AusBonsai

Jerry Meislik wrote:Sorry to join this thread so late but I am enjoying and learning from all the information supplied.
I too have felt for years that we were under-fertilizing. First, I grow all tropicals now. Two, I use an inorganic soil. Three, I grow my trees indoors under lights only.
After various experiments I concluded given my growing conditions, soil, trees etc that I needed to increase fertilization from every two-three weeks to daily. I use an inorganic fertilizer applied with an injector system.
Once every week or two I will water without fertilizer to flush the pots. Not sure if this is needed but I do it anyhow.
I would like to use organics but due to insects mold and smell and growing my bonsai in the house, I can't do it.
I definitely noted better growth and healthier trees once I stepped up my fertilization.
So far, adding humic acid has done nothing to my inorganic fertilizer regimen. Nor has adding trace elements. Apparently my chemical fertilizer must cover some of these vital elements.
Jerry
http://www.bonsaihunk.us

Jerry Meislik wrote:The fertilizer injector is a simple hydraulic pump that mixes a fixed ratio of chemical into the water. In my case, I have a bucket of very concentrated fertilizer that the injector sucks up and mixes with reverse osmosis water. I use an electrical conductivity meter to test my the resulting mix every month or so to be sure that it is not too concentrated. I also use the ECM to verify that my hydroponic growing bath is the correct concentration for my bonsai.
An ECM could be used to test soil salinity by mixing a fixed volume of soil in a specific volume of distilled or reverse osmosis water and testing the conductivity of the water. This should give a relative salinity of the soil. Of course it will only measure soluble salts and not insoluble salts. My assumption is that most plants do not have problems with insoluble salts.
Jerry