VITAMINS FOR VEGETABLES

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MOTHER'S CHILDREN

This 11-year-old gardener uses vitamins as plant foods.

By Robert Williams III

Silver Queen 100 inches tall, and cabbages almost a yard across

Before I started my experiment, I looked for some books or magazines that told of research with plants and vitamins, but I couldn't find anything in print. So I had to find things out for myself. I started off feeding eight plant trays with different vitamin mixes and one plant tray with only water.

I made a table showing the vitamin solutions and water used. I made notes of when all the seeds were planted and when they germinated. I also measured the plants' heights every morning and every night.

The vitamins I used were A (50,000 I.U.), B 1 (200 mg), B 12 (200 mg), B 100 (200 mg), C (1,000 mg), E (400 I.U.) and pantothenic acid (500 mg). I diluted each vitamin with two quarts of water. All of the vitamins except A and E were crushed and dissolved in water. I had to boil water to get the A and E vitamins to melt.

Indoor Seedlings

I started the seeds in peat pots, after pouring vitamin water into the dry pots to expand them. I put the seeded pots under a light (I used an old photo-copying stand). All of the plants were put in the same room and kept the same distance from a woodstove that provided heat. I poured the same amount of vitamin water on my seeds every day. I used one tray for each vitamin, one tray that received only water, and another in which I used a mixture of all seven vitamins.

I planted all the seeds early on January 16, and by the next morning, some of the green peas in the pantothenic acid and vitamin E trays had already germinated (I had soaked all the pea seeds overnight before planting). By that night, the pantothenic-tray peas were nearly two inches tall. By January 21, the peas watered with the B 12 mixture not only had germinated but also had well-formed roots coming out the sides of the peat pots. However, the pea plants in the vitamin A tray did not germinate until January 23, and the plain-water peas not until January 27.

By January 3 1, pea plants in the B 12 tray were eight inches tall and had 12 or 13 leaves.

The other peas were only half as tall and had only three or four leaves. But suddenly, those in the pantothenic acid tray started to grow faster. By February 1, they were taller than all the other pea plants.

In other trays, the broccoli grew much faster in trays that were fed vitamins B 12 , C or E. Curled mustard grew well in all of the trays, but it grew fastest and best when fed A, B 12 , B 100 or pantothenic acid. The cabbage grew best in trays fed vitamins A, B, or pantothenic acid (B 100 cabbages grew the slowest).

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