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How To Get Plants To Grow FASTER & BIGGER. Why Every Plant Person Should Be Using A Copper Spray!
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Dec 21, 2022
How To Get Plants To Grow FASTER & BIGGER. Why Every Plant Person Should Be Using A Copper Spray! 🍃 K A Y T O N I K - http://bit.ly/3Gj2Zzl 🎥 2 N D. C H A N N E L https://youtube.com/channel/UCjui7H4Eczaoj3Z92AC-LBQ 👩🔬 G R A B A P L A N N E R Paperback Houseplant Planner: https://geni.us/NFTrl2 Paperback Garden Planner: https://geni.us/s9zc Digital Download Planners https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/GardeningInCanada 📝 S T A Y I N T O U C H Join our monthly newsletter! newsletter.gardeningincanada.net Website/Blog & FREE printables: https://gardeningincanada.net Join The Newsletter: https://newsletter.gardeningincanada.net
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0:00
and I've seen this on so many people's houseplants before it turns completely
0:03
black and it almost just wilts away and falls off hello fun people how are you
0:08
guys doing today if you're new around here my name is Ashley and I like to take science and apply to all things plants and in today's video we're talking about
0:16
copper so this is a video I did for the 12 days of Christmas I talked about
0:22
copper and then I never really you know brought it back up it or 12 days like
0:28
the I think it's called 18 essential plant nutrients in every single day
0:32
leading up to Christmas they went through every single plant nutrient that is essential and one of these is copper now copper for outdoor plant people is
0:41
just as good as it is for indoor plant people but for indoor plant people in
0:47
particular it's a nutrient that I want you to pay attention to and there's a
0:52
few reasons for that we'll get into those in this video today's video sponsor is ktonic 100 organic soil amendment sourced from sustainable peat it's omni listed
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1:06
activity and naturally replenishing the soil health get 15 off your bottle of ktonic with
1:11
the discount code in the description so hands up in the comments if you've seen the fuzzy stuff on
1:17
top of your soil surface now this is fungi and i've done a video on this and how it's really not
1:24
dangerous especially if it's the white stuff because it's actually just natural decomposition
1:29
of the plant presenting itself on the surface i'm going to be doing a separate video here soon
1:34
on rhizobium bacterias or mycelium fungi in particular for house plants indoors
1:42
but ultimately if you don't like the fuzzy stuff and you find it to be ugly copper actually is a
1:49
great solution for that where you could apply it to the soil surface and it's going to get rid of
1:54
the hyphae from that fungal issue if you have fungus on your knees which I've very rarely heard
2:00
any of you complaining about but it can be a thing sometimes an application of foliar copper is also
2:06
going to help to curb that or ultimately destroy it altogether the nice thing about this is that
2:13
it's technically organic and completely natural there's no chemical in this other than copper
2:19
ionic copper and so because of that it's not dangerous to children or to yourself or to your
2:26
animals if you have them and it's just all around a great thing to apply now potting soil if you guys
2:32
did not know is often supplemented so while you get peach or you get coconut coir there's other
2:38
stuff in there that goes on behind the scenes such as the additions of limes and stuff to bring the
2:44
pH into a normal range and also micronutrient and macronutrient additions so it does come naturally in a potting cell the potting cell company is doing
2:53
what they need to for your plants health ultimately if you're doing semi-hydro
2:58
like what this guy is in right now if you're following the proper procedure for
3:04
fertilizing with LECA and I talked about this before you need to pH balance it
3:08
add the appropriate levels of nutrients the proper types of nutrients then it
3:14
you also likely will not have a nutrient deficiency however as the potting soil
3:20
ages regardless of the potting soil you're using you will eventually become
3:25
deficient in copper now I have some plants that have been potted in the same
3:29
container for ages one of which is this giant enormous fiddle leaf behind me you
3:35
actually can see a majority of the plant because a lot of it it kind of I bushed up above the camera And so that one plant where I don even have the stomach ultimately at this point to repot it it probably gonna live out its life in that container and so because
3:51
of that a full year application of copper is better than actually placing
3:55
it in the soil so you're probably thinking well how is it better than placing it in the soil the reason for this is because copper is immobile
4:01
meaning wherever it enters the soil for the most part it's kind of stuck in
4:05
situ unless if gravity brings it down into the profile farther the only way
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gravity can bring it into the profile farther is through water or mechanical
4:17
movements such as manipulation of that potting soil so as you water a plant
4:22
that has a foliar application of copper whatever hasn't been absorbed through
4:27
the stomata on the bottoms of the leaves will be put into that soil surface
