What Are Plant Nutrients?

By Author: Alan hoyle
Total Articles: 32
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In simple terms plant nutrients are the elements that plants need to grow. In the natural world those elements come from the soil and the rain.

For the most part the nutrients in the soil occur naturally as other plant materials break down in the soil more nutrients are produced. Some nutrients in the soil are generated by the growing process itself. For example nitrogen being snatched from the air by clover and fed back into the soil. Water also brings some nutrients to soil. That water can come in the form of rain or a stream or river flooding the land. Plus of course animals living on the land also contribute to its nutrient content when their faeces is broken down and fertilises the land.

Plant Nutrients in Farming
Farmers have to grow more intensively, so as a result add nutrients to the soil in the form of fertilisers. They sometimes use naturally occurring fertilisers in the form of animal and plant waste which they spread as manure. However, they also use chemical fertilisers, which are largely manmade.

Many of these manmade chemical fertilisers or plant nutrients come in liquid or powder form ...
... to make them easier to spread on the land. They are far more targeted than natural fertilisers and can top up one specific nutrient or a small group of nutrients to prepare a piece of land for a specific crop.

Plant Nutrients for Hydroponic Growing
Another area where plant nutrients are widely used is when growing plants using hydroponics. Because there is no soil involved when you grow plants in this way you have to feed the plants all of the nutrients they need throughout the growing process. The fact that you do this means that you can precisely control what nutrients you give the plant at each stage. This means that you can often produce far healthier plants as a result because you are giving each plant precisely what it needs at each step in its development. For easy administration most of the plant nutrients used for hydroponics come in liquid or powder form.

My Hydroponics Shop sells a huge range of plant nutrients. Their products are specifically used for the hydroponics industry.