🍌Increasing Water Consumption, Balancing PK Ratios, & Everything Potassium, w_ Nik from Rooted Leaf

9:28AM Jan 29, 2025

Speakers:

Jordan River

Keywords:

potassium importance

water metabolism

carbon metabolism

stomata function

enzyme activation

cation balance

transpiration efficiency

terpene production

cannabinoid biosynthesis

nutrient ratios

phosphorus solubility

organic acids

root anchor

conventional crops

peak bloom

Greetings, cultivators worldwide. Jordan River here back with more grow cast yellowing from the margins in today we have Nick from rooted leaf back on the line. He's activated a special code, 30% off. That's right. Grow cast has been boosted@rootedleaf.com thank you for doing that, Nick, just for our audience and just for this month. And he is here to talk about potassium. That's right, potassium. We are continuing the nutrient deep dive, and potassium is a big one. Get ready to learn all there is to know about K but before we jump into it, quick, shout out to AC infinity. That's right. They make the best grow gear on the market, acinity.com, code, grow cast one five saves you 10% that is the maximum discount we've had the code forever. We've been partners with AC infinity for years. And why? It's because they make the best tents you can get your hands on. They make the best inline fans, the best oscillating fans. They make really, really great quality accessories like scissors, pots, Ratchet hangers and things like that. And now they also have lights. They've got the ion board and now the ion frame bar style, really, really great stuff at AC infinity. Get the whole grow kit you've been after. You know you can get a three by three kit, a five by five kit. You know you want another one, just go ahead and pop over there. Use code grow cast one five, always at checkout for the max discount. And thank you for supporting us and AC infinity. We love them so much. They make our favorite grow gear out there. I'm looking at two AC infinity tents in my bio dome, and you won't regret grabbing one. Use code grow, cast one, five at AC infinity.com. Thank you to AC infinity. Okay, let's get right into it. Thank you for listening and enjoy the show. Hello. Podcast listeners, you are now listening to grow cast. I'm your host, Jordan River, and I want to thank you for tuning in today. Before we get started as always, I urge you to spread the show. Tell someone about growcast, turn someone on to growing as how we can achieve our mission of overgrow, and see everything that growcast is doing at growcast podcast.com/action, there you will find the membership and the seeds and the classes and everywhere I'm going to be. I hope to see you soon. Dear listener, today we have Nick from rooted leaf back on the line to continue the highly popular nutrient deep dive series. What's up? Nick, how you doing? Man, hey, I'm doing pretty well. Jordan, how are you doing? Excellent. Really quickly. What have you been up to? I don't think since we last spoke, you've updated us on your international travels and what's been going on with your amazing nutrient company.

Yeah, you know, we came back from Mauser by John and we successfully set up a research project that we're going to do with Baku State University, and we're going to be looking at the effects of our carbon based fertilizers on the growth of tomatoes and strawberries. And then they're going to do a variety of other tests that you know, some of which are going to be done on agricultural soils, just to kind of test like, what are the effects of, for example, root anchor on a high salinity soil? Can we kind of remediate and detoxify soils that maybe aren't the most arable and most conducive for crop growth. And then we're also going to be testing the products on different types of crops, like cotton, for example, which I never thought we'd be subject to tests on, but it's going to be really interesting to see how our products can influence the metabolism of those plants. I'm pretty excited to see, you know, what happens as a result of that. You know, in addition to that, we've been working with more and more conventional crop growers like tomatoes and cucumbers watermelon. So this fall, we're going to be looking at working with pretty large cucumber farm in Florida, actually, and we're going to kind of test the effects of our products as foliar sprays and also as soil drenches. To see, you know if we can improve yield and quality, which we know we can, which is why we're working with them, is one of those things that's just how large scale can we? Can we demonstrate these benefits? I'm

using it in my veggie garden. It's ripping in my four by four right now. And of course, you're doing a special just for my audience. If you missed out on the 710 sale code grow cast is 30% off this month of August only, and only for grow cast listeners. Thank you for doing that. Nick. 30% off if you've been looking to try a different nutrient line. I love rooted leaf because I'm not pH, in that I put you to the test. Man, you said you didn't have to pH, I was like, I've heard that before. I did it. It works amazing. I start with filtered water. I don't pH. I never have a pH issue. And then you said that it wouldn't harm my worms. So I took it out. I used it on my outdoor living soil bed, on my garden. Worms are happy and fat and healthy, so it's a really cool line, man, really you. You guys outdid yourself and listener, if you want to try it out, 30% off code grow cast only this month. Thank you for doing that. Nick. That helps with the wallet, with the listeners, you know, absolutely and

we definitely appreciate everybody's support. Grow cast is definitely one of the best communities that have, you know, had a chance to interact with a lot of your listeners. We talk quite frequently, both in discord and people send us direct messages, but I appreciate the support from the community, and yeah, we wanted to give them an extended discount. That they won't find anywhere else. So if you're listening in the month of August, make sure you take advantage of that. You'll get a special discount that nobody else gets

right now. I appreciate it, and you really are engaging. Man, I see you in the discord like you don't just talk the talk, like you really are a nerd about this stuff. Man, I see you nerding out, going deep with you know, some of the members, Austin Ron, and you going back and forth and really digging into the science. Man, I love I love how into it you are and how engaged you are with the communities. So let's continue where we left off. I'm so excited about this episode because potassium is one of those. It's one of those nutrients that I feel like you see a lot of deficiencies in flower with. So I want to talk to you about everything we like to go over from top to bottom in the cannabis garden in nature. So let's start from the beginning. Man, how does potassium work in nature, out in the earth, and with regular plants, how does it move and what is it used for?

