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Originally Posted by Deadon2
I was never good in biology in high school. So I'm probably behind the curve on this question.
I have to assume that a banana knows how to grow. Given sufficeint fertilizer and water, it will do what a banana knows what to do.
But, if you over fertilize in a certain NPK nutreient, will the banana overdose and become somehow retarded in it's growth? If you give it too much N or P or K at any point of devolpment, won't the banana know it doesn't need that much and not uptake?
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Too much of any dissolved solute will draw water out of the roots and kill the roots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmotic_pressure
That is less likely to occur when the solute concentration outside of the roots is gradually increased so the solute concentration inside the roots reaches equilibrium. That implies don't apply a lot of fertilizer suddenly.
At lower levels of solutes, things get much more complicated. Too much Mg inhibits uptake of Ca, blah, blah , blah ....
Urea is interesting because it does unusual things within a plant. For example, see
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00750524
http://www.ipni.net/publication/nss.nsf/0/EA265C5FE184D4F285257C8300753585/$FILE/NSS-25%20Urease%20Inhibitors.pdf
In my experience, when enough urea is applied, but not enough to kill the roots, plant growth is temporarily stunted, for, maybe, 2 weeks, and then rapid growth occurs, which more than makes up for lost time.
I only mention this to point out an opportunity for you to do personal experimentation with urea.