I know you say that P is not mobile and therefore has to be globally applied to be effective and that's not what I have in my mix. But, can I assume that the multitude of microbes that were produced in my tea that in part consumed the bone meal and were then watered in, effectively brought P throughout the mix and that maybe the dumptrucks can start being built?
Also, why The Rev's caution to not use the tea more frequently than once every 10 days, just wasteful because the microbes take that long to get used up or something more sinister?
P isn't very mobile in soil. Inside the plant P is extremely mobile. P carries ATP and ATP is where cells get the energy to move nutrients thru their membranes, so P comes into the plant, loads up with energy, and delivers energy to the cells so they can transport other nutrients. It also gets used up in photosynthesis.
The microbes definitely bring P in from the tea. If a microbe doesn't process it then it stays stuck in the soil when you dump the tea into the soil until a microbe in the soil finds it and eats it. Putting EWC into the tea speeds the process.
As for Rev, I think back in the day he was starting to notice that too many feedings were messing with his soil PH. Thats just a guess on my part, but his teas have a fair bit of organic matter in it, and until it properly cooks it drives PH down until it cooks. Everything organic takes 10-14 days.
Testing cooking soils PH is how you know when cooking is complete.
Teas bring raw organic matter and if added, molasses, which will mess up the microbes if used too often, so I only use 1 or 2 over an entire grow, with kelp being the only organic matter, and only enough molasses to barely sustain the microbe explosion if EWC is added.
So yes, you can assume the microbes in the tea upped the P availability to the plant.
The microbes eat it and attach an oxygen molecule to it so it is recognized as food and if the plant is lucky enough to have the microbe poop in the tea rinse across a root or get snagged by myco, it gets into the plant.
Water won't really move P in the soil as it is electrically stickier than it is heavy, so the plant must find it after the microbes process it, but it won't leach out like calcium does. It stays where it's put.
When roots find it in it's raw form they squirt exudates on it so the microbes will process an O2 molecule onto it right there with the root or myco waiting for it.
The more P a plant gets, the more it can photosynthesize sugars to squirt more P with.
The more you have the more you get. The rich get richer.
Calcium carries the signals that run P transport. Carbon for the exudates comes from CO2.
So there you have it. Microbes attaching O2 to P to assimilate carbon into sugars and its all signalled by calcium. The 5 parts of brix.
