Banana peel

[ultimatesr]

Originally Posted by Vanda lover

I have been burying them around my roses because I read that roses love the potassium. Our compost is a good part banana peels because there is a rat problem [we are a port] and I have to be careful not to compost things that bears like. I figure banana peels couldn't be too tasty.

So Vanda lover did the banana peel fertilizer worked well with your roses

[naoki]

Before things go too wild, a couple comments.

Originally Posted by ovanoshio

Banana peels break down to gibberellic acid, which would stoke growth but it can mutate the genetic information and change them for better or worse. (like peloric, meaning changing the petals to 2 extra lips, or in the case of cattleyas make them splash petal). Just fertilize weakly weekly and use a low concentration of superthrive if you want them to grow faster without mutating.

As far as we scientists know, plant hormones are unlikely to cause genetic mutation. Overdosing with hormones do cause developmental abnormality like what you mentioned, but they do not change the genetic information (DNA). Epigenetics (e.g. methylation status) could be influenced by hormones, but nobody would call it as "mutation".

Also, I'd like to know where you have seen the information that banana peels break down to gibberellic acid (GA). No, I'm not attacking you or anything. I'm just curious and I'd like to know the concentration of GA in banana. GA is important in maturation of fruits. It is involved in production of ethylene (which cause the maturation of fruits). So I have no doubt that banana contains GA (as well as quite a lot of other hormones), but I'd like to know if it has high concentration of GA to influence other plants.

Originally Posted by orchidsamore

As for the gibberellic acid produced, I do not know but I use large amounts of Giberellic acid on my orchids as do several other large growers I know.

I use Essentials a growth product with high gibbellic acid concentrated from seaweed. It is 1000 times stronger than Superthrive (IAB and NDD) growth products and does not ever burn orchids. It produces fabulous results.

I have used it for over 5 years and never had the problems of which you warn. Another grower I know with over 1 million orchids in production uses it a lot and never has had any issues.

Anyone using seaweed as a fertilizer also is adding gibberillic acid to their plans.

From your other post, I think you are confused gibberellins with auxins. Most of the Superthrive, KLN, Kelp products are auxins, which has lots of physiological effects, but we are mostly using it for promoting branching of roots. In industry, I'm sure GA is also used. Gibberellins are used for promoting seed germinations (some germination media contains GA). Other than this, I don't see why someone wants to use GA for orchids. It also can cause development of fruits without fertilization for some plants (you can think of seedless grape, even though this is not how they make seedless grape). This is called parthenocarpy, and I'm not sure if this happens for orchids. Parthenocarpy is not desirable, though (other than maybe for Vanilla). Auxins can cause parthenocarpy, too.

A minor point: you meant IBA (Indole-3-butyric acid) and NAA (1-Naphthaleneacetic acid), which are synthetic auxin, not IAB and NDD.

Originally Posted by Orquiadicto

I've read in another forum (a Spanish one) that people actually boil 3 0r 4 banana peels in 1 liter of water, filter it and water their Phals with this. It seems to trigger spikes. I've never done it though. Perhaps I'll try next year, since this year I've only got one Phal to spike (through they get all the same cares).

Interesting, you should try it out of season. For some plants, GA can cause bolting (initiation of flowering stalk). I know this happens for Brassicaceae plants, and I confirmed it with Poppy, too. Plants use some environmental cues (day length, temperature etc), but GA could cause the bolting without the proper cue in some plants. So, instead of waiting for the usual time when your Phals flower, you should try it in a wrong time to confirm the effect of banana peel. I'm not sure if GA is heat-stable, though.

[Vanda lover]

Originally Posted by ultimatesr

So Vanda lover did the banana peel fertilizer worked well with your roses

I believe it does help. It is something that has been used for many years and is know to gardeners.

[ultimatesr]

Thank you Vanda Lover.I started trying this recently.And after your +ve response I'll continue with that.

[gravotrope]

A line from a study that can be found here: Endoreplication: polyploidy with purpose

"Mutations in the GA pathway exhibit defects in endoreplication"

Meaning an excess amount of GA (applied by humans) that degrades the growth inhibitors that are the plant's natural regulation of the pathway (the same as one of the many possible pathway mutations) is capable of causing polyploidy (which isn't technically a mutation but there are other actions of GA relative to gene expression as well as cell replication, so a very confused plant that is growing and dividing rapidly in this environment is LIKELY to have a FEW transcription errors because the messed up pathway is failing to regulate the normal development and duplication of cells), but apparently it would only occur at higher concentrations than can be found in a banana peel.

