J
Jalisco Kid
Guest
Hey Guys, you need to look into plant physiology for answers to those questions.
I am in a advanced plant physio class right now, and I believe I can answer all the questions in this thread correctly :)
On average, 5-10% of a plants dry weight is from the minerals it absorbs. The rest is mostly carbon. Almost ALL OF WHICH COMES FROM CO2.
What you need to realize, is that plants are energy producing machines, that build themselves as they go. Without all the proper parts of the machine functioning, ie gears, pulleys, levers, belts, etc, (N,P,K, Micro's) your machine cannot work to produce its primary product (Carbon based sugars).
Blaze is on it with the rule of minimums, aka Liebigs law, basically translates that you're only as productive as your most limiting factor. IE, if you don't have the Boron necessary for Carb transport, the sucrose produced by the joining of glucose and fructose (produced by photosynthesis) won't be fully translocatable within the plant, thus non-photosynthetic tissues like roots won't have the sugars they need for their cellular process. Just one example of many. If you'd like, I can dig up and scan a copy of a chart I have showing the different uses of the minerals in question in plants.
JK, the dried % of carbon in a plant is DIRECTLY proportional to AMT CO2. No other way about it.
Blaze - I am on the same mission right now about changing from using hydro products to ag products. I'd love to discuss what you've found about different nute ratios and strengths for different growth stages.
Crysmatics - Plants don't normally excrete carbon, but it can happen. Plants that have an association with myco fungi will exchange carbon in the form of sucrose for minerals delivered by the fungal hyphae. It is the plants choice whether to accept or reject this relationship, and it will often reject it in fertile soils, and accept it in poor soils. This is due to the overall availability of nutrients. The plant works extremely hard to collect the carbon from PS, and overall its not a very efficient process regarding energy production, so if there are plenty of minerals around the rootzone already, then it will reject the myco in favor of keeping the carbon for its own growth.
Plants normally exchange hydrogen ions for mineral ions at the various ion pumps in the root. This is why your pH will become more acidic as the plants grow, and why farmers add lime to their fields to counter balance the acidity developed by the growing plants.
Hope this helps.
Alaska aka Inuit
I would have thought the carbon weight picked up through the soil or in hydro in fulvic and humic acids along with the carbon latching onto salts would outweigh the weight from gas. JK
