Plant Nutrition 101: All Plant Nutrients and Deficiencies Explained

What's going on, everyone? Welcome back to the channel. So I promise I'm going to get back to some live action videos soon with some cool gardening stuff.

But I figured this was a topic that a lot of people seem to like, it got a lot of shares on my site, and it's a topic that can be very confusing. And it's plant nutrients. It is nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, but it's also all those other nutrients that we know plants need but we don't know what they do, why they do it, what happens if you don't have enough?

And so we're going to talk about that today. And so here we go. Here's a test.

If you want to do this test, go ahead and do it. You don't have to. I hated tests when I was in school so I don't blame you if you don't want to do it.

But make a list of all the nutrients you think a plant needs to grow properly, thrive and survive. So write it down. And then here's the real list to check yourself against.

Boom. Nitrogen. Phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, chlorine, copper, magnesium.

Oops, I have that twice. Iron, boron, molybdenum, zinc, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen. There's a lot of stuff.

Those are all elements, right? More than you would probably have listed unless you are a botanist, right? So here's what we need to understand.

Fertilizer is much deeper than N-P-K. Those are the numbers we see on a fertilizer container. It is much deeper and more complex than that.

And we don't need to know every intricacy to get a good understanding of how to grow plants, but we do need to get a base level. So we can say. Hey, what's going on with my plant?

Maybe it needs more. Of this. Maybe it's not having enough of this.

Let's keep talking. So we are all aware. That plants need a good fertilizer.

And whether that's coming from organic matter in your soil as you build it over time, whether you're buying organic nutrients, whether you're doing synthetic nutrients. Plants need it. That's.

Just a fact of life, right? So let's talk about the N-P-K numbers. A 10-10-10, that's 10% nitrogen, 10% phosphorous and 10% potassium, right?

And so a hundred pounds of 10-10-10 is exactly the same as 200 pounds of 5-5-5 because it's a percentile, right? And so you're going to get 10 of each of these, and you're going to get 5% of 200, which is also 10 of each of these, right? So there's no real difference there.

That's one thing that I think can trick people. And so let's talk about the primary nutrients first. Nitrogen, the granddaddy, right?

This is a symptom. This is a nitrogen deficiency symptom in plants just so you can see you get a lightness, a light greenness to the plant. And so this is one of the most important nutrients for strong vigorous growth, dark green leaves, a lot of the processes within photosynthesis.

So plants that we're going to grow for mostly their leaves, their vegetation - grass, wheat, oats, leafy greens, microgreens et cetera, they need a lot of nitrogen. And so when you're buying a nitrogen based fertilizer for plants, you're going to want a high first number, a high N, right? 30-0-0 is what people will use for grass.

Because again, grass is pretty much all vegetation, right? It's all leaves. Just remember that rule, a hundred pounds of 30-0-0 is the same as 200 of 15-0-0.

And so, you know, work on those math skills there if you want to make sure that you have a good grasp on what you're actually buying when you buy these fertilizers. All right, let's talk about phosphorus now. So here is an example of phosphorus deficiency in a tomato leaf.

You can see it has that sort of purplish reddish coloration there. Phosphorus is really used for root growth and development. So flowers that are fed with phosphorus will have more blooms, fruits ripen better and faster.

It's very important to flower bulbs, as well as to perennials and trees and shrubs. So effectively all plants, but it's important to know specifically what a plant will use it for so we can see what's going wrong, right? All right, potassium.

Here is an example of a normal leaf and then you've got potassium deficient leaves. So you can see this yellowing start to creep in from the outside of the leaf, towards the interior. And that's a very clear symptom of potassium deficiency.

So potassium is a general nutrient for all plants, being one of the big three improving overall health and strength of the plant. It's a temperature regulator. It helps the plant withstand temperature extremes and it also helps resist diseases.

So a lot of the times, most soils are going to have a good amount of potassium in them. And so the third number is sometimes a little bit smaller than the first two, but it's important. If you looked at my video on soil tests to test your soil, you need to know what's in your base level soil so you know what your plants are going to be short in or maybe have a surplus of.

Because for all deficiencies, there are also toxicities. You can have too much of a nutrient as well. Very similar to us as human beings.

You can have too little of a vitamin. You can have too much of a vitamin, right? Okay.

Now we're getting into the secondary nutrients. These are the ones that most people don't have a good understanding of and don't really understand how they impact the plant. And so here we're talking about calcium.

Here's an example of calcium deficiency on some new leaves. So it's something that you can spot. It's important for plants in their younger stage of life - young roots, young shoots.

Helps build cell walls. If you have a calcium deficiency, what you're going to see is the growing tips, those edges are going to start to decay and collapse, right? Calcium, it's an immobile element.

This is what's interesting. So when there's a deficiency in calcium the plant cannot move calcium throughout its structures to get to these younger leaves that don't have it. And so calcium stays where it is in the plant, which means that a deficiency is going to show up on new growth, not old growth, right?

That is a key for calcium deficiency. Okay. Now we're going to talk about magnesium.

