In the Boomkwekerij [Tree Growing] trade journal of 8 July this year (no.14) were a few articles worth reading on the use of so-called plant invigorators. Organic feed, the aim of which is to make the plant more resilient, with a view to reducing the use of chemicals. Of course, this development is driven by trends in society and the resources available for growers to use, a range which is becoming ever narrower.
I was struck by how little is yet known about plant invigorators, and that opinions on them are divided. According to Ketura Haverman’s article, for instance, there are “more than a hundred plant-invigorating substances on the market, but just a small portion of them has been tested in trial sites or in practical networks.”
My eyes immediately fell on the article on growers’ experiences, which quoted tree grower Piet Smits: “All you need to do is grow strong plants.” It seems that Smits does, indeed, use foliar fertilizers, but does not use any other plant-invigorating feeds. As he says, “You need to make sure that plants are content, not constantly standing in water and that they are growing healthily.”
That is something I could’ve said myself. In a previous blog post I wrote “I have always been searching for ways to make plants feel ‘at home’. I am convinced that if you can achieve that, then you won’t need as many pesticides (which we are allowed to use fewer and fewer of). If you make sure that your plants are ‘content’, nature generally does the rest.”
The basis for a healthy, vigorous plant is, of course, a healthy root structure. No-one can argue with that. If things are as they should be under the ground, you will be able to see that above ground too. And that is precisely one of the first things that growers list when they talk about the benefits of growing plants on our floors: a strong root structure that results in an exceedingly vigorous plant. As a grower told me last weekend, “You can just see that plants are really comfortable on this cultivation floor.”
And that’s not really a surprise. When we were developing our ErfGoedFloor, we always came back to the central question: How can we create the optimum growing conditions, allowing plants to be as comfortable as possible, so that they can develop in the best way possible?
If that is the case, does that mean that plants grown on our cultivation floor live longer than plants from other cultivation systems, then? We – and many of our growers with us – have seen this in practice. In order to prove that, we recently started a number of tests. I will make sure to keep you updated of the test results.
What about the weather we’ve been having in the past few months? In the Haverman article, Dinand van Wijk of Cultus Agro Advies rightly points out that this concerns crops grown outside, so the weather plays a substantial role. Tree grower Piet Smits, too, says that he has had to deal with extremes this year. “In such cases there’s no alternative than to resort to pesticides.”
And yet, ErfGoed’s porous cultivation floor seems to be a large part of the solution here, too. Last spring, for instance, we laid two outdoor floors in France. Both growers had to deal with extreme flooding in June, but recently said that this year – to their amazement – they had not recorded any plant loss. As Smits said, “Make sure they’re not constantly standing in water.”
I am convinced that the solution to the range of resources that is becoming ever narrower is, indeed, to increase plant resilience. Whether plant invigorators have a decisive role to play in this, who can say? But the cultivation system certainly plays a role. And the ErfGoedFloor has already proven its worth beyond question.
Would you like to get a feel for the results of growing on our floor?
Or, if you have found this blog post interesting and would like to arrange an informal chat, feel free to e-mail me.