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Food - Food is energy plus elements essential for life. All living things are bags of chemicals. Introduced other chemicals-could benefit the bags -food -or disrupt the bags --poisons. More on the topic: Food is any substance that provides energy and elements essential for life. Food is fuel. Tree food is sugar. The chlorophyll traps the energy of the sun in a molecule of carbon dioxide and water-glucose. Tree food is carbohydrate; carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen combined to form many types of sugars and sugar-based substances. Nutritious food includes the proper amounts of essential elements and vitamins that are necessary for a healthy living condition. Fertilizers provide some elements essential for life. Planted trees usually require fertilizers. But, fertilizers do not provide an energy source for trees! The energy still comes from the sun and it is held in the sugar molecule. It is not so important to know the words, but it is important to know the natural processes. More harm has been done to trees in the name of feeding than with most other injurious actions. We want to make trees like people. If you love someone who is sick or starving, you give them food. So, food is not given to trees, that is the sad part of the story. So, here the words we use are important when they result in harm and not help. When a tree is sick or stressed, its energy reserves are usually low. Trees can only store energy in living cells. The amount of energy reserves is then directly related to the amount of healthy living cells in wood and inner bark. When elements are added to the soil or injected into the tree, the elements stimulate the natural biological processes to increase their rate. To do this, energy is required. The energy can only come from stored reserves or from new substances produced by photosynthesis. What all this means is that the tree does speed up its normal activities. But, is this not good for a sick tree? In some cases it may be, so long as the energy required to operate all processes is sufficient. But, when the natural processes operate faster than energy can be supplied, then problems start. Large leaves form. Long new shoots form. Then the leaves and shoots begin to die. This scene has been seen by many people who have fertilized a tree planted early in the spring. Everything looks very fine, until all the leaves come out. Then they die. How could this happen, people think, when the tree grew so fast and the leaves grew so large. The rapid growth rate and the large leaves were part of the problem. There was little or no energy left to make new wood and bark, and no energy left to supply the living cells in the trunk and roots. The living cells in the trunk and roots are absolutely dependent on the leaves for their energy. A major problem with many planted trees is that they grow too fast. We think that rapid growth means a healthy tree. This is not so! I hope the day will come when we can give trees food. Until that time, use fertilizers with great care, and do not confuse them with tree food.

Bottom line on elements verses nutrients. Elements are too often mistakenly called “nutrients”. To make this clear, please allow me to share this with you. Essential elements. Look at your chart of Atomic Properties of elements. (Not the Atomic Properties of nutrients) That’s where you will find your elements. Look at mycorrhizae. Is it fungus or is it tree? YES, mycorrhizae is a composite structure made up of root and fungus tissues.

But if you have the fungus and no tree, do you have mycorrhizae? NO, you do not have the composite structure made up of root and fungus tissues. You only have fungus.

If you have a bag of fungi to place on the soil, to establish mycorrhizae, do you have mycorrhizae in the bag? NO

Take a lichen, is it algae or fungus? YES (People do not like these kinds of answers)

But if you have a bag of algae, do you have lichens. NO

If you have a nutrient, is it an element or energy? YES

If you have a bag of elements do you have a nutrient? NO

Do you have a bag of food? NO

You say oh, word games?

With respect: Consider poor Joe who liked alcohol. Drank methanol rather than ethanol. He then quickly learned, as his brain got burned. That words, are important after all.

See "Tree Food" a must. See "Photosynthesis".