Yeah, so potassium is pretty important. And I feel like the topic, or the conversation about potassium is, in a lot of ways, very difficult to prepare for. And we've talked about, you know, a lot of the other elements, nitrogen, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus. We kind of beat the bush around this whole like, you know, let's have a conversation around potassium, because it's really difficult to talk about potassium. Because what it means to prepare for a conversation around potassium is that you have to be ready to talk about literally everything that happens in a plant's metabolism, on every single level, in every single step of the way. And that's not an understatement. I mean, potassium is quite literally everywhere at every moment in the plant, responsible for pretty much everything that's going on in inside of the plant. Geez. And the easiest way to kind of understand what I'm trying to get at is to say that potassium, as a cation, or as a positively charged element, is accumulated in greater quantities than any other element in the plant, more so than calcium, and more so than magnesium, and more so than nitrogen in its ammonia, former, you know, because ammonia has a has a positive charge to it. So that kind of counts as a, you know, cation form of nitrogen, but potassium is taken up in larger quantities than any other cation, and so it exists. Yeah, it's really important. It's it's taken up in very large quantities. And like I said, it's responsible for pretty much everything, every step along the way. So for example, when the stomata of the plants open and close, the actual physical opening and closing of those stomata is a potassium mediated function. There are these floods of potassium. You could say that come first from the vacuoles, which is kind of like the storage area for most of the potassium ions, even though it's kind of spread out everywhere across the plant. So when the stomata are closed and the sun rises and they all of a sudden open up to allow for photosynthesis and transpiration to occur, it's actually the movement of the potassium ions inside of the guard cells that allows for the opening and closing of those stomata, whoa, and this regulates transpiration. So it's like the primary metabolic functions of the plants, you know, as the stomata, open up. They allow for this exchange of CO two that kind of comes in and diffuses across the stomata, and then the water that leaves through transpiration and all kinds of other metabolites. You know, there's even microbes that colonize this phyllosphere. So it's very rich kind of area overall. But the idea is that as the stomata open and close, that is a function that's mediated by potassium. And so right from the get go, when we're talking about photosynthesis and we're talking about carbon metabolism, well the stomata are open and closed by potassium, so clearly potassium plays a primary role at the very first step. Now, when we look at on a more microscopic level, some of the enzymes that participate in carbon metabolism, those have either active sites that require potassium, or they are sort of turned on and off by potassium. So a lot of these enzymes, they they are, you know, maybe present in the plant, but they're not activated. They're not turned on, so they're not doing their thing. It's kind of like somebody sleeping at night, you know, yeah, they're still alive, but they're not active. They're not functioning. They're not doing their thing. So a lot of times that functioning of plants and the enzymes is determined by the presence of potassium. So as the potassium kind of moves and floods throughout the plants, it can kind of wake up and turn on a bunch of enzymes that are associated with carbon metabolism. So it's very important now to kind of get back to your primary question about, where does it, you know, come from in nature? Potassium is pretty present across a variety of different soils. In fact, is present in a lot of different mineral types that are kind of common throughout the world. Certainly here in the United States, the issue has always been, though, the availability, because there's this weathering that has to occur. So as plants grow, they have to kind of release certain types of compounds, like organic acids, to help chemically weather soils. And as they break those soils down, perhaps there's some assistance. From the microbes and the fungi, they can kind of access these resources and break them down into the potassium that's inside of them. And it's pretty common across most soils, like I said. So it's kind of out there in nature. In fact, a lot of times, if you look at the amount of potassium that's present, you know, anywhere below 12 inches in the soil, you'll find a high concentration. It's a component of clay, for example, a lot of plays in the US, but it's just not available for plants. So the question has always been like, how do you break that potassium down? How do you get available for the plant? Because clearly, it plays this very, very important role. It's taken up in huge quantities, and it's responsible for just so much primary and secondary metabolism in the plants, yeah? So

that's where you need the microbiology to come in, traditionally, right? To break down that potassium, to make it available to the plant, yeah, just to

kind of build organic matter around clay, because clay can be high in minerals, but low in organic matter, right? And so you have this, like high concentration of cations, which could include potassium, certainly frequently does. But you've also got a variety of different elements, magnesium, like in green sand. Green sand is a good example, because most people think of green sand is just purely being magnesium silicate, when, in reality, there is, it is a source of potassium as well, right? Or it can be a potassium, but, you know, depending on where you get it from. But these concentrations kind of vary. And what it goes to show you is that these minerals oftentimes exist in a balance, you know, in their clay forms. You never really like the defined, you know, one fraction that just contains one type of mineral. It's very uncommon for that to occur in most regions in the US, there's, you know, variety of mixed minerals inside of the rocks that the plants have to chemically weather in order to access as nutrients. And so microbes participate in that process. And then the plants, they take up that potassium. And what's really interesting is they can recycle a potassium when the when the water gets transpired on the leaf surface. In some cases, it can actually take the, you know, soluble potassium ions with it, and as that moisture drips back down, you know, first it runs down the leaf, you see a little water droplet. That water droplet goes back and it lands onto the soil. Will it return some of that potassium and plants have this interesting and unique ability to take up huge quantities of the potassium, sweat it out of their leaves, redeposit it back in the top layers of the soil, and kind of keep recycling it that way. It's this very interesting in terms of its mobility, potassium flows kind of like water. In that regard. It's very, very

