Quote:
Originally Posted by tropterrarium
Hi Ray,
Do I understand you correctly, that you think that pH deviation 2-3 steps of "recommended" do not matter? This goes very much against anything I've ever heard. because of pH dependency of nutrient availability. I don't believe in the singular perfect value either, but would think that variation of a total of 0.5-1 pH value (+/- 0.25-0.5) would be more like an acceptable range.
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I don't think the nutrient availability vs pH information that I have seen is very accurate for orchids in bark or even spaghnum. Perhaps those numbers were accuate for some (unspecified) type of soil.
I would be concerned that a 2-3 unit variance of pH from specification indicates that the material is not well mixed. To get a multicomponent mixture like these well mixed so that it will not separate during shipping you really need to make a solution of all of the components and then use spraying drying to get it back to solid.
A significant component of my decision to use the Dynagro products was that they are supplied in liquid form. Liquid concentrates like Orchid-pro though have problems with solids forming over time so that when I make up a batch of Dynagro Orchid-Pro I use the entire bottle and start a week ahead of time trying to dissolve the stuff that has come out of solution (and not all of it will dissolve).
Soon I will start preparing my own formulations from pure chemicals. I plan to use a two component liquid concentrate formulation with phosphate, sulfate, borate and molybdate in one component and calcium, magnesium and the other minor elements in the other component. The cationic minor elements - iron, zinc, manganese, copper and cobalt I will use as amino acid chelates. At the moment I have prepared zinc and copper glycinate and have iron as ferric ammonium citrate but I have aspartic and glutamic acids on order and will probably switch over to using those to prepare the chelates.
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