What Do Plants Eat? Most gardeners are aware of the important relationship between plants and light. The Garden Reference emphasizes how important it is to provide various plants with sufficient light both indoors and outdoors. However, I am not sure gardeners understand that light is essential for plants and that sun-loving plants alone do not get enough light. We have already talked about the light preferences of plants. When plants that need sunny locations are dwarfed, they wither.
In modern times, people have no idea which plants should be eaten. Some blame the term “vegetable food.”.
In antiquity, the early farmers realized that the plants would grow if they spread slurry on the fields and planted crops. It was easy for them to assume that the plants would grow because they ate slurry. It made sense that providing abundant food would make a person stronger and healthier, and that the food provided by slurry would make plants grow faster.
The idea that we feed all plants when we add slurry and fertilizer to the soil has been solidified to this day. Not only do we feed our plants, we also feed them.
In the 20th century, we discovered that plants undergo a remarkable chemical process called photosynthesis, which produces light. This process, it turns out, is the foundation of life as we know it today. The problem is that we know very little about it.
In photosynthesis, plants use a green pigment. This is how sunlight (or artificial light) works.
Plants use the energy in combination with the carbon dioxide they absorb from air and the water they absorb in soil to make sugar molecules. The energy is stored in the sugar molecules from which humans and animals produce food.
As a byproduct of photosynthesis, oxygen from plants is released into the atmosphere. Photosynthetic bacteria and plants developed when the atmosphere had very little oxygen. Today, the atmosphere is rich in oxygen and our planet is full of animals that need oxygen for life. The photosynthesis process and the plants that carry it out have changed our planet and enabled the existence of oxygen-breathing animals.
Plants use the energy created by carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sugars produced by photosynthesis and other elements they absorb from the soil to build the tissue they need for their metabolism. That’s right, like a body, plants produce water and carbon dioxide from the air.
Soil does not provide plants with the energy they need to live and grow. Plants don’t eat soil either. Early farmers found that plants grew best when slurry was spread in the field.
Like the water they need, the plant roots absorb various minerals from the soil. These minerals contribute only a tiny fraction to the body of plants, but they are crucial for plant health.
We know that plants produce their own food, but we cannot feed them directly. This is where fertilizer comes in. Fertilizer supplies minerals such as iron, nitrogen, magnesium, potassium and calcium that plants need to absorb to keep the soil healthy. If the soil does not contain or add these minerals to grow plants, we would have to take vitamin supplements from our diet.
A better analogy for fertilizers and plants is to compare fertilizers with vitamins in food. It is like what we do when we fertilise a plant with something that is said to be needed and give it vitamins that are said to be needed.
A very small amount of fertilizer is sufficient to keep the plants healthy. A tiny amount of vitamins (think of the small tablets you take in the morning) is all we need to get healthy.
But more is not always better. Sometimes people have to endure what it takes to make ends meet. The more people get involved, the more they need.
Vitamins can be toxic in high concentrations, and you can damage your plants by applying too much fertilizer. But people should never confuse the small vitamin tablets they take with the food they need.
The relationship between plants and light is not always at the level they prefer. It has to do with what they consume to live. Light is important for everything from the houseplant on the windowsill to the living oak in the front garden to eating on your plate every day when you are outside. After all, plants are solar-powered organisms. The relationship between plants and light and how they consume and live.
If you give plants less light than they need to be healthy, they become weaker and anaemic, just as you would if you were deprived of most of the food you need to eat. Indoor light is so limited that it is not uncommon for plants to starve to death without their owners bothering about water or fertilization. We have additional water, fertilizer and begging to make plants healthy, but they do not get enough light. Without sufficient light, there is no other way for them to provide the food they need, and they will starve.
Remember how important it is to provide the right light the next time you walk through the yard with a plant in hand in search of a suitable location. Sometimes I think that gardeners lose sight of the relationship between plants and light on this basis, so I thought I would remind you a little. We were taught photosynthesis at school all the time. How earth-shattering that is, I will not reveal.
