How To Properly Feed Woody Indoor Plants; A Few Words About Mycorrhiza

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Most woody plants, including those grown in room culture, feed not through root hairs, like herbaceous ones, but through mycorrhiza. And she is very sensitive to dry soil. When the soil dries up completely, mycorrhiza dies. Therefore, even if the moisture of the soil coma is then restored rather quickly, the plant will remain on the "starvation diet" for a long time. Until the dead mycelium of the fungi grows back and mycorrhiza reappears.

For those who do not know what it is, I will explain: mycorrhiza - (translated as mushroom root) is a mutually beneficial accretion of a plant root with a thinnest web of fungal hyphae, outwardly similar to a barely noticeable mold, permeating the entire soil lump; often you cannot see them with the naked eye.

This is also one of the main reasons why it is preferable to transfer woody houseplants into a larger pot, i.e. transplant without disturbing the soil coma, and, therefore, mycorrhiza. Then the mutual exchange of nutrients is almost not disturbed - the mycelium of fungi (fruit bodies in a pot appear extremely rarely) supplies the tree with water and mineral salts, and the latter shares with it the products of photosynthesis, mainly sugars, which the mycelium itself cannot produce, since it is devoid of chlorophyll …

Thus, to fertilize a house tree, you must first feed the mycorrhiza-forming fungi. For this it is necessary to stimulate their vital activity. This can be done by spilling the soil in a pot with a solution of multivitamins (one tablet of any multivitamin, for example, Complivit or Oligovit, etc., per liter of water). Moreover, even old, expired vitamins that are not suitable for people are suitable here.

After that, after one to two weeks, the soil mushrooms are fed with a sucrose solution (one teaspoon of granulated sugar per liter of water). And only after, after another couple of weeks, the plant itself is fed with complex fertilizer. And if this is not the case, then for most woody species grown in room culture, and preferring a slightly acidic, neutral and even slightly alkaline soil reaction, you can add a teaspoon of wood ash with the addition of 1/3 of its volume of nitrate or urea - for one liter water.

However, the latter recipe is not suitable for rhododendrons, camellias, araucaria and some other plants that love acidic soils. After all, ash has an alkaline reaction and deoxidizes the soil mixture in the pot. To feed these particular plants, it is preferable to use a complex mineral fertilizer or make a similar mixture yourself. After such a triple feeding, periodically repeated, your indoor trees will look great and grow great.