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Humic & Fulvic Acid · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
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  Today we're going to be talking about humic and fulvic acid,
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  a very common biostimulant and additive in fertilizers.
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  And I thought I'd talk about it today because I woke up this morning to loads
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  of orders on the website for humic and fulvic acid.
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  So something's going on, don't know what it is, but very popular product today.
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  So let's have a look in further detail about what they are.
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  So humic and fulvic acids are the basically they are the the thing that gives
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  soil its dark color it's part of the organic matter in soil and it can they
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  can range in color from yellow to light to dark brown but a.
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  General humic acid is always black very very black and you can extract them
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  and then you can put them into hydroponics and you can give the benefits that
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  you get from a soil in hydroponics It's also used on golf courses because the
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  greens that they put on are mostly made of just pure sand,
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  and there you want to add back some of the benefits to the grass of the soil
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  that the humic acids give.
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  So it's humic means soil
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  or earth in latin that's where it gets its
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  terms and humus is another word for
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  the organic matter in the soil not to be confused with hummus which is the lovely
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  dip that we like to eat from the middle east so humic substances they're a major
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  part of soils especially peaty soils and so like acidic bogs and things like
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  this very high in organic matter because they don't.
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  Fully decompose. The organic matter starts to decomposition and then it ends
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  up with humus and humic acid.
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  Whereas in, say, an alkaline, well-drained soil, that organic matter just breaks
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  down eventually and is released into CO2 and things like this.
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  That's why peat bogs are so good for storing carbon dioxide and things like this.
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  So eventually that will turn into coal and before it gets to coal it turns into
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  something called a leonidite and that's where most humic acids that are used
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  in hydroponics comes from.
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  It's extracted out of leonidite normally with the use of potassium hydroxide
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  and that gives something called potassium hydroxide.
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  Potassium humate and potassium humate
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  is what's dissolved in liquid and then used in
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  fertilizers and things like this if you then extract
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  what's soluble in acid out of that that
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  liquid or that powder then you get fulvic acid
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  because humic acid is whatever's soluble out of
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  the humus and that black thick liquid
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  and then fulvic acid which is normally like a light light to
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  dark brown that's whatever's left that's soluble in
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  acidic solutions and so when you hear about
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  farmers using fulvic acid that's good because it
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  can be mixed with alkaline and acid products so
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  like glyphosate often they add fulvic
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  acid to improve its efficacy so human
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  is what's left that's not soluble in any ph in
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  water and then you also have something called umic acid
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  and umic acid is what's soluble in
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  alcohols so they're the different ones human humic
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  acid fulvic acid and umic acid there are
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  no real use for human in hydroponics i've
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  never heard of any use of umic acid ever you know
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  of any uses of umic acid let me know other than having a great
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  name so fulvic acid and humic acids are
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  what use routinely and we sell
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  a humic and fulvic acid mix we also sell fulvic acid
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  to to farmers for the use in in
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  arable crops and but fulvic acid is more expensive because
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  it goes through that extra stage so we use we use.
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  A wide range of different ones and what can we say
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  so it's used to improve the efficacy of other co-applied agrochemicals basically
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  you stick it in a fertilizer a pesticide a biostimulant it makes that work better
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  it improves the absorption and deliverability of of that product that's that's
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  the theory anyway and there's some good results to show that.
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  And but the other reason it's
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  used is that it's just really really black and a
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  bit like seaweed extracts people put them in fertilizers just
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  to give a bit of color so if you ever opened a bottle and it's
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  got a black or or a brown color it's
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  probably from the humic acid it won't be from the fertilizer itself
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  and that's good because then you know people don't get confused about
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  which one's which and things like that so that's
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  a good use of them certainly better than food dyes which
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  you'll find in a lot of hydroponic feeds you know brightly colored products
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  they're only brightly colored because they've got food dyes in them which are not going to be great
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  for the plants anyway and better to put something that could
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  improve the efficacy of the fertilizer in there so
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  we sell humic acid for arable crops we also
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  sell it to some hydroponic growers and we have
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  a product that's foliar optimized to get onto the
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  leaf but it can also be put onto the root and as a root trench
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  it feeds beneficial microbes as well so once
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  it's in a well aerated soil it will slowly break down
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  a bit more slowly than say
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  sugars would so it's good for that what the
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  uses are good for humic and fulvic acid it's thought
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  to be a potent root stimulant and it's
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  used a lot now in as you'll find it in lots of root stimulating products even
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  if they don't say that it's humic and fulvic acid in if it's very very dark
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  it's probably going to be humic and fulvic acid if it's clear it's probably
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  going to be potassium phosphide or an amino acid if it's yellow.