interesting. Is it very mobile in nature, in runoff and things like that. You know,

it depends on which forms that's in most of the forms that we deal with in the fertilizer sense, in the fertilizer world, they definitely are mobile, like potassium nitrate, the organic acid chelates that we make, like potassium citrate, potassium full weight, and potassium acetate. Those are all huge, highly, very, highly soluble in water, so most of the time, yeah, it is like, you know, even with potassium being complex to phosphorus in the form of potassium phosphates, you have monopotassium phosphate, di potassium phosphate, you know, trip potassium phosphate. There's Tetra potassium pyrophosphate. There's all kinds of different relationships that potassium can have with other compounds, and most of those are soluble in water, so yeah, it is kind of mobile in that regard. But there's also a huge amount trapped in rocks that require chemical weathering where they can release

that potassium, like you were saying that, okay, okay, makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. So what about cannabis? Specifically, you know, you talk about all these processes that plants have in common, the opening and closing of stomata, things like that, very integral to to how a plant operates. But what about cannabis, like terpene production, stuff that's going on in the Trichome head? What is potassium used for in that regard?

Well, I think the best way to kind of understand this is to take a look at how potassium might be able to influence the concentration of water inside of the cells. And the reason this is something that's so specific is because, like I mentioned earlier, potassium is just it's literally everywhere in every single step in the operation. We can't look at anything that's going on in the plants and not see potassium either directly involved or indirectly involved. It's going to be somewhere there. And so again, having this like conversation around like, what does potassium do? It makes it really difficult to specify and pinpoint, because it's involved in everything, but specifically in the context of cannabis plants, I think it makes a lot of sense to understand the importance of potassium by looking at water metabolism, because water metabolism is fundamentally tied to the concentration of cannabinoids and terpenes. You need your plants to burn a lot of water, to take up a lot of water, to use the power of the sun or the lights to split those water molecules apart, generate reduction power. And then, you know, through the Calvin cycle, reduce the carbon and so on and so forth, until you finally get to a spot in that carbon. Metabolic cycle where you make the terpene and you make the cannabinoid. These are all very complex processes, but in order to kick start those processes, you need ample supplies and ample availabilities of water. And one of the best ways that high potassium concentrations can influence terpene and cannabinoid biosynthesis is by, you know, when the plants accumulate a lot of potassium inside of their cells, there's a lower concentration of water overall relative to the outside of the plants. So when you water the plants, for example, typically it's more dilute than inside of the cells. The cells having a high concentration of potassium creates this kind of gradient. It's just simple diffusion or osmosis. You know, there's a high concentration of water outside of the cells and there's a lower concentration of water inside of the cells. So this phenomena of calcium being accumulated in such large quantities inside of the cell is like a mechanism by which the plants can take advantage of the excess water outside of the cells to create this scenario where that water will diffuse inside of the cells. It's almost like it floods into the cells. So the plants are like, hey, if I take up a lot of potassium, I can also open up the floodgates to have a bunch of water come in. Because the water is, you know, present at higher concentration outside than inside. This is just basic diffusion or osmosis, the transfer of water. So this influx of water happens the plants store up a lot of water, and then they use that water, and they actually burn it as fuel to then create those terpenes and cannabinoids. So if you can keep this, you know, water pump phenomena or feature flowing in the plants, by means of having adequate potassium supplies, you get really good results with terpene and cannabinoid biosynthesis. This is why a lot of finishers out there on the market, including our resin bloom, have potassium content inside of it, because potassium is fundamentally tied to these processes. I hope that kind of makes sense.

Yeah, it seems like the element itself is allowing the plant to drink more, is what you're saying. And I remember you saying from previous episodes, how do you need to split that water and grab that hydrogen molecule to increase that terpene production? So that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, I guess, I guess anything that would allow additional water to come in, like you're saying, the diffusion into the cell wall, I guess that's a positive, right? When we're looking at the compounds that we're trying to produce, that's what we're aiming for. So that does make sense,

yeah. And again, it's just accumulated in such large concentrations. It's responsible like the movement of potassium really is kind of like the heartbeat that you can trace of metabolic activity in the plants. You have this high potassium concentration inside of the cells, and it pulls water into the cells, which the plants know they take advantage. They even have these little pumps that sit on the outside of the cells and kind of regulate the flow of material inside and outside. Well, those pumps are activated by potassium. This little active site sits, you know, on the inside of the cell. And when there's adequate potassium concentrations, there's these free potassium ions that move and they kind of attach and they dock at these sites that bind through sort of electrostatic principle. You know, positive charge of potassium meets a negative charge on an amino acid residue. For example, nature has these very clever ways of attracting opposites together. And it's during this attraction of potassium to these active sites that things just kind of turn on, and all of a sudden you you witness the floodgates opened up in the plants, and they take in all of this water. And it's crazy, because, as I mentioned, potassium is kind of everywhere, you know, here it's activating the pump, and it's allowing for the influx of water. And then also, potassium ions are responsible for how that water gets metabolized through photosynthesis, how it gets burned. And then even as you trace the carbon downstream, when plants metabolize carbon, you know the converted into things like organic acids, which are just pools of carbon that exist in transitionary states, and they represent free energy in the plant. These are very thermodynamically important compounds, organic acids, but organic acids have a negative charge on them, and that negative charge is always compensated for implants by potassium, more than any other cation. So it's really interesting. Here we have potassium opening up the stomata, sending photosynthesis. Here you go, do your thing. Here's the water that you need. I'll even turn on the pump for you, and after I turn on the pump for you as you metabolize the carbon, I'll even carry that carbon and make a handshake with it, just like a chelate, you know, or complex. Technically, potassium is monovalent, so it can't form multiple bonds, and so it's not a true chelate in chemical terms, but the concept of a chelate does apply here in the sense that potassium can be chelated or complex with organic acids that are a byproduct of carbon metabolism. So this is like this crazy symmetry here, potassium turns on the carbon metabolism. You know, every step in the flow of that carbon being metabolized, it participates with and then, even after the carbon is metabolized, it. Exist to kind of create a charge balance to make sure that carbon can sit and be accumulated in very large quantities inside of the plants, without throwing the chemical balance of the plant off. You know, plants want to accumulate as much carbon as they can, and if they have a lot of potassium, then they can accumulate a lot of carbon, because there's a charge balance that exists between them. It's just this wickedly beautiful thing. Like I said, it's so difficult to talk about, because potassium is literally everywhere, doing

