Plant & Soil Doctor Talks Benefits of Humic Acid & Organic Solutions
As challenges related to fertilizers increase, more people are looking for solutions and alternatives. From fertilizer shortages to nutrient pollution in water, Kerry Johnson, who holds a PhD in horticulture and a PhD in Agronomy, among other degrees, shares ways we can mitigate some of those growing challenges, whether from our home lawn, garden, golf course or farm.
“As I may expound on things, like soil structures, a home gardener will say, ‘Great, Doc. But, how does that apply to me, here in the garden?’”
Johnson simplifies the science in a way that we can all take something home. Humic acid and fulvic acids, which are the main components of organic OMRI-listed SoilPlex, provide numerous solutions to many of the common problems associated with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. For example, SoilPlex can optimize their use, decreasing the need for more and mitigate their harm.
SoilPlex is a natural, organic soil conditioner rich in humic and fulvic acids appropriate for all plant types. (OMRI-listed for organic growing)
Further, Johnson shares, different types of fertilizers can provide solutions. Organic whole fish fertilizer, for example, such as FertaFlow, provides organic solutions to growing.
A Bit About SoilPlex
SoilPlex, an OMRI-listed product rich in humic and fulvic acids, provides a solution to the increasingly common problems of poor soil quality. Furthermore, it mitigates some of the problems associated with heavy reliance on chemical fertilizer or too much plant nutrition unused in soil and water.
This is because SoilPlex optimizes plant nutrient uptake, improves soil structure to minimize nutrient runoff and locks in the soil toxins that build up from many common horticulture practices that otherwise have damaging effects long term.
Growers and gardeners have confidence in the product’s ingredients due to this OMRI listing. Furthermore, even when used on a golf course or home lawn, which may not be as fully organic as a vegetable garden, the benefits remain in the soil for the plants and for the surrounding area in a way most products just cannot compare.
SoilPlex Provides Solution to These Common Fertilizer Challenges:
– Increasing cost of fertilizer
– Decreasing availability of fertilizer nutrients
– Damage to waterways and ecosystems caused by nutrient runoff
SoilPlex, with Rich, Pure Humic & Fulvic Acids Addresses these Fertilizer Challenges by:
- Improving plant nutrient uptake
- Decreasing nutrient runoff
- Improving soil structure, aerobic conditions and microbial health
- Providing a carbon source
- Acting like easy-to-use liquid compost
- Being organic: OMRI-listed for organic growing
A Bit from ‘The Doc’ on How SoilPlex Works
SoilPlex is an organic biostimulant with its humic and fulvic acids.
“Humic acid is the building block of organic matter, which is necessary in the soil to sustain plant life. In Florida, (which is where SoilPlex is made), the muck is high in organic matter. But far and away, Florida soil is sandy and low in organic matter,” says Johnson.
Other than compost, it can be a challenge to add organic matter to soil so that it retains a balance of moisture, microbes, oxygen and nutrients, all of which lead to healthy root systems and plants.
“When worms break down blades of grass, they break down into humic and fulvic acids to become available to the plant,” he explains.
But still, often that is not happening or not enough to enrich the soil. Thus, SoilPlex can help, and a little goes a long way, requiring just ounces per thousand square feet.
Other Astonishing Attributes of SoilPlex in a Nutshell:
- Biostimulant improves root growth
- Nutrients become more available due to improved bioavailability
- Increase soil population of healthy microbes, which leads to healthier plants and foods grown
- Binds soil toxins in an ionic way
- Chelates nutrients to avoid them washing away
- Adds liquid organic matter to soil quickly and sustainably
- As urea off-gasses in warm temperatures, SoilPlex holds urea in place longer to decrease waste
- SoilPlex reduces heat stress and improves drought tolerance
- SoilPlex works in geoponics (meaning with soil) or hydroponics (without soil)
- SoilPlex’s fulvic acid can be combined with any fertilizer, including an organic or foliar fertilizer, improving nutrient absorption in the leaf
- Humic and fulvic acids that are so healthful for plants in soil are also equally healthful in humans and animals, improving nutrient uptake in animal life as well as plant life.
- Reduces amount of fertilizer or nutrients needed
- Improves healthy root systems, which further decrease nutrient runoff
- Stabilizes soil to prevent erosion
- Leads to balanced pH and salinity
- Increases seed germination and yields
- Improves nutritional values of plants and yields
- Diminishes chlorosis due to low iron uptake
- Possesses extremely high cation-exchange capacities
- Improves water holding capacity
- Extremely high CEC, cation-exchange capacity
- Increases yields up to 70 percent
- Reduce fertilizers and pesticides up to 30 percent
Ecological Benefits of SoilPlex:
Overcoming Fertilizer Challenges and Other Concerns
- Since growers often use more fertilizers than plants can use, nitrate concentration becomes unhealthfully high in soil and in ground water.
- By preventing nutrient runoff and increasing plant utilization of nutrients, less fertilizer is needed.
- Thus, harmfully large amounts of nutrients are prevented from leeching into ground water, washing away into nearby waterways and causing algae blooms that lead to fish kills, aquatic damage and human health challenges.
- Reduces high salt toxicities.
Sources Include:
In addition to Kerry Johnson, PhD, other sources are numerous on the benefits of humic and fulvic acids. We have collected this information from numerous reports and sources from industry leaders, government studies, universities and community gardening leaders looking at proactive solutions to common agricultural, horticultural and agronomic practices. Online sources also include:
- This scientific report published in 2020. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74349-6.pdf
- Science Direct’s Humic Acid report published in their “Soil and Environmental Chemistry (Second Edition), 2017,” https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/humic-acid
FertaFlow: A Unique Organic Fish Fertilizer Alternative to Other Fertilizer Challenges
When soil does not have the nutrients that plants need, there are more sustainable options in providing that nutrition. FertaFlow is one such fertilizer. This organic fish fertilizer is unlike most emulsions. It is very popular among growers, whether landscaping, gardening or farming, who once used emulsions or who are looking to get away from chemical fertilizers.
FertaFlow is an optimal fertilizer to combine with SoilPlex when extra nutrition is needed. If there has been much use of fertility programs on the land, but plant health is suffering, more nutrition is not the solution. SoilPlex may instead better utilize the nutrients that are already there.
“People have used fish fertilizer for a long time, for generations and centuries,” says Johnson.
One of the many benefits is that the oil acts as a natural insecticide, he adds.
“Although mainstream ag isn’t using fish fertilizer, they should be,” says Johnson.
FertaFlow provides an alternative to chemical fertilizer with their high NPK values, he says.
Unlike the chemicals with salts that have harmful effects on soil microbes, FertaFlow benefits the soil. These different affects on soil are even more noticeable over time, he explains.
What Makes FertaFlow Uniquely Effective in Soil and Plant Health
FertaFlow is not an emulsion. Instead, Geoponics, the makers of FertaFlow, do not cook nor highly process the fish fertilizer.
Instead, FertaFlow retains enzymes, proteins and nutrients that are lost in the processing of most fish fertilizers that are merely emulsions.
This organic fish fertilizer is the whole fish and cold processed.
Learn more about FertaFlow (FertaFlow.com)