Early K-lite results

[Stone]

?????

Too much at one time!

 

[Stone]

Maybe the high nitrogen thing is a clue, since I also don't add a ton of nitrogen.[/

QUOTE]

Yes ratios!! more N needs more K. N is the bricks, K and everything else is the cement. You can have varying amounts of cement but you can't build a house with only bricks.

 

[gonewild]

To me this is more evidence that (at least) moderate consentrations of K at say 50% of the N does not cause the problems of Calcium or Magnesium or any other element being inhibited to the extent that it causes a reduction in growth or other problem.

But look at how they are growing.
In perfectly controlled greenhouses. Their aim is to force the plants to grow as fast as possible.
They have no data as to the long term effect on the plant health.
We have always known that feeding maximum amounts will grow plants bigger and faster.... but does it cause a certain percentage of plants to burn out and die or become disease problems.
Remember their crops go to the mass market and then most die within a year.

Their trial used excessive amounts of nutrients. 200ppm N and 200ppm P ???
They do not mention supplying any micro nutrients (or did my fast read miss this?)

They did not consider that the different nutrient ratios might effect K. Like excess P?

They used hydroponic nutrient levels as a basis and that is fine if you are a commercial grower trying to turn over your benches as fast as possible.

 

[gonewild]

QUOTE]

Yes ratios!! more N needs more K. N is the bricks, K and everything else is the cement. You can have varying amounts of cement but you can't build a house with only bricks.

Put too much sand in the cement and the brick house will fall down.

 

[gonewild]

I saw this one a ways back.

How come all my stuff is still alive?? Especially my phales?

Maybe the high nitrogen thing is a clue, since I also don't add a ton of nitrogen.

Increase the N and you must increase everything else. But remember they are forcing their crop.

Your plants are still alive and I doubt any of theirs are.

You have to remember the big growers do not want or intend the plants they sell to live forever. They grow them fast and cheap and the only way they can stay in business is if people discard the plants and buy another one.

 

[Stone]

We have always known that feeding maximum amounts will grow plants bigger and faster.... but does it cause a certain percentage of plants to burn out and die or become disease problems.

I agree! Feeding maximum amounts is not the way with orchids. Just trying to point to the ratios.

 

[Rick]

Just trying to point to the ratios.

Other big ratio that we always seem to loose track of is H20 and C.

We focus 99.9% of our attention on finagling ratios on what amounts to less than 1% of the total wet weight of the plant.


If a whole dry phalae leaf weighs 500 mg and you splash on 200mg of N on it each week. Then how's that paying attention to ratios? That leaf didn't need more than 15 mg of that N to make it over 6 months of growing time.

 

[Rick]

Too much at one time!

Thats one of two basic factors of Toxicity 101:clap:

Magnitude, and duration is the other.

 

[ALToronto]

There are so many flaws in this study, the results can be applied only to a very narrow set of conditions. The researchers severely underwatered the bark mix plants (compared to sphagnum plants), the bark mix was far too acidic with peat moss and no charcoal, the N concentration was too high, and there was no mention of 'flushing' the media with pure water from time to time.

There is no mention of any corporate sponsor, but I wonder if a fertilizer manufacturer provided some $$ or other resources for this study. It's as if they're trying to justify using as much fert as the plants will tolerate.

 

[Stone]

There are so many flaws in this study, the results can be applied only to a very narrow set of conditions. The researchers severely underwatered the bark mix plants (compared to sphagnum plants), the bark mix was far too acidic with peat moss and no charcoal, the N concentration was too high, and there was no mention of 'flushing' the media with pure water from time to time.

There is no mention of any corporate sponsor, but I wonder if a fertilizer manufacturer provided some $$ or other resources for this study. It's as if they're trying to justify using as much fert as the plants will tolerate.

All that may be true but even with those shortcommings the study was about the effect of increasing or decreasing the K levels and the results of that. I doubt whether acidity or more or less water would have given different results. I admit I didn't read it all.
Just had another quick look. One curious thing about it is why on earth the decision to have equal parts N and P! I believe you need to increase K to balance such high P consentrations. So that may also be a factor. The pH of sphag and sphag peat when I have mesured it was always around 4 for both or maybe a touch lower for the peat so I think there are comparable.

 

[Ray]

The more I study plant nutrition as it applies to epiphytes, the more obvious (but not necessarily clearly defined) it is that too much of anything disrupts the plants' absorption of other things, leading to an imbalance.

You want to push the crap out of plants to sell 'em? Go ahead, but don't expect them to hang around for long.

Eat several thousand calories a day to become a football guard, and you'll likely have a life span of 40-50 years. Take a plant that naturally might get 15 ppm nutrition on a daily basis, and push it to a couple thousand? You decide.