everything. But I know that that interests you, because you're all about that carbon. So the fact that it balances that allows you to drive that carbon up, which is kind of your whole thing, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Man, yeah.

And that's why, if you look at our product line, you'll see it's very rich in potassium. In fact, every product has potassium except for CalMac fuel and even our base nutrients have way more potassium than any other product line out there. And I always attribute the benefit of that extra potassium to the fact that we carry it in an organic acid form. We can fit more potassium into the plants specifically because we feed a carbon based fertilizer regimen, and the fact that there's carbon allows us to automatically put more potassium. We, kind of, you know, saw the manifestations of this, as far as the expression of the plants and their potential was concerned. We're definitely on the high end of potassium. But if you look at the potassium to carbon ratio that's out there in nature that plants try to create a balance for. We're actually not above the sweet spot at all. We're actually pretty much riding the sweet spot perfectly. So yeah, it's very interesting that potassium the carbon relationship. So

what else about cannabis growth? Are we concerned about with potassium, whether it's from veg to flower or anything that's cannabis specific?

Well, you know, potassium is an interesting cation, because, you know, for example, when we did the episode on calcium, I mentioned specifically how the flow of calcium typically is one that allows that calcium to be deposited into a cell wall, or some structural component where maybe it's not going to get remobilized. And in many cases, it doesn't. There is this pool of soluble calcium that exists. We refer to that as the calcium waves. And we look very specifically at where the calcium ions came from. We looked at the organelles and how those organelles flooded the cytoplasm and the cytosol with calcium ions. And kind of look, you know, downstream. But the thing about potassium that I feel like is really important for people to understand. To understand is that it's kind of the opposite of calcium, in the sense that it's not really ever going to be permanently sunk into anything. The potassium that's inside of a plant is always going to be kind of moving around. It's going to be doing something. It's going to be in a soluble form. It's going to be carrying this. It's going to be charge balance to that. It's going to be activating this enzyme, you know, it's going to be flooding this guard cell. In particular, potassium doesn't really become incorporated into the plant tissue, which is also one of the reasons why you can feed high concentrations of potassium to plants during the mid to late stages of flowering, and it does not accumulate within the flowers, so you don't have to worry about any kind of salt accumulation, or any you know, element accumulation that's going to affect the quality of your smoke. Potassium is so soluble, and it exists almost always in a soluble form in your plants. So when you dry your buds out properly and you dehydrate them properly, you're going to get a massive reduction in the potassium concentration, because, again, it's so soluble in the plants, so it's important to keep those potassium concentrations high during the mid to late stages of bloom, because that's when you want your water metabolism to be optimized and to be maximized. And the more water you burn, the more your plants can make cannabinoids and terpenes, and that's ultimately what we want to see. We don't want to see reduction in water metabolism. That means. So

what is the major expenditure that I always see this deficiency arise? You know, the potassium deficiency one of the easiest ones to spot, as long as you're not dealing with anything else funky and weird, you look at the edges of the leaves right the outer edges of the leaves begin to yellow from the outside in, pretty uniformly across the plant, and then kind of get crispy and burnt, always from the margins of the leaf in, never from the center out. And I see this deficiency a lot. When plants are are drinking up a lot of water, they're eating a lot they're bulking in that flowering phase. What? What is the big expenditure that causes that deficiency in mid to late flower?

Well, I think part of it could be a cation imbalance, you know, I think a lot of people will push too much magnesium inside of their plants. The you know, the way that plants operate is they like to have ratios between certain things so they can deal with high concentrations of elements. As long as those elements are present in particular ratios. It just makes solving the challenges much easier for plants. When you start to throw some of those ratios out of whack and then combine those out of whack ratios with higher concentrations than necessary of particular elements, that's where it can start to affect the distribution of potassium ion. It's inside of cells. There are some mechanisms that exist in plants to kind of create an equilibrium between calcium and magnesium concentrations. And it's kind of interesting, because if you look at the overall calcium load that you would feed your plants versus the magnesium load, you know you feed way more calcium than you feed magnesium to your plants. But as far as like the internal plant ableism and the chemistry goes, they try to create an equilibrium. There's a mechanism by which they try to create relatively equivalent quantities or supplies between those two. And they can be, you know, separated by a certain amount. But the overall point is that for the purpose of the metabolic cycles we're looking at here. There's some elements that kind of don't follow the same rules that people think of in terms of primary metabolism or secondary metabolism. That

