Just like Mrs Marsh’s toothpaste ad in the 1970’s “it really does get in”. Each season you only get a brief opportunity to get the micro nutrition right. Lets face it, time & money spent on diesel & wages to spray out foliars may as well be time & money well spent.

Take Calcium in apples for example.

The average Calcium Chloride product can typically demand 96 litres per hectare to be applied over a season. This is inefficient. The volume is high because the penetration is low. It simply does not get into the fruit without constant drenching.

The key to effective foliar nutrition is to make a trace element available to the plant. The point of applying in the first place is to address any imbalance now. Not to partially get through with the remainder either washing off or passing through at a later date.

This is where the term chelation comes into play.

Chelation of trace elements is a complex subject of metal ions, cationic reactions, positive & negative charges and so on.

Think of what happens with magnets. The pores of a leaf are negatively charged, which means when you apply a positive charged trace element it has trouble moving through. A positive and negative will bond to one another, and it requires some effort to remove them. Chelated foliar fertiliser removes the positive charge, making it easier to slip through.

Another obstacle can be the bonding of this trace element by other elements rendering it unavailable to the plant. A well chelated trace element stops this from occurring. A non chelated product is like trying to enter a party without the right invitation and no friends. When it knocks on the door to enter it takes some time to talk its way in, and once it does make it through it can be captured by others, stopping it from going any further.

At Biogrow, our goal is to formulate stable chelated trace elements which are as close to 100% available as possible. Lets face it, when the label offers 13.5% Calcium, this ought to represent what is truly available.

You should get what you paid for.

Selecting the right chelating partner for a trace element is important. One size does not fit all. There is not necessarily a single ingredient which will carry all elements. The connection must be stable in solution and allow the trace element to be released on absorption.

Amino acids work well but not for everything.

For example, the amino acid; glycine, works very well with calcium, but is not a good match for Zinc. BIOSTIM products are chelated with the best match for that trace element, insuring the most efficient uptake, which is reflected in the low application rates.