I'm amazed at how thick the stocks are. Wonderful gardens. All the plants look vibrant. Thanks for the tour. :)
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I'm amazed at how thick the stocks are. Wonderful gardens. All the plants look vibrant. Thanks for the tour. :)
;) Secret trick of the trade I learned. When in vegetative phase you want to do what I have coined "pinch && roll" each of the stalks and branches.
You take the stalk between your thumb and forefinger and literally pinch and roll the stalk between your fingers, pressing just enough to where you feel a slight popping in the plant. What you are doing is allowing for the phloem and the xylem to become larger through repeated trauma, similar to what a weight lifter is doing to bulk up. The xylem allows for water to be carried throughout the plant from the roots, while the phloem is a sap that contains macro and micro nutrients to be dispersed.
I've been doing a little bit of research in the field of plants since I've begun to grow. This is why I mentioned the microbial feedings over the bottle fed nutrients. Bottle fed nutrients, whether they are synthetic, salt based, or organic, they still are in plant uptake form already. This in turn causes the micro-environments to be displaced as the microbes are the ones who break down organic matter into inorganic forms that are readily taken in by the plants. Since the plants need the microbes to break down organic matter to feed them, the plants in turn have produced a way of attracting and feeding these microbes with what are known as exudates.
When you begin to feed with nutrients in the form that plants can readily absorb then the plants no longer produce the exudates and the microbes die off or seek food and shelter elsewhere. It can take centuries to build these ecosystems. The strongest and most diverse microbial ecosystems are found in old growth forests where the fungi and bacteria can reach unfathomable numbers in just a teaspoon.
//rantoff
Sorry for the tangent heh
Thank you for your extremely valuable response. I greatly appreciate this level of detail and will be putting this information into action in the near future. You are the 2nd person this week who highly recommends microbial feeding over liquids and your plants speak for themselves. I would like to see your response as a separate blog post. Your information is worth more than gold and people need a chance to read it. Thank you so much.