makes sense with what you just said, though, because you're saying like, you know, with calcium, it's sinking that calcium into the plant tissue, like you said, which may cause a depletion, whereas a lot of the time you're saying with a potassium deficiency, it's more about the ratios being off, and the potassium just needs to be present in the proper volumes and ratios. That does make a lot of sense to

me. Yeah. And another way of looking at that same phenomena, I guess, from the perspective of calcium, is when people look at some of those leaf tips and they see them burning. We may have talked about this on the episode of calcium, but oftentimes it could be an indication of a mild calcium deficiency. And what ends up happening is, if your VPD is off and maybe the plants are drying out a little bit faster than they should, what happens is the overall concentration of fluid inside of the xylem tissue may decrease, and so you don't get this delivery of calcium. The cells that are like furthest out on the leaf surface, those are the ones that typically require the most, you know, calcium just relative to the amount of water that makes its way out there. It's

like the human body, just like the human body needing to get that blood flow to the fingertips and toes, right? That is fascinating. Need that, that pressure, that fluid pressure, to pump it all the way to the tips of the leaves. God, damn, that's wild. So when you

don't have the correct balance, or the correct ratio between potassium and some of these other elements, like, if you, you know, did a heavy dose of CalMac, for example, and didn't even think about how much potassium you're feeding to the plants, this can start to, you know, create this imbalance in some of the leaf tissues themselves that may be sensitive to this type of thing. It not only happens in high intensity environments. You know, in most environments, there's a lot of buffer and there's a lot of play. Specifically, because of so much potassium is kept soluble inside of the plants. And so it's this really fluid element in the plants. It can kind of flow. It can do a variety of things, from the macroscopic, like the, you know, opening, closing stomata, all the way to the microscopic, like sitting in catalytic pockets within enzymes themselves and attaching to amino acid residues and turning on and off the catalytic function of enzymes. I mean, it like literally goes down to the level of the DNA in the plants too. So on every scale, potassium is required. And so when you have even a mild imbalance in a high intensity environment, that can start to affect all kinds of things from the DNA expression. So you start to get kind of weird morphological traits, weird morphological issues, even a decrease in the terpene and cannabinoid biosynthesis. This is definitely felt in the mid to late stages of flower, where you don't have enough potassium going to the plants, you can actually get a decrease in the overall productivity. And again, this kind of revolves around water metabolism, but those enzymes that make those cannabinoids and terpenes, if they don't have the signals coming in from potassium and the water that it's capable of delivering to burn, then you don't get the production of these compounds. And so the enzymes aren't even turned on and off. Potassium is not there. I absolutely can't do any of this stuff. I've

seen exactly what you're talking about. And then people up their potassium, and they go, whoa. It came out so much more dank, so much more stinky. I've literally seen that exact thing before that you just described,

yeah. And again, it's everything from the water flow going into the plants. You know, most people know how much they feed their plants in week 345, of flowering. And then most of them would be like, yeah, maybe 567, the plants slow down a little bit. If you can figure out how to get your plants to be really active in weeks five, six and seven, and keep that water metabolism up high, you're going to get better productivity, because that water metabolism, again, is fundamentally tied to the biosynthesis of terpenes and cannabinoids. And really, the link for water metabolism is going to exist somewhere between potassium concentrations in the plant and environmental factors such as light intensity, and you know, temperature and humidity, all that stuff you want, PPD and check but potassium, again, as an ion, regardless of the environmental stuff that exists outside of the plant, within the plants, I don't think you could find an element that's perhaps more responsible for water metabolism than potassium. So. It. So this is one of those things I think a lot of people should be paying attention to. I

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before we move on to like forms of potassium, and how we can get it into our grows and all that. Can I ask you a quick left turn question about drybacks, because you talk about, okay, increase your water consumption. And I always, my mind always goes to mulching versus not mulching, where, if you don't mulch, you'll certainly have quicker dry backs. But that's evaporative, right? So when you're trying to get your plant to drink more and more, do you recommend mulching or not mulching?

I think mulching is a good idea. You know what? I think dry back as a topic begs the discussion of is transpiration efficiency in the plants. What we want to do is create a scenario where water that's present in the soil and that water content can be modulated by the presence of mulch, for example, because it can help trap some of those water molecules and prevent them from simply evaporating under highlight intensity for the heat of a nice, hot summer day. The other end of that equation, though, is what happens inside of the plants. So they take the water up and, you know, the highlight intensity, or the hot sun, instead of evaporating that water, instead pulled it up from the plants through this transpiration stream and through the water pump mechanism. If you have ample concentrations of potassium inside of the plants, they can better regulate the flow in the distribution of water, because, like I mentioned earlier, potassium is accumulated in such high concentrations inside of the plant cells that it creates this simple process of diffusion or osmosis, this transfer of water inside of the plant cells. So if you have high concentrations of potassium ions inside of the cells, and it's a hot summer day, the only really thing that you need is just huge amounts of water, because this is the perfect recipe to allow cells to stay hydrated without getting burned or without getting desiccated under high light intensity or when it's very, very hot outside. This is actually one of the things the benefits of potassium silicate are attributed to, for anyone that is kind of familiar, you know, people say that silica can help the, you know, prevent dehydration and plants. It can help prevent lodging, which is when plants desiccate and they fall over and they physically wilt. Silicon can kind of help prevent but the missing link there that I think a lot of people forget is that it's a potassium silicate, and it's really the benefits that potassium brings, as far as being able to maintain what's called isotonicity. Isotonicity is just the reference to how much water is concentrated inside of the cell versus outside of the cell. And an isotonic state is you have this equal distribution of water inside of the cells and outside of the cells, you have this optimum environment. So if it's a flood condition outside of the cell, an isotonic state would be like, yeah, there's a flood out there, but the inside of the cell isn't flood. We can maintain this kind of ability to balance isotonicity, not just the phenomena itself, but on the flip side, when plants are faced with environments that are very desiccating, very drying, like, you know, they're out of their VPD curve, and maybe it's really hot and it's really dry, the ability of potassium as a cation can actually help regulate the hydration capacity of the cell. If the soil is wet and you've mulched it, and you water the shit out of it, and it's really hot summer day, the plants can probably pull enough water up out of that in order to prevent themselves from getting desiccated or dehydrated extensively. This is one of the beautiful features of potassium that kind of keeps water inside of the cell so they don't dehydrate nearly as fast. That

