K-lit after 6 months

[gonewild]

First, I need to know if people here are serious about doing a trial. Then we need to figure out the logistics - who, which plants, in what growing conditions. Then I'll need input from the experts - what do we want to test, what do we want to vary, what do we want to keep constant. Only then can I start on the design matrix.

It's a serious, time consuming undertaking (designing an experiment), and I'm not going to spend time on it without commitment from enough people to make the experiment happen. If enough people want to commit, I will start a separate thread.

What is enough people?
Based on what you are thinking what would each participant need to commit to?
How many plants, how long, ect....

If you give some basic general plan then more people might get interested.

 

[gonewild]

If one uses deflasked seedlings for an experiment this will ensure high plant numbers needed for sound statistical analysis. Stating with seedlings also removed a lot of history from the plants that could end up being confounding factors.

There would be a problem starting with deflasked seedlings. There is too much variation of growth between seedlings in the first 6 months. Their growth rate and survival rate is too heavily influenced by environment.
Uniform seedlings.

I don't know, but using a CHC as the growing medium might be more telling than SH or bark. CHC from agric stores seems to come now in mostly the same standard product and I don't think many people grow in SH (though that will be my option when I start again). I think the experiment must be relevant to the "average" grower (and not the nuts the in either extreme of the bell curve).

How to avoid the variations between different organic media sources?

I think it is important to know how the quality of the medium changes (so we can satisfy David) so both the soil and leave mineral content would need to be tested.

What is the desired result? To learn what minerals plants assimilate or to see what gives more pleasing growth based on what you see?

 

[Rick]

About a year ago I started a side by side trial with ten deflasked lowii seedlings.

5 get K lite/kelp and 5 get MSU (just like in the old days). All are in 2 inch plastic pots with a CHC mix (just like in the old days).

I must say that even to maintain this little separate test in my small GH is a total pain in the rear. And the variation among 5 seedlings per treatment still seems to be too high for clean comparisons. Probably need to go to at least 10 per treatment. In our tox test at work, we usually need 20-40 organisms per treatment to get decent statistical power.

It only takes up a foot of bench space, but finding even a foot with even lighting and not getting drips from overhead mounted plants has been a challenge.

Then making up separate watering/fertilizer regimes, week in week out for years on end makes for lots of slop in the application. So who ever decides to do this is making a big commitment.

At this time the above mix portion of the plants are doing well in either fert regime. However the MSU plants appear to have only shallow roots and are floppy in the pots, while the K lite/kelp plants seem to be rooting deeper and firmer into the pots.

 

[ALToronto]

What is enough people?
Based on what you are thinking what would each participant need to commit to?
How many plants, how long, ect....

If you give some basic general plan then more people might get interested.

Number of people would depend on the number of growing environments we want to test - GH, windowsill, basement with lights - anything else? We'd probably want two or three participants in each category.

Then we need to decide on growing media - types of organic, LECA/lava rock, semi hydro. Not every person would have to do all of them - that's where the design comes in. Then for each growing medium, we test the different fertilizers. I would do only 3 - Klite, MSU and something like Dyna Grow. Soil and fertilizer amendments would also have to be determined.

I wouldn't do this experiment with expensive plants - catts or phals would be fine. On the other hand, slippers will show the differences between the conditions much more readily. I will defer to the experts.

In any event, I'm not offering to manage the trial - just design the experiment. But now you should be getting a good idea of the scale and scope.

 

[Rick]

In any event, I'm not offering to manage the trial - just design the experiment. But now you should be getting a good idea of the scale and scope.

You could save a lot of time and just take the Cornell study and divide the chemical concentrations by 10, and increase the study period from 9 months to 5 years.

Judging from the reaction of folks over the last year, I don't think you can ever design a study robust enough to cover the skeptics. Every time you do this for species ABC they will just come back with "that means nothing for species XYZ" "Or hybrids PQL".

That's why we have countless threads for "How do you grow X?" Threads for growing Paph emersonii claiming something totally different from Paph hangianum, with the argument that species are separated by inscrutable but critical physiological differences.

I've been observing this forum since its inception years ago, and noting that history repeats itself over and over and over.....

 

[Ray]

I think that in order to do a definitive experiment, it should be many, many plants in a single, stable environment, so that every environmental factor is identical, except for the food. Trying to compare plants grown in my greenhouse and yours, for example, is not apples to apples. OK, maybe it's Granny Smith to Macintosh, but still not the same, and environmental variables can have a huge impact on the results.

