in high school bio they told us that the plant makes the “sugars” via photosynthesis in the leaves and then these sugars are pumped to other parts of the plant through “veins” of some sort. So if I wanted the plant to grow faster than photosynthesis allows, could I hack this process by directly putting these “sugars” (or whatever compounds that photosynthesis normally makes) on the leaves so that they would seep into the “veins” and then carry on as usual?
Plants have skin, too. Neither plants nor people absorb nutrients through the skin. Ok, technically plants absorb through roots and the human stomach
is also technically epidermal material. But no, it won’t work.
Miracle-Gro claims that it is absorbed “through both the roots and the leaves.” Is this claim misleading? Or are the chemicals in Miracle-Gro fundamentally different?
Fundamentally different.
so is the difference in that when leaves uptake water from the outside, their surface filters out dissolved complex organic substances but allows in dissolved simple inorganic ones? Or how does it work?
Yes, nutrients can be absorbed through plant leaves, although not nearly as effectively as through root systems. Commercial foliar feeds are avail. I have one on had, made by Peters.
ck this out, wiki link on foliar feeding of plants.
foliar feeding
Correct me if I’m wrong, but plant nutrients are pretty much all small, water soluble molecules. Whereas sugars, in comparison, are big, water soluble molecules. So even if plants do have the ability to absorb plant nutrients through their leaves, we can’t conclude they’d absorb sugar the same way in significant amounts.
I generalized sugars to mean nutrients since the sugar term in OP isn’t well specified.
What sugar are we talking about? Glucose? This is more a chemistry question than a horticultural one, defer to someone with that background.