is wild. So if you're over watering, if you're under watering, if the plants going through a drought, if the plant just experienced a flood, potassium helps with all of that. Is that. Amazing how it doesn't. It's not just a one to one kind of you know, you add potassium and then the plant drinks more. It's what you said, which is, it allows the plant to regulate better. What a crazy symphony that occurs naturally. You know what? I mean? That's really, really wild. And I didn't know that potassium was so critical to those processes. Yeah,

I've often referred to potassium as the Grand orchestrator. It is the conductor of this grand symphony. But it also it's kind of like the hog of the show, because on the one hand, it does orchestrate this whole symphony. It's like, All right, everybody, here's your place, here's your role. You do this thing. I open up the flood gates, all of these enzymes, which, by the way, I will activate too, will turn on, and it'll do all these things. So it's like, it's conducting this orchestra, and it's the maestro, but then it's also playing the instruments. And you're like, Well, hold on a second. This is an unfair advantage, because potassium is literally everywhere, doing everything, and that's why, when you have deficiencies in potassium, it quite literally affects everything from gene expression all the way up to how much water your plants actually take up and transpire. It's literally on every scale that you can physically interact within the plant. And that makes up a plant. Potassium deficiencies affects quite literally everything on every scale

that is wild shit, man. I'm glad we saved this one for so long, because you kind of need everything to build up to potassium. I see why this one came later. Tell us about different potassium sources. You know, you mentioned potassium silicate, and I heard that too, you know, oh, it helps with heat stress and all this. And I and now I know that there's, you know, largely attributing to the to the potassium and the way that the plant drinks. But what other forms of potassium are we commonly adding to our grows? If we're using, you know, nutrients that you see around, what forms does potassium come into our cannabis gardens?

Well, interestingly enough, an unusual suspect might be your pH up solution, potassium hydroxide or potassium carbonate. Usually it's a potassium source. Some of the really cheap and inexpensive ones are maybe a sodium source. But you don't want to overdo the sodium in the plants. You can overdo the potassium quite extensively. You can take up 400 500 ppms, maybe even 600 ppms of potassium, and that's perfectly fine for the plants on the flip side, just for reference, you know, if you're feeding your plants, let's say 500 ppms of potassium, you may actually end up only feeding them about 30 to 50 ppms of phosphorus. So there's, you know, a 10x difference on the low end. And it just goes to show you, like how how much potassium is required in high concentrations. And the benefit for plants is that most of these potassium forms are relatively soluble. Most common ones would be potassium nitrate, which are found in a lot of you know, conventional fertilizers. It's a great fertilizer source, and in a lot of ways, it actually fits very naturally into the metabolic cycles of cannabis plants, because potassium, as I mentioned earlier, creates this charge balance. It's a monovalent cation, meaning it's got one positive charge on it. It's a good way of looking at it, and it can kind of help create a charge against negative compounds like organic acids, that are just normal byproducts of the Calvin Cycle, which is CO two metabolism. Or if you feed your plants nitrates, they can take up huge concentrations of nitrates and they can convert those into proteins, and it's really the potassium that creates the charge balance for the plants. So potassium nitrate is a very common one. There are in PK boosters. Every PK Booster out there is made with a potassium phosphate salt. And as I mentioned earlier, there's a variety of different species. You can call them different flavors. There's mono potassium phosphate, where there's just a single potassium that exists in this configuration with phosphates, there's some hydrogen to help acidify it, and then, because the hydrogen carrying a single positive charge and the potassium also carrying a single positive charge, they can be swapped out. And as they continue to get swapped out for each other, that's what differentiates the mono potassium from the dye potassium and the trip potassium phosphates, it's just the amount of and does

that make that middle number go up? That's why some of these PK boosters have a really high middle number, that that P number, versus some have a lower p number. Yeah. Is that the reason why?

Yep. So dia potassium phosphate is going to have more potassium than phosphorus inside of it, but a mono potassium phosphate is going to have, you know, like a zero 5030 analysis, or zero 5132 or something like that. Where does

this stuff come from? Where? Like, I know exactly the products that you're talking about, like those cheap, crazy, strong bloom boosters. Are those, like, mined somewhere? Do they come from? Sea salt? Where do those come from? Those

are usually just the byproducts of industrial manufacturing, you can take phosphoric acid and react it with potassium hydroxide, which is used, you know, for a variety of different inputs. They're pretty common ingredients, but that's typically how you react them. And you can create potassium phosphate compounds. And then from there, they simply dehydrate them into salts by removing the water, you know, boiling and evaporating it. It, geez. And then they're left for the crystalline substance, and they just bagged it up and sell it.

