K-lite fertilizer

[gonewild]

I was going to say (before my computer locked up, twice), that if the test bag of fertilizer got too low with p and k, we might just as well have a bag of calcium nitrate, with some micro nutrients added, and later on add some epsom salts for magnesium... just a thought

That would be to easy! We should assume that we need some P and K in the base formula. The ratio needs to be usable for a variety of different growing medias. And the idea I had when I started the thread was to come up with a formula that the average orchid collector would be able to use without having to measure out several different materials.

 

[gonewild]

Has anyone had the enthusianum to try feeding at very very very low rates at every watering as they would recieve in the habitat? say 1/10 strength?

That is already pretty well proven to not work well in a captive environment. The plants benefit and grow better (appearance) when they get a lot of nutrients compared to what can be measured in Nature. The idea is to figure out how to force feed them without poisoning them with an excess of certain elements.

 

[Stone]

That is already pretty well proven to not work

Proven? I grow a lot of other things besides orchids and have found its always preferable if they recieve a continual delivery of nurients during the growing season. This is the way the Japanese people (not all) feed their plants including paphs and they have had 3 hundred years experience in container growing. They use solid organic fertilizer made from pressed seed meal and bone meal with undeniable results but you really have to know what your doing.

I can't see why a similar method with modern fert. in optimum consentrations wouldn't work but I couldn't be bothered

The idea is to figure out how to force feed them without poisoning them with an excess of certain elements.[/

Can't forcing lead to problems down the road? We aren't talking pumpkins

 

[Rick]

Don't you think this will make the difference on the label :



SLIPPERTALK ELITE PAPH GROWERS FORMULA

 

[Stone]

Don't you think this will make the difference on the label



SLIPPERTALK ELITE PAPH GROWERS FORMULA

OOOOOHHHHH YES that will make a HUUUGGEEE difference!

 

[gonewild]

Proven? I grow a lot of other things besides orchids and have found its always preferable if they recieve a continual delivery of nurients during the growing season. This is the way the Japanese people (not all) feed their plants including paphs and they have had 3 hundred years experience in container growing. They use solid organic fertilizer made from pressed seed meal and bone meal with undeniable results but you really have to know what your doing.

I can't see why a similar method with modern fert. in optimum consentrations wouldn't work but I couldn't be bothered

You misunderstood what I said. I have always been a big proponent of continuous feed for growing plants. What I said was proven to not work was a continual extremely weak fertilizer solution. A continual weak solution will maintain plants and that fits well into the Japanese culture where they consider their plants will be in their families for generations, they are not in a hurry.

MSU formula was developed to do the opposite, maximum nutrients for maximum growth, and it works very well. But now after some years of using the formula we have more experience to evaluate about it.

Ricks observations about excess potassium has given reason to look for a modification to the MSU formula. So far everything he has reported makes sense. We want fast growth that is better than what we have now and we want to grow the plants faster and better than Nature does it.

Can't forcing lead to problems down the road? We aren't talking pumpkins

Yes forcing can lead to problems and that is the reason to try a modification to the forcing ratios.

 

[SlipperKing]

Don't you think this will make the difference on the label :
That has to be you Rick!

You misunderstood what I said. I have always been a big proponent of continuous feed for growing plants. What I said was proven to not work was a continual extremely weak fertilizer solution. A continual weak solution will maintain plants and that fits well into the Japanese culture where they consider their plants will be in their families for generations, they are not in a hurry.

MSU formula was developed to do the opposite, maximum nutrients for maximum growth, and it works very well. But now after some years of using the formula we have more experience to evaluate about it.

Ricks observations about excess potassium has given reason to look for a modification to the MSU formula. So far everything he has reported makes sense. We want fast growth that is better than what we have now and we want to grow the plants faster and better than Nature does it.



Yes forcing can lead to problems and that is the reason to try a modification to the forcing ratios.

I'll go along with Lance, continuous feed at a forceful rate!

 

[Stone]

. A continual weak solution will maintain plants and that fits well into the Japanese culture where they consider their plants will be in their families for generations, they are not in a hurry.

Sorry Lance, I wasn't talking about bonsai trees so much but what they're doing with orchids in particular right now

We want fast growth that is better than what we have now and we want to grow the plants faster and better than Nature does it.

