Fulvic/Humic acid anyone?

[Bjorn]

Yes you know what I mean. As far as rates, I read something just 2 days ago where they found a down-turn in growth rate after a certain concentration but damned if I can find it now.
This abstract suggests 20ml and 50ml per L were optimum for 2 different formulations which kind of says that 50ml of the first and 20ml of the second was not as good.
If you would like to pay for the full text, I would love to read it:evil:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01904169809365424
In this trial 10-15ml was not enough and 100ml was too much:
http://thegrowcomp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/P-Hydroponics-Greenhouses.pdf

Thanks Mike,
had a look and noticed you're having a typo in the above; the text says mg/liter, that is one tousand(1/1000) of ml/l or mg/l = ppm for that sake. According to the first paper 20-50ppm of the humic substance should therefore be enough. This is of course promising for those of us that have to pay:rollhappy:

 

[Stone]

Thanks Mike,
had a look and noticed you're having a typo in the above; the text says mg/liter, that is one tousand(1/1000) of ml/l or mg/l = ppm for that sake. According to the first paper 20-50ppm of the humic substance should therefore be enough. This is of course promising for those of us that have to pay:rollhappy:

Oops. I guess it very much depends on what you are using. I tend to use everything at 1/8 recommended anyway. Can you get pure fulvic acid over there? (apparently it's a clear gold colour)

 

[Bjorn]

I got it as a powder through e-bay. Quite expensive (partly due to freight- from the US) so I am happy with using small amounts. It dissolves easily and produces a dark brown solution at 10%. I have tried it together with kelp at 400ppm (each), but feel its better to add, say 25ppm to all water like I do with my fertiliser composition already.

 

[naoki]

Interesting about the suppression at higher concentration in the 2nd paper. Both of them used hydroponic, so the optimum is probably different for orchids. There were some papers which used drenching (and foliar application). Some of them went up to 4g/l without negative effects (but no better than 50ppm). I can't quite relocate it.

[edit: I was wrong about this. The study was mixing in the solid humid acid to potting mix, so the unit was mg/kg of potting mix, not in solution. Also, there was negative effect at the high concentration]

It appears that there is BiaAg distributor in Holland. According to some other plant grower, their Fulvic acid (Ful-Power) uses different extraction method and more potent. Fluvic is better for foliar application, right? I went with their Ful-Humix (fulbic+humic) because it is in powder form, and much cheaper.

 

[gonewild]

Interesting about the suppression at higher concentration in the 2nd paper. Both of them used hydroponic, so the optimum is probably different for orchids. There were some papers which used drenching (and foliar application). Some of them went up to 4g/l without negative effects (but no better than 50ppm). I can't quite relocate it.

It appears that there is BiaAg distributor in Holland. According to some other plant grower, their Fulvic acid (Ful-Power) uses different extraction method and more potent. Fluvic is better for foliar application, right? I went with their Ful-Humix (fulbic+humic) because it is in powder form, and much cheaper.

Are you talking about 50ppm of the powder or 50 ppm of the acid?

 

[gonewild]

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02370049#page-1

 

[naoki]

Are you talking about 50ppm of the powder or 50 ppm of the acid?

I didn't read in details, but I'm guessing that it is measured in terms of the acid.

 

[Brabantia]

A good paper about this subject:here.
For information: Orchids Focus Bloom (Growth Technology) is a 2-1-2 fertilyser and it has a .25% content in humic acid.

 

[myxodex]

My question with with humic/fulvic acid supplements is knowing what brand to use. Some products are really hyped up and don't provide useful information, just a lot of marketing woo-woo. Some of the major producers have concerns that the disinformation used by some in promoting their products may actually harm their business in the long term. They have produced this document which gives some useful background which I thought might be useful. http://www.humintech.com/pdf/humicfulvicacids.pdf
Apparently some products contain hardly any humates or fulvates.

When thinking about dosage, bear in mind that the most commercially viable source of humic/fulvic acid is from extraction of leonardite with strong alkali solutions, either sodium or potassium hydroxide. With sodium hydroxide extraction the resulting liquid has approximately 7.5% sodium (don't have a figure for the potassium extraction but guess that by weight this would be a bit higher). Apparently (?), the sodium hydroxide extract has higher "auxin like activity" than the potassium hydroxide extract and is thus favoured by some producers, not to mention that sodium hydroxide is quite a bit cheaper than potassium hydroxide. My problem is that I would like to know a few more details when I choose a product. With the fulvic acid preparations I would like to know if they separate out the excess salt produced from the acidification step in which the humic acid is precipitated (humic acid is only soluble as the humate salt of Na, K or NH4). I don't have an issue with these products containing salts, but I would like to know what salt and how much of it.

 

[ALToronto]

Is Inocucor a reasonable source of these acids?

