phal root system

[terryros]

Before beginning Ray's K-Lite trial, I used Green Jungle fertilizer from Orchids Limited here in the Twin Cities, Minnesota very successfully for 4 years. It is a complete formula. It is proprietary based on careful studies done by Jerry Fischer (in conjunction I think with some University of Minnesota scientists) of native orchid habitats.

The solution in the bottle is actually 1.28% N, 0.48% P, and 1.48% K but I believe the labeling regulations make this round to the 1-0-1 you see on the bottle. It contains optimized amounts of Ca, Mg, and all trace elements. It also contains a wetting agent. The bottle directions for 2 tablespoons per gallon of RO or rain water results in about 100 ppm Nitrogen.

Jerry believes that this formula is more optimized for orchids than the MSU formula, which I think was created for more general plant growing?. If the K-Lite trials seem to be a success, I think we would say that Green Jungle has too much potassium in it, but I don't want people thinking that this isn't a complete fertilizer. I guess because it is proprietary, Jerry is probably not going to put the details of the exact composition of everything on the bottle.

[RosieC]

Yeah, we have a complete mix of units here. No consistency at all...

We use Miles-per-hour, Miles-per-gallon but measure small distances in cm and m and buy fuel in liters. We use pints for beer but ml in cooking, we measure people's weight in stone, but cooking in grams, water freezes at 0C but 70F is a nice day. Some measures are consistent nationally, speed limits are in miles, pubs sell in pints etc. however others are up to an individual's personal preference. We get quite used to mixing and matching and converting

The seaweed extract I recently bought called for 10ml per UK gallon... so you see how mixed up we are.

However I've never seen a calibrated measure for spoons at anything other than 5ml for a teaspoon (not in the last 15 years or so anyway). Silverware in the draw could be anything but when measuring out a 'teaspoon' in cooking or fertiliser or whatever it is a 5ml teaspoon that is assumed. However of course many products are imported... and we might assume one thing when the label was written for a different market. While if I know it's a different measure to I'm expecting I try and do a convertion the differences are minimal with the amounts we are talking about here anyway

[camille1585]

I had no idea that things were so insane in the UK! One thing that has always intrigued me is why another unit was created for weighing people (stone) when you already had kilos and pounds to choose from! Or if stone preceeds the other 2, why wasn't it dropped for the sake of simplicity?

[RosieC]

Stone is just part of the imperial system with pounds and ounces it's the bigger measure of the imperial system with 14 pounds in a stone. It came long before the metric system.

The UK just can't fully accept the metric system. The metric system is the best for science because all the equations just work without conversion factors however science is about the only field in the UK that seems to have adopted them whole heartedly.

Officially Britain is meant to be metric now, but speed signs are still MPH and while an attempt was made to stop the use of 'pint' it didn't work. Most people understand height and weight of people in Stone/Pounds and Feet/Inches but I have noticed that babies now get measured in metric and everyone has to convert it back to imperial to actually understand it

[camille1585]

Well they do serve certain beers by the pint here as well, and that's pretty much the only non metric measure in use. I think it has to do with tradition more than anything.

[RosieC]

Yeah, tradition and a "we don't want Europe telling us what to do" attitude which a lot of the newspapers make worse by making up stupid stuff they say Europe has told us to do

[catweazle1962]

wow i did not ecpect all these replys sorry to cause problems about measurments

[camille1585]

LOL that's fine! It's a chance to learn about things other than orchids as well. I have picked up lots of random facts here!