increase fruiting – GKVKs – Gardening Tips and Store

HOW TO GROW LOTS OF FRUIT TREES IN CONTAINERS?

admin — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 13:38:56 +0000

In Today’s article, we will look into some important gardening tips and tricks on successfully growing fruit trees in containers. Topics like Which fruits trees to choose – Seed grown vs Cuttings grown vs Grafted Trees. Where to purchase high quality grafted fruit trees and some important repotting tips for newly bought plants whether from online nursery or offline.

Let’s look into the Topics Covered in this episode:

Plant Purchase: Seed grown vs Cuttings grown vs Grafted Trees.
Repotting: Should I repot immediately after purchase?
10 Golden Rules to Follow while repotting a plant
Common Care Tips for Growing Fruit Trees.

Let’s begin:

Plant Purchase: I am sure most of us might have this question in mind: Growing from Seeds vs Growing from Branch Cuttings or Choosing to Purchase a Grafted tree. Which one do you thing you should opt for?
First of all, growing from seeds is a great fun thing to do and we all have done it many times for gardening fun and experimenting. But the major disadvantage of seed grown tree is they are not “true to seed” – meaning they may not produce identical fruit tree and more over it might take ages for the seed grown trees to products fruits, but of course there are some exceptions.

Secondly, Plants grown from cuttings including the air layering method may produce the genetic clones of the parent tree. Fruit trees such as figs, pomegranates, mulberries and many others are generally grown by this method. But the major problem with this method is they do not have enough roots developed to support fruit production and more over there are only fibrous roots and no tap roots which are important for fruit trees for anchorage. Whereas Seed produced plants have a well developed tap root system and this concept is used in Grafting. The ‘root stock’ which is the lower portion of the plant with strong root system and the ‘scion’ which is the branch from selected delicious fruit tree which is grafted on to the root stock.

Having Said that, its time to choose which trees to purchase for your container gardening. It’s obvious that grafted trees, specially dwarf varieties are the best one to grow in containers.

REPOTTING: Whether Purchased online or offline from a local nursery, people often have a misconception that immediately repotting a newly purchased plant into a larger container and a nutrient rich potting soil will make your plant grow like crazy. This is not always true.

Now let’s discuss some Very important points and concepts, that you must keep in mind if you want to keep your newly purchased plant healthy and avoid the so called repotting or transplant shock.

To answer this question, let us ask 2 QUESTIONS:

When Do I repot a New Plant Purchased offline, that’s from a Local Nursery or Garden Store?
When Do I repot a Plant Purchased Online? Like from nurserylive.com or amazon

Now, lets quickly look into the conceptual answers to these queries.

If your plant just came home from a local garden centre or nursery, DO NOT REPOT IMMEDIATELY. Let it adjust to its new environment for few days or atleast a week before repotting it. This is because the Plants are already in shock at their new residence until they get used to new factors like light, temperature, and humidity conditions.
Then in second scenario, that is when you purchase a plant online. Repotting immediately is the best solution in most cases. Because, it is very much likely that the plants would have travelled hundreds or thousands of miles and many days without any water or moisture before reaching its final destination. The plant will be going through a recovery period and an acclimation period during these days of transport in whatever medium the seller packs them in. So, Why let the plant re-acclimate twice in this situation.

The 10 Golden Rules of Repotting:

Let’s quickly list them one by one:

Water the plant the day before you plan to repot.
1. Perform Repotting in the evening hours to prevent shock to the plant during sunlight that is the day time which is the active period for photosynthesis. Let it get overnight period of rest and recovery.
1. To Remove the Root Ball, Gently Tap the rim of the pot to a hard surface like a table or a counter. This is to loosen the root ball instead of pulling it with force which can damage the roots or the stem. If the root ball resists to come out, run a knife between the pot and the root ball to loosen the root ball.
1. Inspect the root ball for things like: any root worms or maggots, root disease and if they are root bound to decide whether you want to repot in a larger container or perform root pruning.
1. Choosing the Right Container: For fruit and Vegetable plants especially if you are growing on terrace, choose fabric grow bags as your first preference. This is because they are not only light but also follow the principles of AIR PRUNING and can grow into healthy trees using this principle.

Then It’s also very important to choose a pot that is of appropriate size for the plant. Like, You should never pot a 6 inch pot plant into a 14 inch or a very large pot. Go Step by Step, Choose one or two steps higher, like 6 inch pot, you can plant in 8 inch or 10 inch pot and so on.