4:32
where again it's immobilized it cannot move and so once it's on the surface it does have to work
4:38
its way down into that root system through again mechanical means and so because of that even me
4:45
using like a liquid fertilizer or some sort you know supplemented with copper it's just not going
4:50
to give me the same effect as actually giving it a foliar application and when I foliar apply there
4:56
are some stomata that can be found on the surface of a leaf but a majority of your stomata are
5:01
actually going to be found underneath and so misting the bottoms of your leaves
5:05
are going to be the best case scenario you can of course miss the top and if
5:10
you're looking for fungal bacterial or even pest prevention applying it to the
5:17
surface of the leaf along the stems in the nooks and crannies is also going to
5:20
give you really good benefits but really truly applying underneath the leaf where
5:25
the stomata is is going to be key now ultimately the best time to do this is
5:30
is going to be at night. The stomata open during the day to a point
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but the stomata really like to open at night. That's when they do most of their work
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because the plant says to itself, no more sunlight means less heat
5:45
Less heat means if I open up my stomata and let everything open
5:50
I'm going to lose less water. And that's ultimately their goal because this rigidity
5:55
that rigidity that we have to our plant is caused completely by something we call turgor pressure
6:01
That turgor pressure, keeping this plant nice and firm, it's what allows the plant to do phototropism
6:07
such as move towards light and that sort of thing. So if we're looking to try to really maximize our copper uptake
6:14
you're going to want to apply underneath the leaves just before lights out
6:19
So the way that copper from a foliar application helps prevent against disease and pests comes down to the pH
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the pH of a foliar copper application is about four. So what ends up happening is it really
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disrupts the pH of the leaf surface. It doesn't harm the leaf by any means, but it gives the
6:38
actual pests really nowhere to go because now everything's kind of turned a little bit acidic
6:44
As we water and move the copper kind of into the actual soil itself, it's going to adjust our soil
6:50
pH very minor amounts because again we're not you know dousing the plant we're just doing a few
6:56
squirts type thing and it can you know affect your soil pH but ultimately to the better if you're
7:02
looking at something that's a little bit more alkaline so you're probably thinking well what
7:05
does copper do why do you keep talking about it and once you start applying copper you're going
7:10
to notice a ton of growth if you look at studies that were done with a foliar application of copper
7:17
you are going to see very drastic differences in the actual growth of that plant in particular new biomass The amount of new biomass and the size of the leaves that are put out is enormous and now this comes down
7:32
completely to one factor copper activates an enzyme this enzyme is used in something called
7:40
lignin synthesis lignin synthesis and all these other enzymatic processes that copper is used in
7:48
ultimately key to photosynthesis and getting the carbohydrates or the sugars if you will to the places that they need to go so this is very crucial to some
8:00
things that are going on with the plant now of course you can overdose a plant so don't go copper in your plants every single day but once a month the good
8:08
spurts is by all means a good thing if you have a copper deficiency or you're
8:12
wondering like should I purchase this should I not you can apply it to a plant
8:16
that's showing zero signs of actual deficiency in copper and your plant will be just fine if you do
8:23
a foliar application in particular and you're doing it once a month it's very unlikely you're
8:27
going to overdose your plant trust me it's nearly impossible unless you're very actively trying to
8:33
do so or you're adding this to the soil which you most definitely do not want to actively dump this
8:38
in the soil by any means but an actual copper deficiency this is going to shock many plant
8:44
people because it's what a huge majority of you are suffering from so one thing you will notice
8:50
is your new leaves will cup or they will look smaller in size another really common thing is
8:57
chlorosis so i have some slight chlorosis happening in this plant uh leaf here and so that is one of
9:05
the reasons why i'm spraying it down with copper now this is likely due to me being lazy uh this
9:12
is a hydroponic pot or semi-hydroponic pot and i have been so busy this last little bit um that i
9:19
haven't been able to give it the proper waterings that it needs with my ph adjusted with the proper
9:25
nutrients exception so far so i have been using like straight water at times in my tap water here
9:30
in saskatoon is at an eight which is way out of the scope of what a plant needs to survive
9:36
so because of that i'm getting you know some chlorosis in there and ultimately some nutrient
9:40
deficiencies and you can even see that by the size of the new leaves compared to the old ones