Even the water supply can vary, RO to RO. Membranes remove a percentage of what's fed into them. Unless your input water supplies and membranes are identical and of the same usage history, the RO will have differing traces and levels of minerals in them.


Ray Barkalow
Sent using Tapatalk

 

[ALToronto]

I agree, Rick. At the same time, I think there is a significant interaction between the medium and the fertilizer. It would be worthwhile to learn that, perhaps, plants growing in lava rock need a different fertilizer blend than plants growing in bark/sphag/chc.

I think the main reason for all the skepticism is that none of the studies has been designed to cover different growing conditions, and that the fertilizer concentrations have been much too high. I have looked through all the studies that have been referenced by you and others on this forum, and I haven't felt comfortable adapting any of the results to my plants.

Personally, with K-lite, I have seen some dramatic improvements recently - but could that also be because it's finally spring in Toronto, and the plants on my windowsill are getting more sun, with higher humidity? Or could it be that KelpMax is helping more than the K-Lite? Only a properly designed experiment will separate the main effects and the interactions; otherwise we're just shooting darts in the dark.

 

[Trithor]

I think perhaps it would be easier to compare plants within each growing environment, rather than from one environment/grower to the next, and see how many results are common. It might be very difficult to get sufficient uniformity from one environment/grower to the next. After all I assume the intention here is to get a reasonably accurate idea if k-lite works for orchid growers in general, rather than if it works with a single cultural profile. To standardize the trial across twenty different growers in twenty different environments may prove too difficult and sink the trial before it even got off the ground.
Perhaps if a number of growers would agree to perform the trial on a reasonable number of plants in their individual environments and cultural techniques with the only difference being the fertilizers (standardized across the whole trial) and see what the results are at intervals across the test. After all if grower A finds that MSU performs best on plant type Z in his environment, but all the rest find that best results were obtained on their various groups of plants in their various environments using K-lite, then a fair set of conclusions will be able to be reached from the study, especially if a difference between grower A and the rest can be identified.
I for one would be happier if I saw a result in a variety of growing conditions on a variety of plants, rather than a perfect result in a laboratory on a single set of plants.
...... Just a suggestion from a carpenter, not a scientist.

 

[DavidCampen]

Or could it be that KelpMax is helping more than the K-Lite? Only a properly designed experiment will separate the main effects and the interactions; otherwise we're just shooting darts in the dark.

With the addition of KelpMax to K-Lite regimen, at least 3 to five variables have been changed from a plain MSU regimen - ratios of K, P, Ca and Mg and the addition of KelpMax.

Since we are engaging in unfettered speculaton here; I speculate that increased root growth with a KelpMax/K-Lite regimen compared to MSU is due to the KelpMax and more specifically because of the presence of amino acids in the KelpMax. I find exuberant root growth with my plants that I speculate is due to the large amount of aspartic acid in my nutrient formulations.

I think perhaps it would be easier to compare plants within each growing environment, rather than from one environment/grower to the next, and see how many results are common. It might be very difficult to get sufficient uniformity from one environment/grower to the next. After all I assume the intention here is to get a reasonably accurate idea if k-lite works for orchid growers in general, rather than if it works with a single cultural profile. To standardize the trial across twenty different growers in twenty different environments may prove too difficult and sink the trial before it even got off the ground.

Exactly.

 

[Rick]

The study is going on as we speak.

I believe it started in May 2011 when I first proposed the idea, and started a low K work around with my 300 + plants. In conditions ranging from mounted, potted bark, potted CHC, basket, and SH/leca. By December 2011 I think we were up to a couple dozen growers trying it out, with all their idiosyncratic growing methods.

As of today, there are probably at least 125 worldwide participants either using K lite or some version of their own design. My collection is pretty small, I would guess there at least 37,000 (captive) orchids getting exposed to some semblance of a low K/high Ca, Mg fertilizer regime.

rather than trying to get someone to dedicate a whole GH, you should design a survey that can plug data into an ANOVA analysis.

 

[consettbay2003]

What are the thoughts on the amount of Kelpmax to add to a litre of fertilizer solution and how often should this be used?

 

[Stone]

What are the thoughts on the amount of Kelpmax to add to a litre of fertilizer solution and how often should this be used?

