Elton's Corner
Acidify Your Water to keep your plants Alive!
I have been talking acidifying plant water for a long time, then I talked about adding ammonium sulfate to the water also. Malcolm Burleigh and I did an article on the subject called, Ammonium Nitrogen and Acidic Water for Xerophytic Plant Growth. With the use of acidic water the plants responded quite quickly. From people that tried it, I received emails saying how long it took for them to see a difference in their plants. Those that were keeping a daily eye on their plants, one reported new spine growth in three days. Quite a few reported new spine growth in four days. Other people reported that they saw improved growth in the plants be if from 5 days to a weeks time. There is one thing that governed how quickly plants responded. That is if the pH was taken down to only 6.8 to right at 7. At that pH the plants would take a while to respond. Those that took the pH down to 6 or below saw a much faster response time in the plants. I blame my self for this for before writing the article, Acidic Solutions with Malcolm and Russell Wagner I had sent out emails to quite a few people on my email list. There I was saying to add one tablespoon vinegar to five gallons of water. I had a pH meter at the time and still do but I had not run into a good pH kit at that time. So did not tell people that their water should be below a pH of 6 and it would match the pH of rain water if it were between 5 and 5.5.
With acidic water the health of all the plants started to improve. Some plants show it much faster than others. The real hard bodied plants like Ariocarpus fissuratus, retusus and the like took longer to show new growth. It was not too long before I could see a change in the color of the growing point of the plants though. On most cacti, the plant will show greening up at the growing point first and then work its way down the plant. After acidifying the plants we did some experiments of adding ammonium sulfate to the acidic water. The reason is that we found that urea and nitrate nitrogen needs bacteria in the soil to break it down so the plants can use it. In checking, most water soluble fertilizers on the market, we discovered that most have mostly urea and nitrate nitrogen with very little ammonium nitrogen. The ammonium does not need bacteria to break it down and so the plants can use it right away. The bacteria needed to break down the others can take as long as a month to grow. The problem with succulent plants is that they are watered and then the soil is allowed to dry before the plant is watered again. At that rate, the bacteria never grows, for the soil has to stay quite damp for it to grow. We had a hand full of growers across the country testing and reporting what effects they found with the ammonium sulfate. It was all positive and those that reported said they would always use ammonium sulfate along with the regular fertilizer. The first thing we discovered was better looking growth. Another thing we thought was happening was more flowers being produced. We were not really sure if it was happening or if it was just wishful thinking on our part. When spring came we discovered that it was not wishful thinking but a fact. Healthy plants just seem to want to bloom more and also we saw that the flower colors were a lot richer.
On the fast growing plants like most Echinopsis and Rebutia you can see changes in the plants in only a short time. Others like the Ariocarpus and some of the plants with hair for spines or hair and spines took longer for differences to show up. One thing we did notice is that the spines on the new growth was stronger and longer on quite a few plants. Dotted here and there among my hot houses I have some Austrocylindropuntia floccosa. I have put them in different areas because they did not grow the required hair on the stems. I figured that if I put them in different growing areas maybe one would grow some dense hair, then I would give all the plants the same growing conditions. Needless to say not much happened, when acidic water was given the plants went from a yellow green to green but still little to no hair growth. In time I had given up on the plants growing any dense hair. So when to my surprise I saw a densely hair covered plant, I had to investigate. All five plants are now covered in dense hair. This came about after I started feeding with ammonium sulfate. With the 20-20-20 I was using even at quarter to half strength the plants were only getting about 1.2 to 2.5 % usable nitrogen. With the increase in usable nitrogen as per the article the plants have now covered themselves with a good amount of hair. Any time I saw photos of A. floccosa in habitat they were covered in mantels of white hair. I figured since it is hotter here than in habitat that the plants would cover themselves with very dense wool. It just goes to show that lots of light is not always the answer.
Want plants that thrive?
Acidify the water and
feed with ammonium sulfate