Thursday, June 21, 2007

What Is Foliar Fertiliser

Foliar fertilisation is any fertilising substance applied in a liquid form.
Foliars in their most basic form, often used by home gardeners use animal manures, or seaweed collected from the beach, suspended in water, until all the 'goodness' has been extracted.
This is time consuming where a lot of effort is required for a small amount of nutrient.
By contrast, modern foliar fertilizers are concentrated solutions using very high grade technical elements, in which the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are combined to the desired ratio in a controlled environment.
The fertilising elements in this method are true solutions, soluble, and thus very plant available.
This is in contrast to soil applied (solid) fertilizer, which is applied as a powder or granules to the soil in dry form. This then, has to be dissolved, by moisture (rain) to be plant available via the roots. In other words, it has to dissolve into the soil solution to be available.
To these foliar solutions, trace elements in the form of chelates are added, along with seaweed and /or humic acid, or other additives depending on preference, to give a balanced fertilizer, supplying not only NPK, but all the trace elements as well as growth hormones, vitamins etc.
Many different NPK formulation combinations can be made, depending on the application required. The same elements that make up foliar fertilizer are required for plant growth and development, and are formulated to meet quite specific plant requirements.

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