What is the conversion rate from growmore to plant matter?
Yes, I already know that there is no such thing as that but ..., in an ideal situation for each gram on growmore how much plant matter will be produced? - assuming that no other nutrients are limiting. I want to know the theoretical maximum.
I use growmore on my garden vegetables and I usually put it around each plant, half a teaspoonful at a time.
So, for instance, what is the most growmore I should give each individual parsnip or strawberry plant?
Over 90% of the weight of most fruit and vegetables consists of water. 94% in the case of tomatos,and much other fruit.
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purpose of the major NPK elements, nitrogen, phosporus and potassium is simply to allow the plants to develop to their full potential, which in reality means developing more and larger cells to hold more water.
The major determinant of plant size is photosynthesis, the metabolising of sugars by the action of sunlight on the chlorophyll in the leaves in combination with water.
Plant elements are often most noticed by their absence, both major elemnts such as NPK and minor elements such as boron. And most soil is sufficeiently permeated with most of these elements so as to support an appropriate range of plants. For those climatic conditions at least.
Basically if a plant doesn't get enough of an essential element then its growth will be stunted as compared with an average plant. However providing more than it needs, won't produce a larger plant. Instead it can be positively harmful by inhibiting the take-up of other essential elements. Thus tomatoes are given extra potassium to promote flowering (in a loose sense, anyway), but because this inhibits the take up of calcium from the soil or compost, most tomato feeds are dosed with extra calcium in addition.
In other words - just enough - but no more than enough.
To fully answer your question it would be necessary to grow selected strains of genetically identical plants under totally controlled conditions - under artificial light and using a sterile growing medium such as rockwool. Which, because such conditions are untypical of the way in which most plants are grown would be of little benefit to anyone.
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- assuming that no other nutrients are limiting. I want to
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Again impossible to answer without knowing the existing fertility of your soil. However given that strawberries are 95% water you can see what the plants should definitely not run short of.
Thanks that is a good enough answer for me. I shall probably use less growmore in future. I've noticed that it seems to have no effect at all on the plants in my back garden (which has very rich soil).
Found this article which was interesting from a chap in Gardenex ...
Growmore is the standard basic fertiliser for most non proffesional gardeners but I am not a fan. To start with the nutrient content is 7 ,
7 , 7 . This means that the fertiliser containers equal quantaties of Nitrogen , phospherous and Potash . Okay fine if you want a general feriliser . But if you want something more specific for instance with a higher potash content for say tomatoes or flowers then growmore won't do . Growmore has it's place in the garden as an all in one feed , quick and easy with no messing but it has limited uses if you want to take gardening seriously . It's a good beginner fertiliser but you will soon find that it is not adequate for more specialised subjects .
In my experience there are much better fertilisers around such as pelleted chicken manure which has the advantage of being organic too .
Resh, arguably the bible for hydroponics, estimates that all the elements other than hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen (primarily from water and carbon dioxide) is approximately 1.5% of the plant's weight.
GrowMore, makes a number of different formulations so you would have to be more specific. Any calculation is complicated because the formula on the container is not given in terms of elemental composition. For example, the phosphorous is defined in terms of the equivalent of what is called phosphorous pentoxide (P2O5). Moreover, any fertilizer will lose functionality when one of the constituents runs out.
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