Fertilizer is anything that is applied to the soil to provide extra growth and nutrients to the growing plants. This application creates an increased level of growth and health in the plants and ground that it is being applied to. There are many different types of fertilizer, and one type is called micronutrient granular fertilizer.
Micronutrient granular fertilizer has micronutrients in the form of small pellets to help the land better support growing plants. These small pellets contain the nutrients plants need to grow healthy and strong. Micronutrient granular fertilizer also helps to revitalize a dying garden.
This fertilization product creates a difference in how it can be applied and outcome on the soil. Keep reading below to find out more about micronutrient granular fertilizer.
What Are Granular Fertilizers?
Most dry fertilizers are granular fertilizers, which can be in the form of either pellets or powders. They also tend to release their nutrients slowly over time. This means that you don’t really need to re-apply them very often, since they are usually still releasing more nutrients months after you’ve added them to the soil.
The advantage of granular fertilizers is that you only need to apply them once per season, around the same time that you plant the crops. This can give you the peace of mind that comes with knowing that your crops are ready to go with just your usual watering practices.
What Are Micronutrients?
Micronutrients are essential elements that are necessary for the growth of plant life, but are only needed in smaller portions. Even though they are a smaller portion of the minerals, there are still groups of minerals used throughout the soil so the plants can access nutrients. There are minerals like cobalt, copper, zinc, molybdenum, and more.
These nutrients are fairly uncommon in nature, and plants can usually grow without them, but having small amounts of them can help the plants grow significantly better and can make the resulting fruits more nutritious for humans.
What’s more is that because some of these minerals can be poisonous to plants and people when consumed in excess, it doesn’t make sense to try and spray them on as liquid fertilizer on a small scale. Plants can only take Boron, for instance, at a rate of 0.1lb per acre. That’s almost nothing!
When you add this fertilizer where it’s lacking, you can increase crop yields by several bushels per acre, so not adding in the micronutrients you need could actually be costing you a significant amount in lost yields.
Examples Of Micronutrients
Iron
Iron is one of the more critical micronutrients for plants. While invertebrate animals need a significant amount of iron for their blood, plants lack blood entirely and thus use much less. Plants use their iron for maintaining their chloroplasts and need more of it than other micronutrients. However, iron deficiencies are fairly uncommon among plants.
Zinc
Zinc is one of those micronutrients that is rarely ever deficient in soils. However, depending on the crop, adding some zinc to soils that don’t have any can help increase crop yields. Corn, for instance, is known to sometimes face zinc deficiencies, depending on the soil it’s planted in.
Manganese
Manganese deficiency can lead to discoloration of leaves, but for most plants, manganese deficiencies are incredibly uncommon. If your soil tests low for manganese or you’re growing certain breeds of soybean, it’s a good idea to supplement the soil with fertilizer.
When To Use
You don’t always need to use micronutrient fertilizers for your crops to grow. They’re really only necessary when the soil you’re planting in is lacking in some specific mineral.
For instance, soil almost always has enough Boron that adding in more would actually be bad for the plants. This means that Boron is really only needed if you’re planting in sandy or droughty soil.
Of course, if you’ve been growing large amounts of high-yield crops, chances are a lot of those nutrients were sucked out of the soil by whatever you grew last year.
This means that the best way to determine what kinds of micronutrients you need to use is to do a soil or leaf test. This will tell you how much of each mineral can be found in your soil and therefore how much you need to add to make the soil grow crops even better than before.
You will likely want to use at least some micronutrients each year to keep your plants producing at their optimal rate.
Common Questions
What is the difference between macronutrients and micronutrients?
Macronutrients are the nutrients that plants need in large amounts to thrive, such as nitrogen or phosphorous. Micronutrients are just the opposite: plants need them in minuscule amounts, although they are still definitely necessary.
While getting plants the macronutrients they need can be an issue of life and death, micronutrients are all about optimization. Most plants can live with suboptimal micronutrient situations, but adding them in can boost productivity significantly.
Micronutrients are kind of like vitamin supplements for plants. Using them will ensure that your plants grow to see their maximum potential.
What are the differences between granular and liquid fertilizers?
Aside from the obvious difference of texture, the biggest difference between the two is that liquid fertilizer is more fast-acting, and the farmer has more control over the amount of nutrients that are being applied at any given time. On the other hand, granular fertilizer only needs to be applied once and seeps out small amounts of nutrients over a long period of time.
When it comes to micronutrition, it often isn’t that important to be perfectly in control of how much is released at any given time, since the amount that plants need is minuscule anyways. What’s more important is making sure that it stays in the soil for a long time and is easy for the roots to access.
This makes granular fertilizer the ideal vehicle for micronutrients.
How much do you need per acre?
How much you need per acre will depend on what micronutrient you need to add and how much of it is already in the soil, since most micronutrients can be toxic to plants when applied in excess. In order to figure out the amount of each nutrient that you need, you’ll want to take your lab results to an agronomist for advice.
