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Plant growth with methanol
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Posted by HowardMcPherson Cleveland, 6 (My Page) on Thu, Jun 23, 05 at 16:57
| In US Patent 5981441 "Use of methanol for improving plant growth" the person says that he got improved results by using dilute methanol (methyl alcohol, wood alcohol) on plants. In his discussion of the prior art he mentions other previous people have often had negative results. Has anyone in the forum tried this? |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Plant growth with methanol
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| seems like it would kill the micro-herd to me. |
RE: Plant growth with methanol
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| There is a lot of stuff at scholar.google on methanol and plant growth. I rather suspect the micro-herd makes methanol and this might account for the mechanism by which adding methanol helps plants i.e. it creates something more akin to the so called natural. |
RE: Plant growth with methanol
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| Easy enough to do. What is the rate and method of application? I found only one reference in which 5 ml methanol per gallon of water was applied with fertilizer to orchids. |
RE: Plant growth with methanol
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| I've come across it as hoax when I was still a student. One of the promoters was involved in big time scams to shoot the stock prices up of alcohol producing industries at that time and that guy have purchased a lot of those ailing stocks, about 12 years ago when alcohol was not yet in demand. Because of this, I was biased against using alcohol. But as always, if there are credible scientific sources that can be verified, I am open to reading and scrutinizing the scientific publications about this topic. I somehow find it illogical that the renewable energy is trying very hard to produce alcohol and then you use alcohol back for plant production, and therefore do we really have a net increase in this negative feedback loop in our model of alcohol usage and production? Nowadays, the stock prices of alcohol for fuel production related industries have gone up from 12 years ago. |
RE: Plant growth with methanol
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| My experience was with adding two or three drops to a liter to perhaps enhance gibellines. The patent refers to 5cc per gallon (Mixing "cc" with "gallon" is a little suspect but perhaps to patent office is out of date on these matters.) Nevertheless, a couple of drops or 5 "cc" on a few orchids is not going to affect the micro heard or the price of energy stocks. |
RE: Plant growth with methanol
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| One teaspoon is 4.93 cubic centimeters. 5 cc/gal sounds more scientific than 1 tsp/gal. RealJoe, I suspect that you are confusing methanol with ethanol (regular alcohol). |
RE: Plant growth with methanol
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Actually, to a scientist, 5cc/gal doesn't sound very scientific. One being an SI unit and one being an English unit. FWIW
Ken |
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