Yea, I hit the whole plant also when it's little in veg, but I do a fair amount of foliars above, and got things in line up above, it's a whole different ballgame. I try to run the bases acidic, and up above high pH,, the two combinations really seem effective as far as overall plant health, and keeping budding/fruiting along without much problems. I've been working with a lot of different surfactants, both above and below, and it's essentially two very different ecological envioronment above and below the plant. Sorta like a persons inner membranes, and skin. Colloidal micelles, and
nanosized colloidal dispersions prepared from amphiphilic molecules.
Not everyone can control our environments in every situation, that's the big part to the puzzle that most of us miss here, I think. It's always the big ???
I was a wound nurse for over 20 years, so when I think of tissue health, (roots, leaves) I think along the lines of tissues, and how they react to different built in mechanisms of maintaining homeostasis. Especially when it comes to it's natural defense mechanisms, and how they prevent any types of issues from occurring in the first place. Rhizo is just one very important link in that overall chain, but a very critical one, no doubts. That's why I add the extra boost of carbon (humics/fluvics), to promote that kinda sustained growth, and recharge cation exchange.
But temps, humidity, moisture content, oxygen concentrations, circulation, and ion exchange, cation charge state, lighting, ect... it's synergistic in nature. I kinda feel like I get a good spawn or I don't, sometimes. Optimizing and fine tuning all these factors, that's what I want to master. Then carrying that momentum all the way to the goal line... For me, it's a race for sustained growth, out of the gate. I run my auto plants like horses... on a track. The first out the gates, got a lot of momentum, usually.
There's just so much to know about becoming a decent grower,
especially if you want to learn a lot of different methods of growing. Or cover a good segment of the craft.