Potassium Humate
The Best Pure Carbon Concentrate - No Frills’ Potassium Humate adds carbon to the soil, providing solid bridges between all soil components and allowing the soil to work efficiently. Soil structure is vastly improved, giving resistance to moisture loss and nutrient stress.
What it is:
No Frills Potassium Humate is a concentrated liquid solution of soluble carbon materials that is extracted from an ancient form of compost known as humates.
The carbon in these materials has undergone a transformation that produces unique molecules of carbon that can integrate and react with small particles to perform a number of different functions in sandy and clay soils.
In sandy soils the humate materials have the ability to penetrate deep into the soil profile coating individual sand grains that can have a remarkable effect on non wetting conditions in these soils.
In clay soils the humate materials have charged particles on them that react with the charged particles on clay in the soil which can have the effect of loosening up a compacted clay soil.
These particles also react with mineral nutrients already present in the soil from applied fertilisers making these nutrients immobile so that they are not leached and create a slow release effect.
Humate materials also act as an energy source for microbes in the soil and result in bio stimulant properties.
More Details:
Humates can be defined as the salts or concentrated form of these humic acids (in turn, fulvates are referred to as the concentrates or salts of fulvic acids).
Humic substances play a vital role in plant nutrition and soil fertility, and are now recognised by many soil scientists as the single most productive input in sustainable agriculture.
As a material, humic substances are natural products that are formed following the biological and chemical breakdown of organic matter over an extended period of time (thousands of years), whereby humus is separated from non-humic substances (such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins and amino acids) by natural decomposition within the soil.
As a material, these humic substances are the most chemically active compounds in soils, with cation and anion exchange capacities far exceeding those found within clay.
These humic substances consist primarily of three major fractions including humic and fulvic acids, and raw humin (prehistoric plant and animal matter). With these three subdivisions based on the solubility of each of these fractions in water adjusted to different pH levels
Fulvic Acid: soluble at any pH, smallest molecular weight, dominant in Oxygen
Humic Acid: soluble at pH > 7 medium molecular weight, balance in Oxygen and Carbon
Humin: insoluble at any pH, largest molecular weight, dominant in Carbon
These three components which make up humic substances (humin, humic acid, and fulvic acid) each play a different role in providing benefits to plants grown within the soil medium.
Humin
Of these three fractions, humin has the highest molecular weight (and thus plants respond to it slower). As the humate composition of any humic substance is specific to the substances geographic location, origin material, and degree of decomposition, there can be a large variability in the molecular composition of this humin fraction.
Nonetheless, in general humins are not soluble in water at any pH, are macro-organic and are very resistant to decomposition. However, humins also perform many functions within soils themselves, improving the soils structure, water holding capacity, stability, and soil fertility (including its cation exchange capacity).
Humic acids
Humic acid is a larger more complex molecule than its fulvic acid counterpart, with its main benefits being those it imparts on the soil physical structure. These benefits include increasing the cation exchange capacity, improving soil structure, and its inherent ability to hold up to 16 times more minerals than clay.
Alongside this, humic acids can complex with elements such as nitrogen (making it less volatile and prone to leaching), phosphorus, zinc and calcium, and can also release potassium via penetrating between clay particles and making it more available for plants. Humic acids have also been noted to readily form salts and bind with inorganic trace mineral elements (over 60 different minerals) in a form that is readily available for uptake by various organisms. Furthermore, these humic acids have also been utilised in the past to stimulate microorganisms, and clean up toxic soils (including soils with high levels of pesticides and heavy metals).
Fulvic acids
Fulvic acids are the smallest molecules of the three main fractions which make up humic substances and are soluble in water at all pH conditions. As a molecule its presence has many important benefits to plants (as fulvic acids are involved in chemical reactions in the soil that influence plant metabolic processes).
These include its ability to promote cell growth (similar to the effects of auxins), stimulate oxygen uptake improving drought and heat tolerance (as its oxygen content is twice that of humic acids), and immobilise minerals within plants themselves including iron, magnesium and calcium.
It is also highly chemically reactive, with their exchange capacity found to be twice that of humic acids. Also, due to their relatively small size, fulvic acids are able to readily enter plant roots, stems and leaves, making it ideal as a foliar spray when used as a primary production technique for maximising plant productivity. These fulvic acids are thus able to carry these trace minerals directly into tissues and metabolic sites. Alongside this, fulvic acids are also the most effective carbon containing chelating compound known, and are also non toxic at low concentrations.
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