Plant Mechanics

Reply to: If conditions in your pots are within the limits of what symbiotic fungi will tolerate, they will be there whether you furnish the spores or they blow in on the winds. I live in MI, and don't concern myself with catering to beneficial fungi in containers. There are a couple of reasons. One reason is, if I work on roots during the cool months, late autumn, winter, and early spring, I find ample evidence of fungal hyphae in the root/soil mass. I never see it in the summer because the heat kills it. The other reason is, they are very sensitive to over-watering, temperature, soluble fertilizers and particularly those containing phosphorous, and fungicides. Consider too that a root mass benefiting from fungal symbiotic relationship will be much smaller than the root mass of a plant doing its own work for resources. What happens to that plant if suddenly the population of beneficial fungi is reset to zero on the first scorching hot day, or when you find it necessary to apply a fungicide or fertilize, especially with a fertilizer containing phosphorous? Suddenly then, you find you have a plant with a root system only half as large as needed to support the above-ground parts of the plant. As someone with trees I've been caring for and refining for nearly 40 years now, I'm not willing to put so many eggs in that particular basket. Just a word about choosing a medium for container growing. Container media are all about structure and not about their ability to feed the plant. As the water holding ability of the medium goes down, the ease with which the grower can potentially provide the plant its best opportunity to realize as much of its potential as possible goes up, but only to a point. The ideal medium would hold water inside of porous particles, as a microscopically thin layer of water on the surface of all soil particles, and at the interface where soil particles contact each other. All voids between soil particles would be filled with air. Ideally, you would build any new medium to minimize the amount of perched water it holds and maximize the volume of water held in other than the spaces between particles. If you can do that, it will drain perfectly and offer superb aeration. Best luck, Travis. Al

Q

Reply to: I plan to graft Meiwa kumquats to the PT scions for 3 trunked trees. Kumquats can not be grafted to sour orange directly. Having 2 trunks of PT will help in getting a large Meiwa tree much faster.

Q

Reply to: There are many variants of kaolin clay that are sold. smaller packages tend to be used for human use - cosmetics I think, but would suffice for hobby gardeners. One of the "u-pick" organic peach orchards in SC that I occasionally visit uses it for both anti worm primarily. I had to ask the farmer why the peaches and the trees looked like they had been covered in off white. He told me that he has some more temperate fruit trees that he uses to help moderate high temps. They have big bags (like 40-50lbs) that they put in a tractor sprayer of hundreds of gallons of water. Unfortunately, I don't have a package to share a photo. I got a few pounds from the farmer a few years ago, he gave me a few pounds in grocery bag. I've found it useful to "hide" ripening fruit from birds and squirrels - as they look for color and a heavy coating camouflages berries well - but they'll smell the ripe fruit if they get close, but it helps save me some berries and cherries.

Q

Reply to: Thanks, Jodi - I appreciate the kind thoughts. Hi, Travis. Thanks for the positive comments! Pine bark provides the big particles that create large macropores. The perlite gets wedged between pieces of pine bark to create much larger pores it doesn't/ can't create in peat/ coir/ compost ........ fine particulates. The peat provides you with a way to adjust water retention. Keep in the back of your mind it's generally true the more often a medium used in a container planting requires watering, the greater the potential will be for the plant realizing more of its genetic potential. This is true even in the extreme. Using a medium that REQUIRES watering 3 times per day can produce healthier/ larger plants with better yields than a plant in a medium that requires watering every 3 days; and, it wouldn't even be reasonable to think a planting that could go 3 weeks between waterings would even be in the running. Now, I don't want to be married to watering 3 times per day, so I compromise without apology. You should too. By that, I mean if you only want to devote time to a once/week watering schedule, that's your choice and no one should judge that. The important part of the whole equation is understanding the 3 week watering intervals many of us accept as 'the norm', are severely limiting and sap a tremendously large fraction of our plants' potential. That's not me trying to convince you to grow any particular way; that's simply me providing perspective that should allow you to make decisions that best suit how your priorities are ordered. Al

Q