Some Myths About Foliar Fertilizer? GV

SOME MYTHS ABOUT FOLIAR FERTILIZER?
  

Grigg Brothers brought a full line of Foliar Fertilizers into the golf course maintenance market in 1995. Foliar fertilizers had been used with success in agriculture and farmers knew they worked. Golf course superintendents however were told by many 'experts' it shouldn't, but the superintendents found out they did and kept using them anyway.

There are some, who would say that foliar fertilizers are a waste of time and money because they do not have elements in sufficient quantity to do anything.

There are others who say that plants do not take up nutrients through their leaves, so applying a foliar fertilizer is wasting money.

Other ‘experts’ point at some specific large, multi-valent elements, such as calcium and/or iron as not working.

There are still others who go to the other extreme and say that foliars is all you need, and the total way to go. Most however advocate using foliars in conjunction with soil applied fertilizers.

Let’s look at a couple of these in a little more detail.

1. Foliars do not contain sufficient to do anything?

This assumes all that is needed are the 3 major NPK elements.

It is true that these 3 elements are needed in the largest quantity, but are only 3 of 16-17 needed by all plants.

All the NPK in the World will not fix a minor nutrient deficiency.

Foliar fertilization is the most effective and least expensive way to apply micro nutrients and supplement the major elements. The readily-available nutrients are more easily utilized, because they do not have to be dissolved by moisture and go into the soil solution, where they may be tied up.

The important thing to remember is that a small amount of fertilizer used, actually increases the uptake from the soil and increases the total uptake by several fold over the small amount of fertilizer applied as a foliar.

Radioactive isotope studies by Dr. Harold Tukey and Dr. Silvan Wittwer at Michigan State University in the mid 1950’s showed that it was  8-10 times more effective to foliar feed a plant as far as the amount of nutrients required and the speed with which those nutrients were utilized. Other authorities over the years have showed foliars up to 100 times more effective than soil applied fertilizer.

In Dr. Tukey’s work at Michigan State phosphorous (P) was shown to be more effective over granular by 20:1

2. Plants do not take up elements through their leaves?

 'How do herbicides work'?

If you consider that as little as 2% solution of glyphosate will kill all vegetation, it would appear likely that it is taken up by the leaves. Since it is totally inactivated by soil contact, how could it be root absorbed?

The 1950's Michigan State University research referenced above using radio-active tagged nutrients discovered that the leaves of plants as well as bark take up nutrients.  Many other studies in agriculture since have shown the same results.

Grigg Brothers working with Roch Gaussoin PH D at University of Nebraska in 2005 showed that L-93 bentgrass took in foliar nutrition from Grigg Brothers products in very high amounts, with many nutrients exceeding 90% absorption. That work is continuing in 2006 not only at Nebraska but also Michigan State University and at Clemson University on annual bluegrass and bermudagrass as well as again on bentgrass. The results will be posted on our web site sometime this winter.