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the other thing that we also tend to notice when we have a copper deficiencies is a necrotic apical
9:51
meristem so that sounds complicated but it's really not what an apical meristem is is literally
9:58
the leading edge of your plant so if i put this plant here my apical meristem is this one right
10:03
here if my plant was cut or I top this in some way and it decided to do a why
10:09
you technically have two apical meristems each one of which is on either
10:13
side and so on and so forth so you just follow your main stem up and this here
10:19
is my apical meristem on this plant and on this one my apical meristem is right
10:24
here because they only have one leading edge on both inside of there there is a
10:29
lot of hormones in particular oxen which I've talked to you as in you know
10:35
high detail many times before and inside of that there's a lot of growth hormone
10:42
in particular that really drives the upper biomass into specific shapes and
10:48
designs and on that sort of thing and so this can become necrotic and I've seen
10:52
this on so many people's houseplants before it turns completely black and it
10:57
almost just wilts away and falls off and people will often say why is my new
11:01
growth wilting what going on why is it just that it puts a new leaf out it got the bracts on it it ready to you know pop and then all of a sudden everything just dies off is it because the leaf
11:12
is caught is something going on it's it's a necrosis and so that ultimately can be caused
11:17
by nutrient deficiencies in particular copper so what we can do is we can apply the copper to the
11:23
leaves surrounding which again it's in a mobile nutrient but it will be slowly dispersed throughout
11:28
the plant and you can also try to get it in here as much as possible the actual
11:33
new growth on the plant is going to it's gonna have some stomata on the stems
11:40
and that sort of thing but there's not gonna be much stomata in this area so if
11:44
you can in particular really focus on your last leading leaf it's gonna give
11:49
you the best results but ultimately that necrotic stem is something that's very
11:54
common in a copper deficiency and I personally had that in my house plants
11:57
before and you can kind of see this one acting a little bit goofy so it wouldn't be shocked if this
12:03
one went necrotic and fall fell off so i'm going to try to do as much reconnaissance on this plant
12:08
as i can because i just love i love fuzzy petioles and so i don't want to um really get rid of that
12:16
when we end up with this apical meristem um being necrotic or falling off or something happening to
12:22
it one thing i will say is you will notice a drastic decreasing growth of the rest of the
12:27
plant because remember there's a ton of hormone in that top little bit there and so i find when
12:32
that actually gets destroyed it your plant can really struggle to put new growth on because
12:39
we've just really circumvented a lot of the growth and it's different from the form of cutting if we
12:44
cut you know the hormones will redistribute um and that sort of thing but when it's like a slow
12:51
Labored, you know end of world demise for that. It's really changes the dynamics of the plant
12:57
So that's definitely something to watch out for So if I want to just drive one last point home is that this is a tool that should be used once a month for a nice
13:06
Misting of the plant in particular under the leaves But you can of course do the surface and the stems and the cracks and crannies for a disease
13:14
Prevention one thing I will say is if you're using this on fruits and veg
13:18
inside of like a grow temp when they're seedlings or just as full-grown plants if you want to get
13:24
this in bulk because you can get some pretty darn big jugs of this stuff will actually help enhance
13:29
the flavor of your fruits whether that be tomatoes or peppers or cucumbers or whatever the case is
13:35
however do not over apply if you over apply nutrients is a balancing and some people think
13:41
more the merrier that is not true even with the organic stuff compost manures you name it
13:46
If we over apply any sort of nutrient, it ends up butting out other ones. So copper will actually
13:53
famously but out phosphorus and potassium, two of which are essential macronutrients
13:59
these, this is just a micronutrient, it is not as important as phosphorus or potassium
14:04
And so it can actually come across as a nutrient deficiency in phosphorus and potassium
14:09
if you over apply the copper. So only do it as directed. If you're fighting pests
14:16
it may recommend you do it once a week, which is fine temporarily while you're fighting the disease
14:21
But after that point, you know, once a month is good enough. You will see really good results. I
14:25
think you guys will be very happy with this. This one I got from the grass shop here in Saskatoon
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but I'll also leave a link in the comments down below for those in the US or if you want a
14:36
different source for this, I'll find some sources for you and I will link them down below. But with
14:41
that being said, I want to thank you guys so much for watching. If you enjoyed the video, be sure to give it a thumbs up hit that subscribe button and i will talk to you guys next time bye
#Biological Sciences