Misting Fertilizer

[wetfeet101b]

Wetfeet,
Do you mix seaweed with other fertilizer together as a spay solution? I have used seaweed this past year, only once a month but I don't feed other fertilizer that week.

They all go into the same mix.

[sadie]

Wetfeet -- that is some great, and very detailed information. I love posts like this--what someone actually uses. You got me curious about one thing, however. I use SuperThrive once a month when I water, and I thought it acted as a rooting hormine. It sounds like you use it much more often and use an additional rooting hormone. (I use DynaGrow's MagPro for micro-nutrients, in addition to the regular fertilizer.) What rooting hormone do you actually use and if it isn't for root growth, what does SuperThrive actually do?

[the dragonn]

I only use commercially produced fertilizer, but was intrigued by this thread of misting with it. I recently bought a fogger unit for my new promenarea and bulbo and will have a go at adding ferts to the water. If I see any improvement I'll post it here.

[gbrice]

Wetfeet -- that is some great, and very detailed information. I love posts like this--what someone actually uses. You got me curious about one thing, however. I use SuperThrive once a month when I water, and I thought it acted as a rooting hormine. It sounds like you use it much more often and use an additional rooting hormone. (I use DynaGrow's MagPro for micro-nutrients, in addition to the regular fertilizer.) What rooting hormone do you actually use and if it isn't for root growth, what does SuperThrive actually do?

I used to use SuperThrive every week with my fertilizer but cut back to once a month on the reccomendation of growers (Dr. Motes and Robert Fuchs) in my area. I was told that overuse could lead to deformities in flowers among other things.

-g

[wetfeet101b]

I will have to tag this with my disclaimer - or else I risk getting blamed for untimely orchid deaths

Disclaimer: The information below is strictly sharing my own personal experience and observations, and not an attempt to persuade people to follow my orchid culture regimen.
Every hobbyist's growing conditions and preferences are unique and one culture template cannot be simply imposed upon another grower.
All growers are encouraged to excersize sound reasoning when adopting a new culture regimen.

I use SuperThrive once a month when I water, and I thought it acted as a rooting hormine. It sounds like you use it much more often and use an additional rooting hormone.

Good questions Sadie,

For Superthrive, the bottlecap contains about 1/2 teaspoon (and I use 2 gallons of water). So it falls into the 1/4 teaspon per gallon per week recommendation from the label.
I have been using this concentration for quite sometime now with no negative effects.

This is a small bottle, so it has a small bottlecap. If I happen to get a bigger bottle of Superthrive, then I will need to adjust accordingly if it had a bigger bottlecap.
Obviously, if I start to see any plant or flower deformities, Superthrive will be the first to be throttled back since it is the one with a reputation to cause these problems at high concentrations.

What rooting hormone do you actually use

This season I was trying out Green Light Rooting Hormone (water soluble) that contains 0.1% IBA as the active ingredient (Indole-3-Butyric Acid).
It is the first growing season that I used it, just to see if there would be any noticeable improvements over last year.

I only plan to use it one or two months leading to the growing season when roots emerge. Once the roots have emerged, I discontinue its use.

what does SuperThrive actually do?

I would like to know that too
The product claims to do so many things but does not specify exactly how it does it or what ingredients cause what.
The label is confusing to read sometimes. They try to cram in so much information on it that it feels like reading a crazy neon sign high on Red Bull.
The product label also does not indicate if it contains IBA (rooting hormone) but it could very well be in their "secret formula".

One thing is for sure, the plants treated with Superthrive are in better health and grow better than those without it. I have tried this on orchids, fruit trees and ornamental plants.
So although they do not specify their actual ingredients, my guess is that it contains enough "intangible" trace minerals that complement the fertilizers and are appreciated by the plants that lead to their improved growth.

Would Superthrive, Sea Weed Extract and other "trace mineral" products be redundant?

It is possible.
Without knowing the exact ingredients for the said products it would be difficult to tell.
It is possible that they contain exactly the same set of trace elements, thus effectively increasing the dosage if used simultaneously.
That is why I prefer low concentrations at more frequent intervals compared to infrequent heavy doses.

It is also possible that one product contains substances that the other product lacks, and vice versa. So they could effectively be complementing each other and fill in their gaps.

[gbrice]

I also wanted to add that for my orchids, SuperThrive stimulates root growth, and now that I've cut back to once a month, it seems just as effective. Other factors could be at play here such as the time of year. I cut back 3 months ago.

-g

[GrumpyBear]

superthrive contains a synthetic auxin, NNA, which is an analog to IAA or IBA so i'd be careful if you're giving both. auxins stimulate both new roots and leaf buds in plants and the ratio to other hormones is important.
i'm on another forum for vegetable growing and it's kind of a bigger deal there b/c of apical dominance so this one guy ended up with two foot 'seedlings' that went straight up and weren't bushy at all. a lot of them found a ground up multivitamin was just as effective and didn't come with any hormones.
in high enough doses auxins are actually a herbicide tho, and were the key ingredient in agent orange...superthrive certainly works great, so i've heard, but there's probably no reason to double dose the auxins...

[wetfeet101b]

superthrive contains a synthetic auxin, NNA, which is an analog to IAA or IBA so i'd be careful if you're giving both.

Thanks for the info GrumpyBear.
There should be no need for supplemental IBA then. It looks like it might actually do more harm than good.