Market Farming

["Paul A. Bock" <bockpa AT plesh.com>]

I still vote for the refractometers for plant analysis, but this is too
interesting.  Sugars are present in the sap, but also the basic cations (if
they are hopefully present in your soil) will also be in the sap.  I will
take a wild guess and say that the health of the plant would be proportional
to the concentration of these ionic nutrients.  Your Calcium, potassium and
phosphorus.


>Remember from your basic chemistry/physics that
>conductivity of a solution happens only when a
>solution is made of ions, not nonionic solutes.  So,
>in other words, a solution of table salt, which
>disassociates into sodium and chloride ions, will
>conduct electricity, showing up as non-infinite
>resistance on an ohmmeter in proportion to its
>concentration.  But a solution of sugar, which
>consists of individual sugar molecules, will not
>conduct electricity, always giving a reading of
>infinite resistance no matter what the concentration.