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Iron in Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

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  Welcome back to the Hydroponic Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp,
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  the inventor of gold leaf.
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  And today is one of my favourite subjects, it's iron, or FE as it's known scientifically.
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  Iron is very important for plants, even though it's a micronutrient.
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  It's because it's a central component to the chlorophyll molecule,
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  the chlorophyll pigment that's required for photosynthesis.
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  So chlorophyll has a central magnesium atom, they're surrounded by four iron atoms,
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  and so that's obviously very important there's metal and without
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  it you can't have photosynthesis and so as you would imagine the
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  symptoms of deficiency is a yellowing
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  of young leaves or chlorosis of the young leaves and
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  and then obviously that will spread to older leaves
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  if the situation is severe now more
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  of an issue in areas where you're
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  growing in soil especially high soil ph because iron
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  becomes a hundredfold less unavailable
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  as the ph rises one unit because it's logarithmic other
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  nutrients will become unavailable as the soil ph rises but iron
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  it's a hundredfold whereas things like copper it's like tenfold
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  so very important getting
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  your iron nutrition right if you're growing in alkaline soils and
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  you use chelated iron if you if you can't change the
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  soil ph it's very common in citrus crops you'll
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  see chlorosis of young leaves on citrus
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  plants especially house plants so that's
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  something to look out for it's iron fertilizers are
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  used mostly though in lawn lawns and
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  sports turf and that's because as.
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  Soon as you put them on within a few hours you get instant green up
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  now that is not the production of chlorophyll that
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  happens way too fast for it to be the production of chlorophyll especially as
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  you like it's january in the uk here if i
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  produce took some of our ultimate iron fertilizer out
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  the warehouse put on the lawn outside it would go green in a few hours even
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  though the plants aren't even metabolizing really they're dormant and that's
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  because iron binds to the tannins on the cell walls not a lot of people know
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  this and and it also binds to moss and makes the moss look very dark before it kills the moss.
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  And so iron does lead to dark green plants, but it's not for the reason you
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  think when it comes to lawns.
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  In citrus if you put it on a citrus plant it's not going to go green and revert
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  from that yellowing in a few hours it's going to take weeks and the same in lawns for it to actually.
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  Lead to an increase in chlorophyll it's going to take weeks so by
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  the time you've got this issue it's almost too late you
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  need to be on top of it controlling your ph and controlling
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  your iron levels the reason why gold leaf or
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  as in the uk liquid gold is gold
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  in color is because we add so much iron we've
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  had competitors try and make similar products and they
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  mess up with the calcium and the phosphorus but often they'll produce
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  a white product and if the product is white then it's
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  not got any iron in it so or if
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  it's clear or it's brown or anything but yeah you need that lovely golden
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  color that's due to the iron in the product so
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  you know there's plenty of iron iron is probably the least appreciated
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  nutrient when it comes to hydroponics lots
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  of people go into flowering and start adding a pk if i
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  was going into flowering i'd be adding iron all day
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  every day and twice on sundays because it's it's
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  the weight product it's the weight nutrient it's the nutrient adds
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  weight and density to the crop if you're selling a
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  crop that is sold on its weight value a high
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  value crop then why wouldn't you add something like this
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  that adds serious weight to every cell in
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  that in that produce it's it's a no-brainer for me so yeah iron if you're a
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  next level advanced grower i'd be looking at iron additives speak to me we've
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  got some amazing iron products here as well as gold leaf and liquid gold thank
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  you very much any comments comment below.