Malcolm13/4/04 3:28
In article , Sacha
writes
Malcolm13/4/04 10:28
In article , Jaques d'Alltrades
writes
The message
from Malcolm contains these words:
In article , Jaques d'Alltrades
writes
snip
Not so. When a plant/tree/shrub is badly stressed and 'thinks' it's
dying, it often produces an abundance of bloom.
Interesting. How does it achieve this and have you seen examples?
Well known phenomenon.
Which is hardly an answer to my questions :-(
I posted an answer upthread, drawn from personal experience.
To which I have just responded. I was now asking Rusty. I'm genuinely
interested though as yet unconvinced.
If you're interested enough, there are quite a few books on the behaviour of
plants under stress, many of them too deeply scientific to be of interest to
most 'ordinary' gardeners, including myself.
A lot of what is known about plants, their treatment and cultivation is from
generations of observation and some people don't receive that information
for one reason or another.
For example, in that famous drought of '76, my father in law was astonished
to discover that used washing up water and bath water killed off greenfly
because of the soap in both. He was not only much older than me, he was a
much more knowledgeable and expert gardener but I'd known that from a child
because my grandfather used the remedy. When pa-in-law learned this he was
in his 60s. I think a lot of gardeners will have observed that mature
plants under stress will behave as we've been discussing - sort of a 'last
fling', I suppose!
--
Sacha
(remove the weeds to email me)