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Thank you for your usual hemorrhoidal response, Bert. (I chose that
adjective as the part of the anatomy to which that defective tissue is usually
attached is an extremely important part of the body, and I wouldn't want to
besmirch it. That, by the way, was passed on to me by a PhD chemist for
whom I have much greater respect.) Just because someone makes a
statement about something you might not have considered, that is not a reason to
spew forth.
I would have sworn that my plausible example was a public post,
not a private one, but be that as it may. Let me simplify it further:
1) Picture a sponge.
2) "Water" it with a fertilizer solution, and let it dry.
At that point, there will indeed be dried fertilizer minerals within the pores
of the sponge.
3) Now water it again. Is it not possible that those minerals
might redissolve, giving you a localized chemistry different that what was
expected in the watering process?
I never, for an instant, claimed it was a likely scenario, just a possible
one you had missed in your earlier post. And I certainly hope folks
have enough sense to water thoroughly to flush the excess minerals away.
Get a life, Bert. I share your quest for eliminating the spread of
bad science in orchid growing, but I try not to do so via personal
attacks.
Ray Barkalow - First Rays Orchids - www.firstrays.comPlants, Supplies,
Artwork, Books and Lots of Free Info!
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2005 12:57
PM
Subject: [OGD] Re: Orchids Digest, Vol 7,
Issue 183
The posts by Ray Barklow and Iris
illustrate what I meant by the persistence of orchid cultural myths which
are contradicted by Physics and Chemistry.
Iris, despite what you've read,
charcoal absorbs only materials that have unsaturated electron systems,
technically termed "Pi electrons." Common salts are NOT absorbed by
charcoal even though it is very efficient in absorbing [more technically,
"adsorbing"] noxious gases and colored organic
molecules. Charcoal lacks the replaceable ions that make
zeolites capable of exchanging one small inorganic ion for another. Ray
is correct, the more highly the charcoal is activated, the more efficiently it
adsorbs whatever it is capable of adsorbing, but not mineral
salts.
Ray submitted to me, off the OGD Forum,
one of those contrived scenarios that I referred to in my last post, to wit,
that charcoal physically occludes fertilizer solution that precipitates
when the medium surface dries out and is re-released, in presumably
concentrated form, during the next fertilizer application, without
the two year delay implied by Iris. This scenario requires no waterings
between fertilizer applications and never flushing, an extremely bad and
fortunately rare cultural practice, that will cause problems
regardless of what medium is used.
I do not submit this post, just to
be pedantic. Growers in search of the solution to a cultural problem
usually have a real problem. I just want to suggest that they consider
other less remote possibilities than the medium, diatomite, charcoal or
whatever, injuring the roots by concentrating fertilizer
salts.
Bert
Pressman
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