BIO BASED PLANT NUTRIENTS  |  SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

There are seventeen nutrients that, when applied to soil, play a major role in determining plant health and crop yield. In order for plants to absorb these nutrients, the nutrients must be dissolved. When nutrients are dissolved, they are in a form called "ions" and are electrically charged... Continue

Plant Pathogens -  The study of plant diseases is known as plant pathology. Infectious diseases are caused by living organisms called pathogens. Noninfectious diseases caused by environmental stress and damage by weather and other environmental factors also will be covered...Continue

Soil nutrient management is a necessary component of any sustainable agriculture strategy. A nutrient management plan should include...Continue

Foliar feeding is an effective method for correcting soil deficiencies and overcoming the soil’s inability to transfer nutrients to the plant. Tests have shown that foliar feeding can  be 8 to 10 times more effective than soil feeding and...Continue

Rhizobia bacteria are a group of soil based microorganisms (SBO's) which establish symbiotic relationships with legumes. These SBO's form nodules on the roots of the legumes and provide...Continue

On a hot summer day the level of C0₂ ...Continue

Tests show that  up to 90 percent of a foliar fed fertilizer solution can be found in the smallest root of a plant within...Continue

Soil must not only be capable of storing nutrients but it must also be able to transfer these nutrients to the root surface for uptake by the plant...Continue

Healthy soil is a combination of minerals, rock, water, air, organic matter (plant and animal residue), microorganisms, including bacteria, fungi and protozoa and a variety of insects and worms. This intricate web carries out a process that...Continue

Plants require the following nutrients...Continue

Biological fertilizers are not chemical based and are generally comprised of materials and extracts derived from...Continue

Biological fertilizers promote plant growth in a number of ways...Continue

Controlling Insects with Companion Planting...Continue

Sustainable agriculture systems avoid or limit the use of synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides...Continue

Over a 14 year period in Canada, cultivated brown prairie soils lost 26% of their soil organic matter and 33% of their N (Campbell et al,
1975 in Blaine 1993)...Continue

Plants obtain nutrients for their biosynthetic processes in the form of carbon dioxide, water, nitrate, phosphate, and ionic forms of potassium, calcium, and other essential elements. Nitrogen generally enters the roots as nitrate and becomes assimilated by the plant’s bio-chemistry into...Continue

Where do Agro-Chemicals go?Continue

Disease Management in Clovers, Alfalfa...Continue

Disease Management in Oats...Continue

Disease Management in Rye...Continue

Some sources of plant nutrients are...Continue

Tillage and Seed Bed Preparation - Stand establishment is a critical crop yield factor for all crops, especially in saline soils. Salts affect germination and emergence in a manner similar to seedbed drying. Stand loss from poor emergence is directly proportional to...Continue

Because of their three-foot deep roots, dandelions bring up minerals from beneath the hardpan and help restore the soil...Continue

Fertilizer N is not normally needed for field crops grown on organic soils...Continue

From the beginning of human history through the 1940's, virtually all of the agriculture on earth was sustainable. That is to say...Continue

According to a recent analysis of USDA and FDA data, each day in the United States more than a million children age 5 and under, who eat a normal diet, ingest doses of organic phosphate pesticides that exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s adult reference doses...Continue

Today, EPA announced an agreement to phase-out diazinon, one of the most widely used pesticides in the United States, for indoor uses, beginning in March 2001, and for all lawn, garden and turf uses by December 2003...Continue