesting with age!
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 3, 2010 13:06:12 GMT -10
Thanks, Michael & Noa. Could one of you guys do me a grand favor and tell me what the NPK numbers are on the label, if any, and whether calcium is listed as a component? I'm having trouble finding the specs online...
-mikulaš
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 3, 2010 4:48:53 GMT -10
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 1, 2010 7:48:13 GMT -10
Boris -- First off, it seems that I may have unintentionally caused you offense, and for that I would like to apologize. I value what you have to say, and I appreciate you sharing your experience with other growers -- I would never have known about EM or bokashi juice had you not shared this information in this discussion. I do find what you are saying interesting; what I should have said was that at the moment I lack the mental energy to formulate a balanced reply that puts everything into perspective. Please do continue to contribute. Again, my apologies. Thank you for the link to phosphoric acid. You will note, however, that even Miracle Grow contains phosphoric acid: www.hydroponics-at-home.com/Hydroponic-nutrients.htmlMy point is that hydroponics fertilizers are not as different from other fertilizers as previous posts might lead one to believe. But again, level of difference can be a subjective judgment; one can only look at the lists of ingredients and decide for oneself what counts as very different.
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 1, 2010 5:20:29 GMT -10
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Post by mikuláš on Apr 1, 2010 4:46:17 GMT -10
Boris, if what you say about hydroponics fertilizers being specially adapted for maximum absorption, then (putting costs aside) why don't we use hydroponics fertilizers on our plants instead of other fertilizers? Wouldn't hydroponic fertilizers be superior?
I agree that microbes are everywhere, but I don't think it's likely that the communities of microbes in soil are the same as those living in the pores of rocks.
I think that the better, more useful question at this point is what effect adding soil organisms has on nutrient absorption. Your photos seem to indicate positive results, but without a control group, conclusions can only be limited. And let's not forget that the issue of benefit is different from the issue of necessity.
I think there are a few other logical points to be made, but alas, I have lost interest...
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