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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Plant Nutrition (for Dummies?) was - Svar: autumn Seedballs?

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  • From: Juergen Botz <jurgen@botz.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Plant Nutrition (for Dummies?) was - Svar: autumn Seedballs?
  • Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:08:42 -0300

I liked your vision of plant nutrition, but a couple of corrections
are in order...

On 09/21/2009 10:57 AM, nepal wrote:
> of all the things I've read, what made the most sense and fits
> best with my understanding of nature is the roots are actually more
> like animal than plant and actively hunt out [...] their food

That doesn't mean that "roots are like animal" it only means that
plants (and not just the roots) are a lot more active than most
people think. Plants move, they sense, they communicate...
they are as active and dynamic as any other live form.

> Or could
> I even say that the plant's root ball is an entire and complete history
> of every feeding event of that plant.?

Certainly not "complete"... roots also die, rot, and become food again.
Not just when they are damaged, but often simply because they are
done with what they were doing. Depending on the type of plant that
may be the case only with "feeder" roots or with the whole root
system (on a coconut palm for example no root lives longer than
3 years, even though the plant can live a century).

One more thing... "nutrition" is not really the same as "food". The
single most important difference between us and plants is that
we get our energy and nutrients from the same source which we
call food. Plants get their nutrients from the soil, but they get their
energy directly from the ultimate source: the Sun. We on the
other hand depend on plants for our energy... not only the food
part, but also the fossil fuel part which is sunlight that was
captured by plants millions of years ago and then stored under
the earth.

In other words, plants (and some photosynthesizing bacteria)
are the only primary producers on this Earth, the rest of us are
parasites.

:j





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