 

[Bjorn]

Thank you myxodex, actually a few weeks ago, I read that article, but its always good to repeat. Nevertheless some interesting statements in it, e.g. that one kilo humate equals 30tons of manure!! Not sure where that brings us, but must be quite powerful stuff, if we get the right one.

 

[gonewild]

I'm using Humic Acid liquid produced by GrowMore.
It is 12% Humic Acid and 2.3% Fulvic Acid.

I don't usually like to rely on a manufacturers info propaganda sheet to learn the truth about a product but GrowMores info seems pretty straight forward mostly about humic acid and less about how great their product is.

http://www.growmore.com/products/type/humic-fulvic-acids.html

I decided to use this product because it is the only one I can get here.
But it seems like it is a good source to use so I'm happy I can actually buy it over the counter for $6 a liter.

The recommended dosage is 1 or 2 liters per 200 liters as a foliar spray.
At the lower rate that is equal to 5ml/liter of the liquid which gives a solution containing 600ppm of Humic acid and 115ppm of Fulvic acid.
If I use 1 ml (1gr) per liter then I'm applying 120ppm of humic acid and 23ppm of Fulvic acid.... that is in line with what the linked papers are finding as a good dosage.

Just like with any plant nutrient in order to decide on how much to apply you must consider the percentage that the source solution contains.

 

[naoki]

Lost of links to interesting papers!

A good paper about this subject:here.

Thanks, this, which is also suggested by myxodex, is a good easy read. It looks like that it is sponsored by the company, though?

My question with with humic/fulvic acid supplements is knowing what brand to use. Some products are really hyped up and don't provide useful information, just a lot of marketing woo-woo.

When thinking about dosage, bear in mind that the most commercially viable source of humic/fulvic acid is from extraction of leonardite with strong alkali solutions, either sodium or potassium hydroxide. With sodium hydroxide extraction the resulting liquid has approximately 7.5% sodium (don't have a figure for the potassium extraction but guess that by weight this would be a bit higher).

I agree that it is a bit difficult to weed the hype from real data. With BioAg products, they say that they don't use alkali/acid extraction. So they may contain less Na?

Is Inocucor a reasonable source of these acids?

I doubt it. Inocucor is just effective microbes. If you use it to make compost (bokashi), then it would contain humid acid.

I relocated the study which compare the commercial HA (humid acid) with HA from worm compost. It appears that worm competed version is more potent because it appears to contain more phytohormones (auxins).

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1164556306000379
or
http://www.researchgate.net/profile...ant_growth/links/0912f50ecce34032b5000000.pdf

Are you talking about 50ppm of the powder or 50 ppm of the acid?

Actually, I was completely wrong here, Lance. They were using 50mg of solid HA per 1 Kg of potting media (not in solution). But Mike is right, that it is the general feature that too much of HA cancels out the positive effect (so net-zero or negative effect). This is in the paper liked in the previous paragraph and in the following:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038071799000498

According to this (similar paper suggested by Mike):
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...IvKer_sLg5iGasxGaCU8-4A&bvm=bv.91665533,d.cGU

The tissue analysis of this study showed that FA enhances K concentration in the tissue (well uptake of others were influenced, but K was the most influenced by FA). oke:

 

[gonewild]

Actually, I was completely wrong here, Lance. They were using 50mg of solid HA per 1 Kg of potting media (not in solution). But Mike is right, that it is the general feature that too much of HA cancels out the positive effect (so net-zero or negative effect). This is in the paper liked in the previous paragraph and in the following:

OK assuming the solid HA acid is 100% then 50mg/kg is 50ppm HA in the potting media. So maybe you were not wrong. oke:

But I think 50ppm HA in the potting media is a lot higher level for the plant to be exposed to than 50ppm in a foliar spray. Since in the potting media the roots would be exposed to it 100% of the time it may even be stronger than 500ppm foliar applied.

Didn't one of the papers indicate that the point at which the benefit stopped was 500ppm? But those testa were short term on germinating seeds, not mature plant tissue.

The tissue analysis of this study showed that FA enhances K concentration in the tissue (well uptake of others were influenced, but K was the most influenced by FA). oke:

Oops! Now we are scrounging up extra K after having gotten rid of it with K-lite. :rollhappy:
Here we go giving our plants junk food again. :wink:

But actually the HA an FA seem to enhance how the plant uses the nutrients once in the plant and not just increase the plants ability to uptake the nutrients.....I think.

My interest in the HA and FA is how it may enhance the plants use of the stuff in seaweed extracts like amino acids, which it seems to do.

 

[cnycharles]

From what I'd read a few years ago, they help transport material in plant and human cells in effect making things more available. This a wide generalization of course

 

[jacobwilliams]

Yes, I am using humic acid for so many years. You heared it right. It's great, no doubt about that.

 

[Ozpaph]

time to block these people!

 

[BrucherT]

Does Ray have input?