The current warmer temperatures will help growers in the catch up game we’re playing this season to accelerate plant growth and fruit ripening, but are there other options that can help?
A few of the factors that control plant growth rate, in addition to its genetic makeup, are:
- soil pH
- soil salinity conditions
- soil microbiology
- soil drainage characteristics
- soil compaction
- soil temperature, and
- soil fertility, the most important issue to tackle.
Justus von Liebig’s famous “Law of the Minimum” implies that crop yield is proportional to the amount of the essential nutrient that is most lacking in availability, whichever nutrient that may be. This principle correlates to what we’ve been saying for a long time – plant growth and yield are limited by the most deficient element. In response, we promote products that offer a broad array of micronutrients, to cover all the bases for what all plants need.
This principle goes beyond just minerals, as we’ve learned in recent decades that agriculture also greatly benefits from the application of biostimulants. These include acids like humic and fulvic, microbials like beneficial fungi or PGPRs, extracts like chitin or polysaccharides, and other products like protein hydrolysates or enzymatic extracts.
We have several products and biostimulants that address all these issues with the end goal of improving overall soil health. We also stock biostimulants that can have a dramatic effect on plant growth, including secondary metabolites that contribute to color, flavor, and disease resistance. Microbial-based foliar fertilizers are especially helpful in revving the plant’s photosynthesis engine to speed up its metabolism. And foliar spray applications of micronutrients like zinc, molybdenum, manganese, cobalt, iron and boron, as Liebig suggested, are vitally important and make practical sense.
Finally, calcium increases ammonium, potassium and phosphorus absorption, stimulates photosynthesis, and increases the size of marketable plant parts. It also makes the use of nitrogen more efficient, which improves the economics of production and reduces nitrogen contamination of the environment. However, not all forms of calcium are readily available to the plant so it’s essential of provide the types of calcium that are easily absorbed.