Yes we definately want growth that is better than what we have now, and being a vendor, I can fully undertsand your desire to see your stock get up to size as quickly as possible. I used to be in the game.
Assuming all other nutrients are at optimal levels, I was taught that we use N to control growth rate. But from my current perspective we perhaps differ in what we consider to be ''better''.

 

[Stone]

[

We want fast growth that is better than what we have now and we want to grow the plants faster and better than Nature does

You say that you want to do better that nature,
I woud like to see a sanderianum with a 5' wing span or a dendrobium disolor 8
feet tall and tens of flower spikes grown in a glasshouse! How can you do better than that? Its the environment that's most important not the feed.

 

[gonewild]

Sorry Lance, I wasn't talking about bonsai trees so much but what they're doing with orchids in particular right now

I was talking about orchids as well and the general "Japanese" culture that requires discipline and patience.

Yes we definately want growth that is better than what we have now, and being a vendor, I can fully undertsand your desire to see your stock get up to size as quickly as possible. I used to be in the game.

I'm not a vender (at least not now). I'm not growing any plants to sell that I need in a hurry. My main interest in growing plants is to grow them well and efficiently. But let's not stray from the topic of possible "low" potassium fertilizer formulas.

Assuming all other nutrients are at optimal levels, I was taught that we use N to control growth rate. But from my current perspective we perhaps differ in what we consider to be ''better''.

OK, to me "better" is is simply that... "improved". Even as good as Nature is she makes constant changes to "improve" the plants in her collection.

What makes a plant grow is of more interest to me than the blossom that it produces.

 

[gonewild]

[

You say that you want to do better that nature,
I woud like to see a sanderianum with a 5' wing span or a dendrobium disolor 8 feet tall and tens of flower spikes grown in a glasshouse! How can you do better than that? Its the environment that's most important not the feed.

We can do better than that by not killing off 99.9% of the seedlings to produce one specimen plant. Nature produces extreme specimens that we will never be able to replicate but for the most part individual plants in Nature's growing grounds are not near the quality we want to look at in our collections. Even with your examples above you have made a selection based on size of flowers, size of plants and mass of flowers. These things are seen by humans to be "better". Yet not many of Natures plants perform this good. If Nature had the perfect growing system then why aren't all of the wild plants growing this well? Nature has a huge logistics problem of how to deliver all the supplies to every plant. How to get the right amount of nitrogen to each plant and how not to send to much potassium to a plant that already has too much. Sometimes Nature just can't keep up and she has to get rid of a part of her collection, sometimes she makes a mistake and they all die. Nature gave us a brain to use to help her and by learning how to improve on her methods we can fulfill her legacy.

How's that for a bag of fertilizer? oke:

 

[cnycharles]

I would be happy to not kill off many of my seedlings

 

[Ray]

Sorry for ignoring this. Just got back (1200 miles later) from a funeral in NC.

Catching up... I think there is a bit of a flaw in using natural conditions and wild-plant tissue analyses as our yardstick. Plants in nature are in subsistence mode, not in the productive mode we'd like to see. Lance addressed that well.

I just got off the phone with Bill Argo, and related this discussion, and he said "that's the difference between botanists and floraculturists".

I emailed him about the concept of "K-Lite", using the calcium nitrate/MSU/mag sulfate blend as an example, a few days ago, and he called to discuss it.

First is the difficulty of blending calcium compounds and magnesium compounds in concentrates. Stated he could make the formulation, but would have to use magnesium nitrate, rather than calcium nitrate & mag sulfate. I don't think the raw materials matter that much, as long as the final solution is right.

He also mentioned that bark & coir products tend to have K in them already, so maybe that's the reason adding it via the fertilizers is less of an issue. Obviously, that's more of a concern for me, growing stuff in LECA, so even if the demand is low, it ain't coming from the "rocks".

What I'm mostly concerned about is whatever "side effects" such a nutrient loading change may have. Monsanto was doing a nutrition study with potted corn plants, and they all displayed the pale yellowing associated with an iron deficiency. It turned out they were not supplying enough phosphorus, and that somehow blocked the Fe uptake.

So...all that said, do we have any takers?

 

[Rick]

We can do better than that by not killing off 99.9% of the seedlings to produce one specimen plant.

