Feed the soil or feed the plant?

Well, both. But we need to understand the processes that help a plant to grow, to understand why it’s not one or the other. Plants support their life through two means: assimilation and osmosis. Assimilation is where a plant changes something that it absorbs from the original form to a form that it can utilise – an example is when it takes carbon dioxide and converts it to sugars and starches with are then further converted into plant specific substances to help growth. Osmosis is the interchange of liquids through a plant’s cell walls. Both processes require water.

So we can feed a plant with specific nutrients that it can utilise direct, or by changing them through assimilation, or we can put it in conditions that allow it to turn carbon dioxide into the building blocks of its own structure. This means that in addition to foliar feed (applying food to the leaves in liquid form) and granular feed (which dissolves into the soil and is picked up by the roots in water, we need to ensure the soil in which our plants are growing contains everything necessary for them to carry out these two processes.

If the soil is too compacted then roots can’t obtain water. If it is too low in nutrients the plant will not grow as we want it to. If the feed is too rich, the plant will put out loads of sappy green growth (which is very susceptible to disease and damage) and not bother to flower.

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