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Today Once again we will try to answer another set of Five interesting gardening questions and thoughts. Questions like: My Grandma says: Never go near plants in night time? Can we use animal or menstrual blood on plants? Can we use Human or animal Urine for Plants? And two other interesting questions.
Now Lets Begin with the first grandma question !
- My Grandma says, Do not go near plants during the night time? Why?
During daytime in the presense of sunlight plants prepare their food – that’s called photosynthesis. They take in carbon dioxide from atmosphere, water from roots and then sunlight and prepare their sugars. So in day time they take up Carbondioxide and release Oxygen and that’s good. But during night they takin Oxygen and release CO2 and hence the air near trees will have lesser concentration of Oxygen and higher concentration of CO2. That is why it is not advisable to go near trees during night time. However, this impact will be negligible for small plants and at home gardens and only be noticeable near very large trees or in thick vegetation.
Also another point to note is, Some plants even prepare food at night without sunlight by a process called CAM photosynthesis – Crassulacean acid metabolism. I have discussed this in my video on the 24 hour oxygen producing plants for your health.
- What’s the world’s largest flower?
The flower with the world’s largest bloom is the Rafflesia arnoldii, found in the rainforests of Indonesia. It can grow to a size of 3 feet across and can weigh up to 50 pounds! It is actually, a parasitic plant, with no visible leaves, roots, or stem.
- My tomato plant is producing lots of flowers but not fruiting? The answer to this question is simple. The commonest reason is insufficient pollination. Check the pesticides you are using might be preventing honey bees and beneficial pollinator insects from entering your garden. The other causes can be insufficient fertilizers and in that case consider adding a high potash and high calcium fertilizers.
- Can i add blood to plants? Can Mentrual Blood Fertilise Your Houseplants?
Well, the answer to blood is Yes, BUT..before that
Let me explain this: To start, As you all know, Most fertilisers are based on the three major plant nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, that is NPK. And all three of these elements are present in blood. Not only blood this applies to any stuff like fish meal, bone meal or even animal blood. But here is the catch and scientific explanation. You might already know that Uncomposted manure or non decomposed manure like cowdung and stuff like that can be harmful to your plants. That is the reason we use decomposed manure and we make compost at home in our compost bin. When you add anything raw including the raw smoothie some people recommend for your plants which they make by blending all raw kitchen waste and I have discussed in one of my recent videos.
The problem is, its decomposition process is going to promote the growth of all sorts of microorganisms which can be harmful to the plants and even humans. In addition, the nitrogen is consumed by these microorganisms for decomposition process and this will lead to nitrogen deficiency in plants, something similar to Nitrogen Stealing which I discussed in one of my videos on the use of Saw dust for your plants.
So Then, How do I use blood? You can purchase blood meal, fish meal, bone meal and all types of these organic fertilizers from a garden store. You can use these because these are prepared from dried or decomposed animal blood. So that’s it.
- Can Animal or Human Urine be used as a Fertilizer?
Well this looks uncomfortable for most of us. But the truth is human or animal urine for example cow urine contains loads of NPK- thats nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium which are the most essential plant nutrients for agricultural use. But it has to be applied in dilution of atleast 1:20 in water. This topic needs more detailed discussion and concepts, we will look into it in some other episode.
