The Mobility of Vital Plant Nutrients: Explained

Any grower, despite the best of preparations, will undoubtedly encounter nutrient imbalances during their crop cycles. Nature is unpredictable and there are a myriad of factors that can influence how your crops will perform throughout a growing season. This is not exclusive to soil or outdoor growing; Hydroponic growing is not exactly more reliable, rather having its own set of risk factors. When you take control of the environmental factors - light, humidity, nutrients - you had better be sure to have a contingency plan in place for when things go off the rails. 

We first need to understand the role of each nutrient and how they move within a plant so we can avoid deficiency issues before they happen, and address them when they do arise.

Breakdown of Vital Plant Nutrients

There are seventeen elements that are essential to plant growth and development. Three of these elements are non-mineral, being Oxygen, Hydrogen and Carbon, and the remaining 14 elements are minerals that can be divided between macro and micronutrients. A deficiency in any one of these vital nutrients can inhibit plant development.

Once inside plants, nutrients are transported where needed though typically to growing points. Once accepted by the plant, some elements can be immobile meaning they are essentially locked in place, while others can move to areas of greater demand. Understanding the mobility of your nutrients is essential to diagnosing issues with your crop.

Since immobile elements cannot easily move within the plant, when deficiency symptoms start, they tend to show up in new growth.

Conversely, when mobile elements are limited they can be taken and moved from older growth to where they're most needed, often showing deficiency symptoms in older growth. 

How Quad Nutro Corrects Issues?

Since the base of our product formulas are Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid based, they are comprised almost completely of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen molecules, the non-mineral elements that are vital to plant growth. 

When you consider that soil mediums carry a negative charge, and most nutrients and water are positively charged, the objective is to enable your growth medium to attract and hold as much water and nutrients as possible, while making those nutrients more mobile and easier for the plant to utilize throughout. So humic acid makes for a bigger buffet table, and fulvic acid puts more food on that table for your plants to feast on. 

Additionally, during production our humic and fulvic acids undergo a proprietary process that results in a much higher ionic charge (negative for humic and positive for fulvic). What does that mean? Our products amplify the natural polarity of soil to nutrients resulting in improved nutrient stability and soil structure coupled with proper chelation of nutrients for more effective adsorption into the root structure (or canopy) and movement within the plant.  

Our F2 Foliar is one example of how to leverage the power of our fulvic to help transport immobile nutrients within the plant. Quad Nutro F2 Foliar is what its name says, a foliar supplement that has manganese, boron, zinc and sulfur completely chelated into the mixture making it a valuable supplement throughout the veg cycle and into early flowering, as these are some of the least mobile minerals. The first treatment can be applied with post-emergent herbicides before the first flower, and subsequent applications can be made with fungicide, herbicide or insecticide treatments.

All Quad Nutro Products can be tank mixed, which minimizes extra compaction, water requirements, and trips around the field. They are also made with highly soluble carbon, so there is no risk of clogging lines.

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