Bag it up and sell it, baby. That's wild. That sounds like some Breaking Bad. Yeah,

in a lot of ways it's, it's an interesting approach, because what it does is it creates soluble forms of these nutrients, and the solubility is what makes them bioavailable to plants. But I think what they're missing is this, this understanding or appreciation for just how complex nature is. You know, if you have a bioavailable or soluble form of phosphorus, which PK boosters, technically are, once you saw solubilize them, when you introduce them to soils, though, they have these interactions with other compounds that are in the soils and that renders them unavailable. And their propensity to have those interactions is very high. They have a very high tendency to interact in a way in soils that just binds them up and makes them unavailable. And that's really, I think, the kind of unfortunate downfall of some of these conventional PK Boosters is that they're not actually taken up by the plants. Yeah, they're soluble, but you got to filter it through the soil first before plants can take it up, you know.

Yeah, that makes sense. So what about rooted leaf? What? What makes yours different? I know you have the PK Booster, the peak bloom. I love that product. Man, why is yours different? That's

a great question. So if you look at how phosphorus is naturally cycled out of soils, there's a variety of mechanisms that both plants and microbes have developed over the course of a very long time. Plants will secrete certain types of organic acids, like citrate, for example. In these organic acids, they function to out compete phosphorus. So phosphorus wants to hold on to, let's say calcium, to make calcium phosphate, which is bone meal, or maybe we're making magnesium phosphate, or, you know, some other kind of insoluble form of phosphate, the organic acids. What they do is they kind of out compete the phosphates ability to capture that element, like the calcium, and they free up that bond. They break it off, and they free it up so that plants can take it up and become solubilized and available for the plants. This is kind of the mechanism that plants have evolved over time. You look at the efflux of citrate from the roots in response to phosphorus deficiencies, and you realize there's a lot of mechanistic reasons this makes sense, like the stability constant how strong physically or chemically, is the bond that holds phosphate to these various cations, and you realize citrate can now compete it in most of these examples. So some psych plants know that byproducts of carbon metabolism through photosynthesis can actually be used. In other words, the power of the sun can get diverted into the soil to help free up phosphorus to make it more available for plants. And this is a really clever mechanism. So when we formulated the peak bloom, the idea was to put phosphorus inside of this network, or this matrix of organic molecules that represented how nature would have broken it down their sugar phosphates, you know, we firm our artichoke sugars. Those sugar phosphates hold phosphorus in a soluble and stable form, so that it doesn't want to compete and convert back into an insoluble form. This is why you can mix peak bloom and calm egg fuel together, not in concentrate, but in solution, you know, at the point of use and application for the plants, and you can get ridiculously high concentrations of calcium and phosphorus delivered to the plants without any kind of binding or precipitation reactions that happen because peak bloom, those organic acids and those sugar complexes drive from artichoke they're really there to serve as a mechanism to protect the phosphorus and make it available for plants in most soils, Phosphorus is about 75 to 90% unavailable for plants, meaning all of your PK boosters, you know most of the definitely, all the rock phosphates, but even some of the more soluble forms of phosphate, they're about 75 to 90% unavailable to the plants, whereas peak Bloom is above 95% bioavailable. So this is like the opposite the inversion of that. So you need way less peak Bloom to get the same amount delivered to plants overall. It works great as a foliar spray too. So, yeah, I noticed

that very low dosage and just ripping. Man, I put it on my flowering fruits outside my my peppers and my tomatoes, and I put it on my cannabis, just ripping. Man, yeah, it's really nice not to pH as well. So I think that's a great product that you have on that you have on your hands. So the peak bloom, yeah. So nice,

yeah. And peak bloom. The cool thing about it is that one milliliter of peak Bloom is about 10 ppms of phosphorus. And the sweet spot for most plants is somewhere between 30 to 50. I mean, for most, you know, cannabis plants, for most vegetable plants, you could get 20 to 40, and that'd be perfectly fine for the plants. So it's like this really easy way to remember, you know, one mil of peak Bloom is 10 ppms of phosphorus. You know, if you kind of think about 30 to 50 ppms being kind of the optimal range for cannabis plants. And. Then start to do the math, and look at some of these PK boosters, you realize like, oh, they want me to put 10 grams of this zero, 5030, in per gallon of water. That's a CR that's crazy math. It's almost 10x more than is optimum for the plants. Maybe it's somewhere between 5x to 10x above the sweet spot for the plants, because, you know, they know that most of that phosphorus is going to get tied up. It's not available for the plants, so if you want that response, you got to put on more than you actually need, whereas peak Bloom is the exact opposite. A little bit goes a very long way, because it's so bioavailable for the plants and it will not tie up in the soils.

I've heard that concept before, though, that they just over apply the phosphorus specifically, because there's so much of it is not available, and I'm sure it's the case with a lot of different nutrients. But yeah. Man, really, really wild. Thank you for doing that code. Man, 30% off just for this month, just for my listeners@rootedleaf.com super excited about that. I need to re up myself here in just a minute. But yeah, before we wrap it up, what else is going on? Anything on the horizon for rooted leaf?

