How fertilisers give nature a helping hand

If you are looking at ways of promoting healthy plant growth and improving plant appearance. Well, you have come to the right place because part of my responsibilities at this horticultural enterprise is making sure that all the plants are provided with the very best growing conditions.

When you were growing up did you ever hear any of the following statements?

• drinking a glass of milk every day helps growing bones

• eating your vegetables helps you grow up big and strong.

I'm sure you've heard at least one of these sayings. Well, technically speaking, plants don't need food like humans because they produce their own sugars from the sun but they do need nutrients to help them to grow strong and stay healthy, and to improve the quality and quantity of their fruit or flower.

Plants obtain carbon, oxygen and hydrogen from the air and water but they also need other elements such as nitrogen and potassium, known as essential elements, and trace elements such as manganese, zinc, iron and copper. These two elements are also known as macro and micro nutrients respectively. In fact, there are 16 essential nutrients needed for plant growth; nine macro and seven micro. Make sure you look up the Glossary to find out exactly what they are and what group they belong to.

As the names suggests, 'macro' means that the plant requires more of these nutrients, while a lesser amount is needed of the 'micro' nutrients. Regardless of the quantity required, each group of nutrients is extremely important to the plant's growth.

Some regions are better suited to growing particular plants, for example, Australian soils are generally poor in mineral nutrients. This means that unless you are growing Australian natives, the soil will need to be improved in order to grow other species.

Can you think of any other reasons why essential and trace elements need to be put back into the soil?

Well, these macro and micro nutrients are lost from the soil or growing media through:

Do you have any ideas how these nutrients can be put back into the soil?

If you said by adding fertilisers, you would be spot on!

As mentioned earlier, plants technically don't need food but the common term 'plant food' is used when talking about fertilisers because it helps plants to function more effectively. You could say that Mother Nature occasionally needs a helping hand to either replace elements that have been depleted from the soil for various reasons or add elements to improve the soil to help the plants grow better.