PMDD and Boron

["Tom Wood" <tomwood2 at flash_net>]

Jay Reeves asked:

"Is Boron included in the list of traces that are available in sufficient
quantity from tap water?  Older postings talk about the lack of Boron in the
CSM / Plantex mix and that adding Boric Acid in the proper proportion is  a
simple fix.  I have been planning on switching to CSM once my commercial
stuff is gone and thought I would need to add Boric Acid.  The water here is
soft and the water department does not list Boron on water report."

Funny you should ask. I added boric acid to some Plantex CSM and put the
baggies of both the boric acid laced and non-boric acid laced CSM back into
the same cabinet. Uh oh. Which is which? I "think" I can tell them apart,
but I've used both over the past two years and really can't tell much
difference in the tank performance. But, I've changed other parameters which
would have a much larger impact, so any conclusions regarding the need for
Boron are lost. Add the boric acid per the Sears-Conlin advice, and you can
sleep at night knowing that you haven't mutilated your plants on that score.

"Is there any real disadvantage to dosing macros that are mixed in water?
Or
traces for that matter."

Agri-grade K2SO4 is very hard to dilute in small quantities of water. KNO3
and the CSM aren't much better. Small meaning 300 to 500 ml. It's just
physically easier to dose the dry compound into a tank of several gallons. I
use Chuck Gadd's calculator and enter "1" as the number of ml of water for
the mix, even though it's just a hypothetical, and then dose the dry
compounds. See:

http://www.csd.net/~cgadd/aqua/art_plant_dosage_calc.htm

TW

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