Drainage Holes: This is probably the most important factor you should consider. If you do not make enough drainage holes at the bottom of the pot, your plant will stand in water and lead to root rot and death of the plant.
- Choosing the Right soil: . As a general rule use a well draining nutrient rich soil with atleast 30 percent compost like vermicompost or decomposed cowdung. To make it well draining, you might have to add cocopeat or peatmoss to garden soil in proper proportions. Make sure you also add stuff like bone meal or soya bean meal for inducing flowering and fruiting. Check the best Potting Mix recipe or formula from my post.
- Partially fill the container with potting mix and then place the root ball exactly in the center of the pot. Then add additional soil to cover the empty space. Make sure the surface of that root ball is below the rim so you can cover it adequately with potting soil or compost and also this good space for properly watering your plant.
- Gently tap the pot on a hard surface to remove air pockets and to level the soil from within.
- Finally After Repotting, water the plant thoroughly and this remove the left over air pockets and stuff like that. Then to counter the Repotting or Transplant Shock, you can follow these simple steps: Water the plant with Epsom salt solution weekly once for a about a month. The dosage is 1 teaspoon Epsom salt per litre of water. Finally keep the plant in indirect sunlight or under a green shade net for atleast a week, before shifting to full sunlight.
  Happy Gardening!

Mycorrhizae Booster Tablets Improve Plant Growth Rate

admin — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 16:34:47 +0000

We all know that Fungus destroys and kills most our plants, what we commonly call as Rot. I am sure Every gardener must have experienced plant death due to fungus attack or the rot. Now what if I tell you there are some fungi which help boost the growth of plants. Yes that’s todays topic of discussion. What are these plant tablets and plant powder that can actually accelerate plant growth. We will quickly learn some scientific concepts of this and will also demonstrate on how to use these for your plants for a variety of purposes including rooting your plants cuttings successfully, using this stuff.

We will start with the term – MYCORRHIZA (that’s a Greek word mycos, “fungus”, and rhiza, “root”). It is a Symbiotic association (mutually beneficial – symbiosis is a process of mutual benefit) between a fungus and the roots of a plant.

We will look into a simple explanation to this: The plant prepares food and energy coming from the sun that’s by way of photosysnthesis and supplies these carbohydrates and other nutrients to the fungi through the roots, and the fungus in turn supplies water and mineral nutrients taken from the soil to the plants. So, Mycorrhizae are located in the roots of the plant. In general, most of the plant species can form these mycorrhizal associations. We will not go into details or types or classifications of these associations. The most common is the Arbuscular type which is also called Vesicular-arbuscular mycorrhiza (VAM) and this is present in 70% to 80 % of plant species. And Mycorrhizae are especially beneficial for the plants growing in nutrient-poor soils. Because the fungal mycelia or hyphae – that’s fine hair like structure can uptake the nutrients from the soil, These are better than the thinnest fibrous roots of the plants. This in scientific terms is called increasing the vascularity, similar to certain drugs in medical field which increase vascularity and increase blood supply to an organ.

There is a lot of research done on this and it is proved to be very much beneficial to plants. You can check out links to some of the website articles on these topic from the description of this video.

Well, Now at home gardening level, How to utilize this benefits of mycorrhiza to boost the growth of our plants.

There are two options am showing you here. You can checkout links to these items from a card linked to this video or visit our website at gkvk.net.

Plant Tablets or Root Tablets
VAM powder containing these mycorrhizae.

This one is in Tablet form. Its called Root booster tablets. This comes with a leaflet and instructions with dosage for various plants. For home plants, use 1 or 2 tablets depending on the size of the container and size of the plant.

Now how to use this: Make a deep hole like about 4 to 6 inches, till u approximately feel you are reaching the roots of the plant. Then insert this tablet into the hole and cover it with soil. Then water slowly to make the soil wet. This should contain spores of the beneficial fungi which should reproduce and start their actions. You should see the effect within 3 months. You can test this on your anaemic plants and see the improvement in about 3 months. If your anaemic plant is showing significant interval change, then this mycorrhizae are into action and providing the plant with the necessary micronutrients like iron, magnesium and others.

Now the second Product is called VAM – Vescicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizae. This comes in powder form and each gram contains 100 to 200 propogules. So, approximately add one teaspoon of this powder near the plant roots by digging a hole or while repotting sprinkle the powder and repot your plant.

Now another interesting Use of this Mycorrhizae. That is Using Mycorrhiza for a Rooting Hormone effect to grow stem cuttings, that is rooting your cuttings. You can dip the lower end of a cutting into this powder and insert them into the soil. You can apply all the other rules of cuttings like the 45 degree cutting angle and others. You can watch one of my old videos on this topic from a card linked at top right corner of this video or search in my channel.

So before going to our important and interesting quiz question.

Will summarise the benefits, Mycorrhizal fungi make plants stronger and healthy, increasing the yields, increasing flowering and fruiting, make them drought tolerant, reduce fertilizer and water usage, protect plant against harmful pathogens in soil, improve soil quality and drainage system, Increase tolerance to soil PH changes and many other benefits.

Now lastly one quiz question. Actually even I do not know a proper answer to this. Can we use broad spectrum antifungals like SAAF powder (carbendazim and mancozeb) to mix with water and water the plants. Will this not kill these mycorrhizae? Please answer in the comment box below the video.

Ref:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4717633/

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-011-3176-6_8