Murray's Weblog

New Writings on Horticulture

I've created a new "category" for my homepage blog called Horticulture to be dedicated to talking about growing things—a hobby that I've found a true love for.

I also never would have guessed how much "science" there is in horticulture. Raising and keeping plants involves much more than occasionally watering your plants. There are all sorts of interesting topics that involve an understanding of specific scientific topics. Here's an example:

• Fertilizer In addition to getting the right balance of the three primary nutrients (Potassium, Nitrogen, Phosphorus) to encourage general growth or blooming (or runner development in strawberries), there's the understanding of how bacteria work to help the roots function. Did you know that bio-decomposition creates acid (low pH) as a side-effect, which is necessary for proper nutrient uptake in roots? In hydroponics your growing medium is sterile so you have to provide an acid source yourself.
• Pruning, flowering and hormones Flowers and the tips of stems produce growth inhibiting hormones that keep nodes dormant along the length of the stem. Prune the tip of a stem and these nodes start growing branching stems. This is really useful to understand when your impatiens begin to look gangly! It also dictates strategies for pruning shrubs if you don't want them to get too thick and knotted.
• Seed Germination Starting new plants from seeds is not an easy endeavor. Different seeds have different storage lives and require different storage conditions. Also, different plants' seeds have different strategies for deciding when it's acceptable to germinate. Simply popping a seed from a fruit into the soil and watering rarely results in a plant.

The cool thing about growing plants is it can be inexpensive, and when your experiments fail, well... it's not all that devastating. (Okay, I felt a little sad when I threw out my problematic avocado plants. Yes, they're dead now.) I've turned into a bit of a nut recently. I will pinch off a small stem from some nice looking shrub while walking down the street, take it home and try to root it. Last weekend at my friend's wedding rehearsal I noticed a cactus plant with a ripe fruit that had just fallen off the plant. I placed the fruit inside a used Pringles can and took it home.

I've tried rooting two Pineapple tops. The first one didn't make it (started decomposing without a single root developing) but the second one is looking more promising.

The number of experiments I've got running is pretty extensive, and I'm in the mood to write about them, so there may be a lot of horticulture writing on this blog in the near future!

Posted by Murray Todd Williams at September 27, 2005 08:38 PM