I've been bad for many years about fertilizing, using a "That looks good" approach, that IMHO has generally left a number of my plants nutrient-deprived (but occasionally overdosed others). I'm looking to amend my wicked ways and - in addition to working on my plant db - have also been working on a fertilizer db, starting with some of the more "mundane" plants I grow.
Everyone knows for example that bananas are heavy feeders - my data for them suggests e.g. around 1kg of N per year per plant (1485kg per hectare) at maturity. Yet, if one can trust this:
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/mg055... it'd seem that pineapples dwarf that. I find that commercial pineapple plantations are planted densely, 63400 plants per hectare. The data in the above link says to give fertilizer in amounts that equate to 0,086kg N per plant per year at maturity, or 5478kg per hectare per year - 3,6 times that of bananas. Of course, pineapples don't stay at maturity for a whole year, but that's not the point; neither do bananas. Are pineapples really such heavy feeders? It's not just nitrogen - the ratios on phosphorus and potassium come out to be 4,8x and 1,5x, respectively. By contrast, the figures for most annonas works out to be in the ballpark of 100kg nitrogen per hectare per year - less than 5% that of pineapples.
Is this right? Are pineapples that hungry? If so.... I have some pineapples to feed when I get home