Everyone is having odd weather. We are getting cool weather, threats of bad storms, yielding little or no rain. We finally had a long sunny day yesterday,so the tomatoes began to bloom and the potatoes started growing leaves. Our first red KnockOut Rose bloomed (one flower), but hundreds of buds are ready to open up
This afternoon the cool winds are blowing again, and we may get rain. I have learned a lot about evaporation from watching the newspapers get soaked by the hose then dry out with a steady breeze.
Although the mulch holds down the soil, holds water, and helps prevent evaporation from the wind. the same wind dries up the rose canes.The newly planted roses do not have good foundation yet, so they gain the water slowly and lose it easily.
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| Standard or tree roses |
Intensive Creation Unit
I walked around with the mop bucket full of rainwater today, pouring water on the lagging bushes and pruning a few examples of deadwood. I run the soaker hose for the roots, but I spray the canes to keep them hydrated. The front and back are set up for two soaker hoses and one garden hose each, so I move switches like a real hydraulic engineer and water the roots.
Roses have simple, easily defined needs, so people do the opposite and wonder why their blooms are not showing up.
The fun part is doing the work early, letting God's Creation take over, and seeing the results. As I have often said and written, people resist the basics of Creation instead of studying them. Darwin's Black Box argues that many theories were easily foisted on the public, as long as we knew little about life at the microscopic level. Each plant cell is not just a chemical factory, but a collection of chemical factories.
If we could stop at the plants alone, arguing for evolution might make a little sense, but that would be like saying water runs uphill and birds fly with thought waves. Each plant is incredibly complex as the cells grow, differentiate, and create the needed structures for its own kind. This all happens without any thought or effort on our part and has continued since Creation.
Many things became evident in the last few years. One is the essential work of fungi, bacteria, protozoa, and nematodes. That increases the level of complexity in the plant cells, because they make the demands upon the fungi for the nutrition needed, swapping carbon for those needs. No one even suggests that plants are thinking beings, but they were organizing their own needs long before we realized how infinitely complex those steps were, and all linked with many other organisms at the same time.
We have trouble talking people out of junk food and cola, but the plant says to the fungi, "If you want my carbon, I need moisture, nitrogen, and phosphorus." Getting the carbon it needs to grow, the microscopic fungi stretch out incredible lengths for their size and even network with several plants at once. That is only part of the arrangement.
Here in the rhizosphere [root zone of the soil], the increase of carbon, together with the carbon in mucilage and dead root tip cells, attracts bacteria and fungi and helps sustain populations near the root surfaces. For example, Rhizobia and Frankia are nitrogen-fixing bacteria that form relationships with legumes.
Mycorrhizal fungi form a symbiotic relationship with plants and get carbon directly from roots, ensuring a supply by providing the plant with nutrients. These fungi literally go out from the plant root hairs and obtain nutrients the roots cannot, both because of the inability of the larger root to fit into tiny pore spaces and the inability of the root to grow the length required.
Lowenfels, Jeff (2013-05-07). Teaming with Nutrients: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition (Kindle Locations 2159-2164). Timber Press. Kindle Edition.
How important is one particular chemical? Here is just a little about the other two chemicals in the NPK rating found on inorganic fertilizer.
Phosphorus
Phosphorus (P) ultimately comes from the weathering of apatite, a type of rock. It can enter soils in two forms: organic and inorganic. As you would expect, the former is from decaying dead plants, manures, and microbes that contain it. Like nitrogen, phosphorus also cycles through the environment in various forms. Inorganic phosphorus, from apatite, is adsorbed to the surfaces of clay particles and organic matter....
Because of the tight adsorption (clinging to) to soil particles, phosphate uptake requires that roots grow so they can maintain continuous and new contact with phosphorus. In addition, around 95 percent of all plants associate with mycorrhizal fungi, which provide the plant with phosphorus in return for the carbon in root exudates.
Lowenfels, Jeff; Lowenfels, Jeff (2013-05-07). Teaming with Nutrients: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition (Kindle Locations 1618-1621). Timber Press. Kindle Edition.
Potassium
Potassium (K) is the only essential nutrient that is not a constituent of any organ, organelle, or structural part of plants. Its role is as a regulating chemical. As such, potassium is the key solute in the cell’s cytosol, where it can exist in high concentrations without causing damage. Potassium ions play a key role in the movement of water into and out of cells. Those all-important guard cells in leaves open and close as a result of different potassium concentrations. This is how the plant as a whole regulates carbon dioxide and water levels. A potassium ion (K+) is positively charged, making it a cation. Potassium’s positive electrical charge acts as a counter balance to other charged molecules in plants. Potassium also regulates more than sixty key enzymatic reactions, speeding up chemical reactions by thousands of times. Its presence is crucial for the formation of starch, which is used to store the sugar made during photosynthesis, and for the movement of sugars themselves.
Lowenfels, Jeff; Lowenfels, Jeff (2013-05-07). Teaming with Nutrients: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to Optimizing Plant Nutrition (Kindle Locations 1633-1641). Timber Press. Kindle Edition.
The answer is not to buy inorganic fertilizer, which does a bad job of delivering these chemicals to the plant.
The answer is to promote microbial growth and leave the soil alone to do its work, providing food and water on top, trusting God the Creator to distribute the food as needed.
Progress
- Sweet corn should be planted soon in the Three Sisters Garden.
- Several vine plants will arrive, to grow up the trees.
- Peas are abundant and growing like government programs.
- Beans are sprouting. Tomatoes are blooming.
- The old rose garden is packed with buds, the KnockOuts will lead the way with the slower forming hybrid teas following.
- The new roses are all doing well, only two need ICU now.
- Potatoes and strawberries are making progress now.
- Bee balm is doing very well.
