Anyone any good at physics?

DaftyDuck

Plant saucers come in all sizes. I have some well over two feet. They do tend to crack all too easily, though. The plastic ones are quite cheap to replace, earthenware ones get expensive, though.

Indeed, many gardening books, and also many thousands of scientific papers cover this topic. Nothing in science is really a certainly, it's all probability-based. You need to head to mathematics for certainty.

If your soil is spectacularly nutrient-poor, fine-grained, very dry, humus-poor, and quite deep, you might (!) find the water coming out of the bottom of a pot is less-rich in nutrients than the fertiliser solution put in on top. Otherwise, it'll be pretty much the same concentration, but richer in nitrates.

Stick a plant saucer under the pot, and have a cup of tea. Less stress!

wellused

You can over water and over feed tomatoes the feed is taken in by the fibrous roots near to the surface.

zygurat789

wellused wrote: »

You can over water and over feed tomatoes the feed is taken in by the fibrous roots near to the surface.

Come the end of the season the plant is potbound. This isn't a domesticated variety, it's a real thug took some seeds from it growing almost wild in Portugal.
Once they start cropping we have salads every weekday night, tomato laden pastas at weekends and put 10 litres+ in the freezer.
It's a cherry, not the type where you pinch out side shoots although I do try with a couple they only grow 8 ft and whilst the fruit is slightly bigger it's not worth it, the bushes are very productive.

wellused

In a bucket sized pot that is pot bound.

poorly_scammo

Put some non toxic food dye in some water and then see how long it takes to run through when you water the plants. That ought to give you some indication of how long it takes for the feed to run through when you use that assuming it's a similar consistency.

Off the top of my head, another variable would be how moist the compost was to begin with.

Scottish_Mike

Curses! You beat me - I was coming here to suggest that. Maybe use TWO different coloured dyes over a few waterings and then you can tell based on the resulting colour how much of the first and second dyes are being absorbed.