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Re: [Market-farming] Sugar as a soil amendment for insect pestsuppression
- From: "Bill Shoemaker" <wshoemak AT inil.com>
- To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
- Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Sugar as a soil amendment for insect pestsuppression
- Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 09:02:11 -0500
Marlin
I don't think it makes sense. As soon as
the sugar gets blended into the soil it'll start dissolving. Then it becomes
food for every living organism in the soil. Sure, the plant takes up moisture
and very small molecules and ions in the water, but most of the
sugar would be consumed by soil organisms before the plant has a chance.
And what suger makes it into the plant through moisture uptake by the roots
would travel in the xylem vascular bundles. Food used by the plant travels in
the phloem vascular bundles. And that's the only way sugar gets into fruit
tissues, by the phloem. Any sugar (sucrose) that is available in the plant gets
used right away for building plant tissues. It wouldn't hang around and wait for
the plant to make fruit 2 months later.
Sucrose is like legos to the plant. It
builds most of itself from sugar developed by photosynthesis. And photosynthesis
uses the basic ingredients of water and carbon dioxide, energized by light, to
create sugar. So if someone is growing really sweet melons or sweet corn, its
because they're growing healthy plants with lots of green tissue conducting
photosynthesis. Healthy plants make healthy food.
By the way, it's amazing how much of a
plant is made up of water and thin air. If you cut a plant off at it's base,
weigh it and let it thoroughly dry, weigh it again, you'll discover that 90-95%
of it's weight is just water. But then take the dried plant tissues, burn them
and weigh the ashes. What you burned away were the solid tissues built from
sugar created by photosynthesis (water and carbon dioxide). Woody tissues
are really just sugars linked into lignins and cellulose. The ashes
will be difficult to weigh unless you have an accurate scale because there's not
much left. The ashes are what make up the mineral portion of the plant.
Everything else was water and thin air. Life's amazing.
Bill Shoemaker
Sr Research Specialist, Food Crops Univ of Illinois - St Charles Hort Research Center
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-
Re: [Market-farming] Sugar as a soil amendment for insect pestsuppression,
Bill Shoemaker, 04/26/2004
- <Possible follow-up(s)>
- Re: [Market-farming] Sugar as a soil amendment for insect pestsuppression, Bill Shoemaker, 04/26/2004
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