Kelp should not be used in any trial of Klite

 

[Rick]

I find exuberant root growth with my plants that I speculate is due to the large amount of aspartic acid in my nutrient formulations.

What is your final concentration of aspartic acid?

Looking at the analysis of Kelpmax there is a total of 2462 mg/L of all amino acids combined. 316 mg/L of aspartic acid. I use Seaplex kelp extract at 1/4 tsp/gal max (0.32ml/L). So without fudging up for material density, my dose rate of total amino acid (assuming Seaplex is equivalent to Kelpmax) is 0.788 mg/L (total amino acid) or 0.1mg/L of aspartic acid.


Total auxin would come to 0.00352 ppm and cytokinin 0.0000099 ppm

1/4 tsp/gall of Kelpmax would boost K by 2.3 mg/L and Ca by 0.256 ppm

All in all pretty sparse.

 

[Rick]

ratios of K, P, Ca and Mg and the addition of KelpMax.

Unfortunately ratios don't explain the whole story as opposed to overall concentrations hitting the plant.

Keeping in mind the Cornell study, 200 ppm and 25 ppm of Ca and Mg respectively was supplied constantly to the orchids while K doses ranged from 50 to 300 ppm.

For Phaleanopsis when K dose was 100 ppm (1/2 the Ca dose and 4 times the Mg dose), leaf tissue K was almost 2 X the leaf Ca and 10X the leaf Mg.

This is backwards from wild orchid data where actual soluble K exposure concentrations are generally 1/10 (or less) what we splash on our plants.

 

[gonewild]

I speculate that increased root growth with a KelpMax/K-Lite regimen compared to MSU is due to the KelpMax and more specifically because of the presence of amino acids in the KelpMax.

Consider that a lot of folks have used KelpMax combined with many different fertilizer formulas and none have really resulted in such positive results as with K-lite.
I tried Kelp with MSU and never saw any results that warranted continued use.
So if results from Kelp use history are considered one can easily assume the dramatic improvement with the K-lite/Kelp combo is mostly due to the K-lite.

 

[Stone]

Once again any trial should be individually standardized for each individual grower. We all have different water, we all use different media and we all have different growing enviroments.
The recommendations for nursery trials suggested in my ''Bible'' written by K Handreck, a soil and media scientist for the CSIRO in Autstralia are:

''Techinique to use when you want to check to see if a particular treatment will improve plant growth. The treatment could be more or less frequent watering, an increased rate of fert application, an increase or decrease in the level of one nutrient element, a different pH, a new fungicide etc.''

In the simplest form:
Select pots for 2 groups (at least 10 pots)(use at least 5 pots for each treatment)
Label one group of pots with a ''C'' the other with a ''T''
Apply the teatment to the ''T'' pots.
Set the plants out in a suitable place.
Assess the effects of the treatment after several weeks to several months.
(simply compare the height and appearence of the two groups)

For more complicated trials we add more pots and label them ''T1, T2, T3'' etc.
For very complcated trials involving all sorts of combinations, you need expert statsical help which is beyond the scope of the average grower.

 

[Rick]

Here's a summary from a recent article I found on stemflow and throughfall in Diptocarp forest preserve in Borneo. Specifically they looked at N, K and conductivity concentrations above and below birds nest ferns during rainfall events. They even did a series of pour through tests on birds nest ferns (with all the accumulated leaf litter, bird poop, frog poop, insect poop....) and still couldn't get K values greater than 8 ppm.

Note for scale the MSU conductivity is only 25% actual (so multiply it by 4 for comparison to insitu values

 

[gonewild]

Kelp should not be used in any trial of Klite

Probably a better trial would be to compare K-lite with and without kelp.

Trying to do a formal trial to evaluate K-lite is not going to provide any more definitive results than what are already being reported.

It would be interesting to try to sort the already reported results to see how with and without kelp compare.

after saying that I do agree with you a direct comparison between K-lite and MSU and other off the shelf fertilizers would be the way to go.

 

[Rick]

Consider that a lot of folks have used KelpMax combined with many different fertilizer formulas and none have really resulted in such positive results as with K-lite.
I tried Kelp with MSU and never saw any results that warranted continued use.
So if results from Kelp use history are considered one can easily assume the dramatic improvement with the K-lite/Kelp combo is mostly due to the K-lite.

Logic not withstanding:wink:

 

[Stone]

couldn't get K values greater than 8 ppm.

But K similar to N levels.