And now I am fairly certain I was thinking of Colchicine instead since my memory of Gibberellic acid was relative to seedless fruit, and specifically not that the fruit developed smaller in the absence of the seeds which produce GA but that it was instead what made the developing seeds abort. I was wrong about that bit so I had to do a little research and the above paragraph/reference was what I came up with.

One of the reasons why it stokes growth is that it helps convert stored starch to sugars, which happens to green bananas as they turn sweet, I wish I knew where my original reference was, but it was at least 10 years ago that I read about it.

[ultimatesr]

Thank you Ovanoshio

[Lilac]

What a ton of great info! I'm doing the boiled banana peel thing. I'll just test a little of it out and see. I can look at them now and I even know which fertilizer they prefer, by the color they turn, It's subtle but noticeable.

[ultimatesr]

That's great. Do plz update about the progress.

[naoki]

Originally Posted by ovanoshio

A line from a study that can be found here: Endoreplication: polyploidy with purpose

"Mutations in the GA pathway exhibit defects in endoreplication"

Meaning an excess amount of GA (applied by humans) that degrades the growth inhibitors that are the plant's natural regulation of the pathway (the same as one of the many possible pathway mutations) is capable of causing polyploidy (which isn't technically a mutation but there are other actions of GA relative to gene expression as well as cell replication, so a very confused plant that is growing and dividing rapidly in this environment is LIKELY to have a FEW transcription errors because the messed up pathway is failing to regulate the normal development and duplication of cells), but apparently it would only occur at higher concentrations than can be found in a banana peel.

Thank you, Ovanoshio. It is a very interesting paper. I've wondered how endopolyploidy is controlled, so I should read it in more detail. But your interpretation is a bit off.

Endopolyploidy is not same as polyploidization (whole genome duplication). For some plants, some cells (e.g. root, trichome cells, guard cells etc.) has higher ploidies. So a single plant is a mixture of different ploidy; e.g. majority of cells are diploid (2x), but guard cells are tetraploids (4x) and trichome are octaploid (8x). Brassicaceae is a good example. So the somatic polyploidization has to be developmentally regulated. The paragraph which you quoted is talking about how this cell specific genome duplication (endoreplication) is controlled by GA and salicylic acid (SA) in trichomes. Therefore, a mutant which has problems with GA synthesis can't properly regulate endoreplication.

Also saying that hormonally screwed up plants causes higher rate of duplication error is an overstatement. I don't think you meant transcription error (=malregulation of gene regulation since transcription is a process to produce mRNA from DNA).

Originally Posted by ovanoshio

And now I am fairly certain I was thinking of Colchicine instead since my memory of Gibberellic acid was relative to seedless fruit, and specifically not that the fruit developed smaller in the absence of the seeds which produce GA but that it was instead what made the developing seeds abort. I was wrong about that bit so I had to do a little research and the above paragraph/reference was what I came up with.

One of the reasons why it stokes growth is that it helps convert stored starch to sugars, which happens to green bananas as they turn sweet, I wish I knew where my original reference was, but it was at least 10 years ago that I read about it.

Well, colchicine is a toxin and not plant hormone, so yes, overdosing with colchicine kills cell (or cause cancer). It is a big going to off-topic, but yes, GA is involved in fruit ripening. However, this doesn't mean that GA helps plant growth by converting start to sugar. This is specific to fruit tissues. One thing you have to understand is that plant hormones have different effects on different tissues. Auxins promote branching in the root system, but they prevent branching in the above-ground (or shoot) system.

And also you are correct that GA is used for seedless grapes (at least in the US). To make the cluster looser (so easier to eat) and to make the fruits bigger. Plant Physiology Online: Commercial Uses of Gibberellins

[Orquiadicto]

I think I'm going to try it completely out of season. I'll test it out early summer with a few Phals and see what happens. If anything interesting happens, I'll let you all know (if nothing happens also).