You know, keep we're going to keep expanding into conventional crops. Like I mentioned, we got the cucumber farmer that also does watermelons in the springtime. So we're going to look at doing programs for them. We also have some cool research projects coming up, not only with Baku State University, but also here some in the US. We got some cool stuff going on just as far as conventional produce goes. And certainly we keep getting more and more customers. Interestingly enough, on the east coast for cannabis, a lot of commercial producers we're starting to work with, and I feel like we're dialing in the system for very large scale production pretty efficiently overall, as the markets kind of continue to figure themselves out and stabilize themselves. So we'll, kind of, you know, we'll be involved in all fronts and agriculture before you know it. And pretty soon, you'll be eating salads that were grown with rooted leaf, and you won't even know. You'll be like, Man, why is this basil so delicious? Why is this lettuce so crunchy? This kale is so nutritious? So it was grown with rooted leaf. That makes a lot of sense. Man,

I put my basil on my whole regimen for my cannabis, like, the whole thing, and it came out with this crazy licorice note that I had just never experienced before. It was so strong it really does, like, like you said, take the genetic potential to a whole nother level, and you see different expressions. Man, so yeah, listeners, if you want to grab it now is the time rooted leaf.com. Code grow cast is 30% off. Get the RIP in nutrients, no pH in run it in cocoa. Run it in pro mix as your primary nutrient, or just splash it on your living soil. You'll see great results. So 30% off this month only@rootedleaf.com thank you, Nick. This was an awesome episode. Potassium is maybe, I mean, if I'm just gonna pick a nutrient that is the most important. The single most important. You made a pretty good argument for potassium today. You said it's present absolutely everywhere. It's responsible for basically everything when it comes to the plant's life cycle and and the water pump cycle, as you said, it helps the uptake and regulations of water, which in turn is going to increase your terpenes. It balances carbon, like you said. I thought it was interesting. You said it doesn't sink into the plant tissue like other nutrients do, and it's just kind of being passed around and zipping around doing its thing. Less potassium means less terpenes, and it's going to help you in all aspects, over watering, underwatering, floods, droughts. It is the it is the grand Maestro of the orchestra who also runs around when it's time for the solo and grabs the instrument and plays the solo of each part. I love it. Man, great exploration today. Nick, thank you.

Yeah, thank you. I mean, you know, like I said, it's such an interesting element to talk about because it's so difficult to describe it adequately in just a short amount of time. So I hope people the takeaway from this conversation should be that potassium is really just involved in anything and everything that plants are all about. So if you want to increase turbines, if you want to increase cannabinoids, the first step in understanding that is to increase water metabolism. And to increase water metabolism means you got to increase potassium concentrations within the plants. Potassium exists in a ratio, so keep all of your ratios balanced. And this, I feel like, will inform people's ability to understand how to balance their nutrient program. It's not just like, hey, I need more potassium. It's hey, I need more potassium. And when I get more potassium, it needs, I need. It means I need more magnesium, and I need more calcium, and I need more nitrogen and so on and so forth. So this, this idea of brand orchestrator, should help people create an understanding of what balanced nutrition actually means for plants, because potassium regulates all kinds of different balancing acts within the plant. So there's no better representation of a balancing element than potassium. Yes, absolutely

true, important in the human body too. Let me tell you. You know, there's a listener to this show who just learned that. I hope she hears this. I went out in Vegas. No so important. Man, what an important mineral, what an important nutrient. And you really shined a light on potassium today, truly. All right. Man, well, listen, we're gonna let you go one more time. Rooted leaf.com, go and grab it. Code, grow. Cast 30% off just this month, just for you, and we'll see you soon. Nick, one more time. Am. Thank you buddy. Awesome episode today.

Thank you guys. I appreciate it. Thanks to everyone who listens. All right, that's all

for now. Stay tuned. Everybody you know where to find us. Grow cast podcast.com, check us out. We got grow cast seed co up there, the classes, the membership, all the fun stuff. I'll see you soon in a town near you, and until then, have a wonderful time growing. Go grow something beautiful. This is Nick from rooted leaf and Jordan River, signing off saying, be safe and grow smarter. That's our show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you to Nick. That was a mind bending episode. And you know, we have more coming, some curveballs in this nutrient deep dive, so don't touch that dial before we wrap it up, grow cast seed CO, baby. Grow. Cast podcast.com, forward slash seed CO, it'll bring you right there. You can find the link right on our main page and check out all the amazing genetics that riser Rich has whipped up. We have some limited packs still up there available. Occasionally, Rich will throw up two or three of something limited. And of course, members of the Order of cultivation. Get $20 off per pack. So check out what we got. If you see any rhinos delight, grab it immediately. Any of the ice cream wolfman F twos, the peach quake is absolutely amazing. Plus we have feminized genetics. All of the Oreos crosses are feminized, loving that Double Stuffed Oreos, loving the banana Oreo blizzard. I think that one's sold out, but you'll find something that you love. Rhizorich makes the most vigorous, passionate made with love and fire genetics that I have ever grown, if I do say so myself, grow cast podcast.com, hit the seed. CO, link right there, and we thank you for your support. Enjoy those fire genetics. Everybody. That's all for today. Be extra safe out there, people. Okay, I'll see you at the next event. Be well. Take care. Bye, bye.

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They're left with a crystalline substance, and they just bagged it up and sell it. You.