NUTRITION OF VEGETABLES

During development and growth, every vegetable plant has certain needs for macro (N,P,K), secondary (Ca, Mg, S) and micro (Fe, B, Cu, Mn) nutrients depending on the stage of development. These quantities cannot be provided during regular soil fertilization but must be added during vegetation through fertigation and foliar nutrition.

FitoFert fertilizers are in full accordance with different phenophases of vegetable development. Crystal water soluble formulations are primarily used for fertigation, but can be also applied as foliar nutrition in combination with micro and secondary nutrient fertilizers. We give our recommendations for growing different vegetable crop, as follows.

Production of vegetable seedlings – for most vegetable plants time needed to produce seedlings is from 4-8 weeks, during which period the plant has low needs for nutrients, and gets everything necessary for regular development, after sprouting until forming of the second true leaf, from nutrient substrates designed for sowing. For sowing, we recommend Kekkila professional supstarate specialized for sowing, granulations of 0-5 mm with 50% black and 50% of white peat, or granulations of 0-7 mm, both of them pH regulated and with amount of nutrients that is coordinated with seedling’s needs for nutrients in initial stages of development. Three weeks after sowing most of vegetable plants should be replanted into one of the Kekkila professional substrates such as TSM 1W, DSM 2W i OPM 015W. This supstrates provides the necessary amounts of essential nutrients at a given stage of development.

Due to irrigation with low quality water it often happens that nutrients are washed out from the soil where the plant is rooting. Because of that it is necessity in vegetable seedlings production to apply fertilizers, by foliar application or through irrigation system.