This was maybe the number one reason I got started on this research in the first place.

Number 2 would be all the plants that I grew great for 3 years to just go into burnout after that.

I really can appreciate the old expression "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". But after 10 years of growing I saw plenty that was obviously broken (at least by my standards).

Also if you go through a lot of the anti CITES threads were Roth points out the rather dismally high mortality rate of propagated seedlings and adult plants going into the world wide market, you could also come up with the notion that it was not just me having the problems.

We can't replicate nature in the GH, but there's no reason we can't learn from it and apply it to our culture programs.

I don't think we necessarily have to give up on faster/better. If you saw my post on my venustum seedling, that plant achieved blooming less than 2 years out of flask. More than half of that time it was in a basket and going to low K fertilizing. It's only one plant, (so not statistically significant), but it's apparent that what I was doing didn't kill it.

I also recently posted some pics of mastersianum seedlings growing at what I think is an impressive rate. These are typically poor doers for a lot of people and would be included on Roth's list of seedlings never making it to market list.

I really don't care, if these guys beat all FCC records, but they sure don't seem to be suffering for what I'm putting them through either.

 

[Rick]

First is the difficulty of blending calcium compounds and magnesium compounds in concentrates. Stated he could make the formulation, but would have to use magnesium nitrate, rather than calcium nitrate & mag sulfate. I don't think the raw materials matter that much, as long as the final solution is right.

I agree

He also mentioned that bark & coir products tend to have K in them already, so maybe that's the reason adding it via the fertilizers is less of an issue. Obviously, that's more of a concern for me, growing stuff in LECA, so even if the demand is low, it ain't coming from the "rocks".

Ray this is something I put into the consideration, but there are 2 parts to it.
First is that all plant products (bark, CHC, sphagnum) contain a certain amount of potassium that will be accessible as it breaks down. But secondly my main concern is that these materials are also potassium sponges (Cation Exchange or similar mechanism) and will really load up the K to toxic levels. I'm pretty sure this is why everyone is having such great luck switching to Orchiata bark, and why Bob Wellenstiens Ca/Mg treatment of CHC were so successful. It starts these products out as something closer to limestone rock rather than an organic bark

Needless to say for the SH crowd, if you consider all the species that grow on limestone rock, they get almost no K in their diet either, and this diet should do great for SH too.

I have lots of mounted plants (bark plaques) granted not totally inert like clay pellets, but close to SH with regards to root exposure and they have also improved greatly. I do have 5 phrags in SH. I recently posted the Phrag caricinum pics. There hasn't been a huge increase in growth size, but rate of new growth is as good as ever, and frequency/severity of erwinia has declined significantly.

What I'm mostly concerned about is whatever "side effects" such a nutrient loading change may have. Monsanto was doing a nutrition study with potted corn plants, and they all displayed the pale yellowing associated with an iron deficiency. It turned out they were not supplying enough phosphorus, and that somehow blocked the Fe uptake.

So...all that said, do we have any takers?

Well I've been sacrificing all the plants in my collection now for about 6 months and I like the results, so I'll square away some seedlings to the cause of trying out a special ST formula.

Did you see one of Lance's last posts on final formulas?

 

[Ray]

10-1-1-5Ca-2Mg

Does that seem right/OK to everyone?

If so, how many takers? (I will need commitments, as I'm not about to pay for this all by myself.)

Also, how much would each person like? At that formula, 1 teaspoon per gallon would be about 125 ppm N, so figure what you'd want to use, how many gallons you'd want to make up to feed your test plants, and for how long (number of feedings) you'd want to try.

 

[Rick]

Does that seem right/OK to everyone?

If so, how many takers? (I will need commitments, as I'm not about to pay for this all by myself.)

Also, how much would each person like? At that formula, 1 teaspoon per gallon would be about 125 ppm N, so figure what you'd want to use, how many gallons you'd want to make up to feed your test plants, and for how long (number of feedings) you'd want to try.

A pound of MSU will last me a year. I can't imagine a 5'lb quantity will break my bank What's our minimum quantity?

 

[keithrs]

I'm in..... I'll take 5 lbs too!

 

[Hera]

Hmm I'd like to try it.

 

[keithrs]

How well does Greencare mix there fertilizers? I know that there was some discrepancy on how well they mixed the MSU stuff.