 

[dodidoki]

Rick, I don't understand following: K-lite does not cause K-deficiency symptoms, leastwise at you and at me ( I mean at our plants), but there were significant deficiency symptoms at test-phalas. How could it be? Maybe high cc. of N and P caused very intensive growing and in this relation cc. of K was very low??? ( clue word is "relation") N was 200 ppm, P 200 ppm, but K-lite is all 150 ppm.

 

[dodidoki]

Yes, my thought is similar, article gives a receipt how to make "body-builder" plants and suggests that K is the "protein" for plants.

 

[Rick]

All that may be true but even with those shortcommings the study was about the effect of increasing or decreasing the K levels and the results of that. I doubt whether acidity or more or less water would have given different results. I admit I didn't read it all.
Just had another quick look. One curious thing about it is why on earth the decision to have equal parts N and P! I believe you need to increase K to balance such high P consentrations. So that may also be a factor. The pH of sphag and sphag peat when I have mesured it was always around 4 for both or maybe a touch lower for the peat so I think there are comparable.

Also it is impossible to increase/decrease a cation (Ca K Mg Na) without increasing some anion, or substituting one cation/anion pair for another.

In order to make K lite, Calcium and magnesium nitrate was substituted for the bulk of potassium nitrate in the system. So in this case, N (as the nitrate anion) was kept fairly contstant while Ca and Mg went up (substituting for K).

For someone to make fertilizer formulations with drastic changes in K, you must also see some pretty drastic changes in some other major ion. So what cation got substituted for the K salt when it was taken out? Or what anion was piled on? When I reviewed this paper this info wasn't obvious, and since no one sees lethal K deficiency in that short of time, I didn't think the paper was relevant.

 

[Rick]

N was 200 ppm, P 200 ppm, but K-lite is all 150 ppm.

Exactly I don't think any deficiencies were generated, but lethal toxic responses.

200 ppm of ammonia N is highly toxic to just about all organisms (unless you keep the pH very low). You can't even keep waste water nitrifiers alive in a treatment plant at that concentration of ammonia if the pH is up in the high 7's. If you have 200ppm of nitrate did a portion shift to nitrite (also very toxic material that plants and bacteria assimilate at a fairly fast rate, but only at low starting concentrations). I don't know what the P tolerance to orchids is, but that is well beyond environmental relevance.

You often can't balance your way out of flat out overdose situations.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.5620100909/abstract (if you don't believe that ammonia is toxic to plants).

 

[Rick]

The more I study plant nutrition as it applies to epiphytes, the more obvious (but not necessarily clearly defined) it is that too much of anything disrupts the plants' absorption of other things, leading to an imbalance.

Yup, and I keep finding that the bulk of what we end up feeding just feeds the potting mix flora creating a big pot management program rather than an orchid growing program.

 

[Stone]

Yup, and I keep finding that the bulk of what we end up feeding just feeds the potting mix flora creating a big pot management program rather than an orchid growing program.

There is no option but to feed the potting mix flora in an organic mix. Whatever N is given to the plant will be stolen by the decomposing bacteria until they have enough for their needs and the plant gets what is left over. Therefore we must determine roughly how much N (mainly) is used by the bacteria, give that and give whatever the plant can use as extra.
What I found curious about the phal trial was that the sphag plants were very slow to show deficiency compared to the bark-which would indicate a higher K supply from the moss or a higher availability or CEC, Yet, the sphag plants also showed a huge spike in growth and flowering with increasing K compared to the bark plants. So whats going on there?

 

[Rick]

There is no option but to feed the potting mix flora in an organic mix.

Not true.

Nitrate is only utilized by anaerobes. If you keep the potting mix aerobic and operate in the 5.5-6.5 pH, with low alkalinity and low TDS you can starve the microflora into a manageable population. Feeding lots of ammonia and shoveling in bicarbonate to accommodate the pH drop, and you turn the matrix into a waste treatment plant.

 

[Rick]

What I found curious about the phal trial was that the sphag plants were very slow to show deficiency compared to the bark-which would indicate a higher K supply from the moss or a higher availability or CEC, Yet, the sphag plants also showed a huge spike in growth and flowering with increasing K compared to the bark plants. So whats going on there?

Like I said, its all a bunch of pot management gyrations at these crazy levels of feed.

Now in the wild, all phalaes are obligate epiphytes. I keep most of my phalaes on mounts, and they have never done better since going low K. But before low K I could not keep a phalae alive in a pot to save my life. Moss or bark mixes. Usually dead in a year or less, and that was with high K. So whats going on there?

 

[Stone]

Not true.

Nitrate is only utilized by anaerobes. If you keep the potting mix aerobic and operate in the 5.5-6.5 pH, with low alkalinity and low TDS you can starve the microflora into a manageable population. Feeding lots of ammonia and shoveling in bicarbonate to accommodate the pH drop, and you turn the matrix into a waste treatment plant.

So if I give 100% nitrate N, my bark will last forever?