Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Foliar fertilizers are especially effective when applied to young plants, which are adept
at taking up foliar nutrients. Liquids are also used during high stress times, such as trans-
planting and disease-prone times of year. An advanced technique you'll learn in an up-
coming chapter is to use them mid-season with specific fruit-promoting fertilizers to
switch a plant's focus from growing to fruiting. Many biostimulants can also be used as
often as weekly throughout the growing season, and sometimes even in the winter.
Foliar fertilizers are best sprayed in the morning or evening when the sun isn't as hot or
bright, and relative humidity is higher than in the afternoon. They work best when the pH
of the final mix is close to 6.4, so an advanced technique is to move the mix toward that
level. If you have a means of measuring pH, you can bring your mixture down with
household or apple cider vinegar, or bring it up with baking soda. I don't do this often in
my sprays because baking soda and vinegar kill some microbes, and I almost always in-
clude microbial inoculants in my sprays.
