What You Need for Your Vegetable Garden Plants
Essential Nutrients for Vegetable Plants
When breaking down all the various essential nutrients that vegetable plants need in the garden can be hard to understand at first. However, the three major nutrients that plants need are nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous. Nitrogen is important for the improvement of great stalk growth and productivity of plant fruits. While potassium provides nutrients for root and seed production. Then, phosphorous strengths the overall root development which helps to prevent disease and pest pressures. Along with the major nutrients, plants need essential micronutrients in the vegetable garden as well. The micronutrients include sulfur which helps the plants use the available nitrogen in the soil. While boron helps with the overall sugar transport in the plants and iron is involved in pigment formation and energy production. Also, copper provides plant respiration, flavor profile, and color in vegetable plants. Finally, magnesium allows chlorophyll to capture the suns energy that is needed for photosynthesis in the garden. Another advantage of having essential nutrients is to help improve soil structure in the vegetable garden. Using good compost and cover crops will help supply the soil with all the essential nutrients that plants needed. Depending on certain cover crops they can help improve soil levels, decrease soil-borne disease, suppress weed growth, and improve the organic matter in the vegetable garden. Another way to supply nutrients to the vegetables and soil is by adding fertilizer to the desired garden area. Overall, supplying the garden with the important essential nutrients will maintain healthy and productive yields in the vegetable plants.
Vegetable Garden Plant Needs
On this week's episode, Travis explains what your vegetable plants need in the garden. We all know the major nutrients that plants require is nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. However, the vegetable plants that we grow also need essential micronutrients which are elements that are needed by the plant in smaller quantities. Some of these micronutrients include boron, sulfur, magnesium, zinc, copper, iron, and manganese. These essential micronutrients are important for amino acids, chlorophyll, and enzyme production. All of these elements help the plant photosynthesize and maintain healthy plants in our vegetable garden. Our newest product called Micro-Boost is exactly what you need for your vegetable garden plants. The micro-boost is a liquid formulation that includes many essential micronutrients. This micro-boost is used as a fertilizer additive so you add it just like other fertilizer products. Travis mentions that the recommended rate of the micro-boost is 1/4 cup per 1,000 square feet of the vegetable garden. So to incorporate the micro-boost into your garden area you should add some of it to your other garden fertilizer either weekly or bi-weekly depending on how often you fertilize your garden. There are two different ways you can apply the micro-boost in the vegetable garden. The first technique is adding it to our fertilizer injector. When adding either the 20-20-20 or Chilean Nitrate to the fertilizer injector you simply add a couple of cups of Micro-Boost depending on the area you are wanting to cover in the vegetable garden. If you don't have an EZ-Flo injector you can also add the Micro-Boost using a hand-pump garden sprayer. With the garden sprayer, you add a quarter cup or half cup depending on the area you want to cover in the vegetable garden. Then, you simply unscrew the sprayer tip off the end of the sprayer wand and drizzle it alongside the plants in the garden row. Whether you are using a fertilizer injector or garden sprayer both techniques work great to add the Micro-Boost to ensure your vegetable crops get all the essential nutrients that they need for plant growth.