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  You have to be careful though when buying humic and fulvic acid because it's
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  so good at making liquids dark.
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  You could buy a product that's half of 1% humic and fulvic acid and it would
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  still look like a dark black liquid.
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  And there are companies out there selling humic acid products that are half
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  a percent. I don't need to name them here because it says so on the back of the label.
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  Whereas at Utrema here, we manufacture a product that's 30% humic and fulvic acid.
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  So it's 60 times more concentrated so one of their one liters is the same as
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  three 20 liter bottles which is ridiculous so don't be fooled for really really
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  dilute humic acid products top tip if you learn anything today it's that.
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  There is a lot of debate about how humic and fulvic acids are formed and what
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  their actual structure is.
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  If you go on the Wikipedia page,
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  you probably won't find much information about humic and fulvic acids.
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  All you'll find is page upon page about where do they really come from?
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  What is the different theories and what's the theories about their structure and things like that?
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  They are actually phenolic compounds.
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  If you ever looked at chemical structures, they're the ones with the rings and like
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  the benzene rings phenolic rings and lots of
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  carboxylic acids if you're a chemist you know what a carboxylic acid
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  is so loads of those rings and then
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  humic acids have really fairly big structures
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  maybe 20 to 15 to 20 rings whereas fulvic
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  acids because they're also soluble in acids they tend to only
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  have a couple they are two to five carboxylic benzene
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  rings and lots and lots of carboxylic acids to make them soluble you
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  don't really the structure is highly highly variable there's not one
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  specific structure because it's just a catch-all term
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  for all of those compounds that are in humus that
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  can be extracted by alkali it's not one particular compound
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  it's loads of different compounds that all have very similar properties and
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  the same for fulvic acid there will be lots of different types
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  of fulvic acid whereas if you took something like
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  a terpene like limonene there's only
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  one chemical structure for limonene and it would have to
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  have that specific chemical structure so humic acid is not
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  one thing it's not like hydrochloric acid or sulfuric acid
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  or and things like that the humic acid and fulvic acid there'll
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  be loads there'll be hundreds thousands tens of
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  thousands hundreds of thousands different chemicals different combinations
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  to me i think they're probably derived mostly
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  from lignin because they if you look at the structure of lignin it's very
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  similar but it says you know that research says
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  that they're also derived from cellulose and hemicellulose and
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  condensation reactions where they these.
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  Chemicals come together and form new compounds and things.
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  Like this you don't need to know that for hydroponics though you just
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  need to know that you don't need to put a lot into your your feed.
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  If you do you could get a bit too much microbial growth
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  but they they do show really good results if you
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  put just a tiny bit into your feed either
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  in the water or you could put a spray obviously some people don't
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  like spraying their plants especially into flowering i
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  wouldn't be spraying humic and fulvic acids late into flowering just in
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  case i've got too many microbes on my leaves when i come to harvest my crop
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  i would be putting them on a small spray when they're seedlings to maybe to
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  help with stress tolerance you know it's very hot this time of year that could
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  be why people are buying humic acids now you know stress tolerance would be
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  a good one and to get their root system going so certainly a good product to put during the.
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  The vegetative growth where you want to get a good root system,
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  keep them stress-free. So make sure you consider humic and fulvic acids.
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  We don't put any humic or fulvic acids into gold leaf, or as it's called in
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  the UK, liquid gold, because it would make the whole product dirty.
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  And the whole point is it's got a golden color to it because of the iron content.
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  As I said in a previous episode, I was asked once by a large chemical fertilizer manufacturer who was
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  pitch it to whether they could put he asked whether
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  they put humic acid in the product and i was like you really don't understand
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  gold leaf if you think you can put humic acids that would
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  be a good thing that would be like putting a caravan on the
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  back of a ferrari just pointless so yeah but they
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  do go well together so you can mix humic and fulvic acid with
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  gold leaf and because humic and fulvic
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  acids are often slightly alkaline you don't need to worry about the ph if
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  you're running a gold leaf system because gold leaf drags everything
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  back to the sweet spot pH 5.5 to
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  6.5 so that's been hydroponics daily for today humic
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  and fulvic acids let me know if you need any more information or
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  if you've used them let me know and whether positive or
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  negative have you had any issues ever with using humic and fulvic acids
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  had one farmer who once said he'd read that humic and fulvic acids improve the
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  efficacy of glyphosate roundup and he also found that citric acid improve the
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  efficacy so put them all in the tank together and the the citric acid pulled
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  the humic acids out of solution, dropped them into a big sludge.