Magnesium, you can see here, the deficiency symptoms. There is this sort of veininess that appears in the plant. It's a little bit lighter in color.

And as far as function, magnesium is going to help uptake other plant foods and aids in seed formation actually. It's actually something that's contained within chlorophyll, helps plants get that dark green color in their vegetation. It is essential for a lot of the processes within a plant - creating sugars, proteins, oils, fats.

Regulates the uptake of phosphorus. And so magnesium regulates the uptake of phosphorus, which is one of those big three nutrients, right? So deficiency symptoms, because this is what we're here for.

How do we know what particular thing our plant is missing? Well you know that by building a knowledge of what a plant looks like when it's missing a certain nutrient. So when plants are missing magnesium, you have this mottled yellow.

So look at this, you have this mottled yellow between the leaves. Between the veins of the leaves. Yellow areas eventually will turn brown and die.

They may actually even turn. Reddish purple because. With low magnesium you're going to have poor uptake of phosphorus, right?

And then you're going to get that phosphorus deficiency that we see right here, right? And so you can see there's a chain cause effect going on here. All right.

There's some more stuff here about different deficiencies based on the type of plant, but we'll get into that. And if you want to look at it, of course, you can just go to epicgardening. com and check that out.

All right. We're going to get into sulfur now. So here you can see a corn, sulfur deficiency in corn, right?

And okay, what does sulfur do? Again, dark green color. It's needed to make chlorophyll.

It's as necessary as phosphorous and considered an essential mineral. Here's the thing though, like most soils have enough sulfur within them and plants don't need a whole lot of sulfur. Ten to 30 pounds per acre, which is a very small amount.

It's a soil conditioner. Honestly, very. Few people are gonna run into a sulfur deficiency, especially if you're just growing at home.

Most of the soil is gonna. Have it. All right, let's move on to the trace.

Elements. So we had our primary N-P-K. We had our secondary, which we covered just now.

And now here are trace elements. So these are elements that plants need in very small effects, small amounts, right? However, that does not mean that the absence of.

Them is not a big deal. The absence of. A trace element can actually be quite drastic for your plants as well, right?

Okay. So if you are. Depending on your crops to do well, or you're just a gardener that wants your crops to do well, yeah if you're missing a trace element you're gonna have a hard time, right?

You're gonna have a bad time. Okay. Let's talk about it, boron.

So here is an example of a controlled boron deficiency. This is an experiment, right? And so here's a perfect plant.

And then here's 13 days with boron deficiency, 19 and 21. So what you can see is this yellowing of the leaves in between the veins. You can see some spotting going on.

It's actually quite a unique deficiency. So it's somewhat easy to identify. And what boron does is it helps synthesize protein.

It helps develop cell walls. What you'll notice is a lot of these nutrients do a lot of things, as in they're used in conjunction with each other to perform most of the processes for the plant. So that's boron.

Let's talk about chlorine, right? Chlorine is involved in photosynthesis. Here's a chlorine deficiency.

It looks very similar to, let's say, a nitrogen deficiency. You're looking at a lightening and then some of this chlorosis in the plant. Okay.

Chloride, necessary for gas exchange. There's a whole lot I could go into about chlorine. Just know that it's necessary.

And no, for the most part you're not going to run out of this in your soil. Again, it's a trace element, which means a deficiency of it is rare. Although that deficiency is important if you don't have it, right?

Okay, here we go, copper. Copper deficiency. Here's an example of a copper deficiency in a canola plant, the image on the right being the most healthy.

And then as we move to the left, you get more deficient in copper. And so you're seeing a lightening of the leaf and that is your symptom to look out for. Okay.

Copper, very important in forming chlorophyll. Plants don't need a lot of it. It again, it's a trace element, but if they don't get any you get disastrous results, right?

Same principle across the board with all these plant nutrients. What it does is it activates enzymes in your plants. It helps to synthesize lignin.

It's part of photosynthesis. And interestingly enough, it's key for flavor in certain types of vegetables. And it's key for color in certain types of flowers.

So from a taste and aesthetic standpoint, even then you want copper in your plants. So again, copper is immobile. It's very similar to calcium, right?

So if your plants are deficient in copper it's going to show up in the newer growth because plants cannot mobilize the copper that is readily available in old growth to that new growth, like they could with other nutrients. Okay. Leaf nodes.

This is an interesting deficiency symptom. Leaf nodes, so the distance between new leaf growth on your plant, on the stem of your plant, is going to be shorter. And so you're going to get a more stout plant, which is an interesting deficiency to look for.

So there we go with copper. Now let's talk about iron. Iron assists in the manufacturer of chlorophyll, many other biochemical processes, many of the vital functions of a plant.

Enzyme and chlorophyll production, nitrogen fixing, and development of metabolism, all dependent on iron. So not a whole lot of interesting things to say here. Again, I'm not a botanist.

This is just the information that I know I want to share and would be happy to have any Comments. There we go with iron, another trace element. Here we can see a deficiency symptom.

So, leaf chlorosis, not a healthy looking leaf right there. So there. You go.

Leaves. Of the plants turn yellow, the veins stay green. So you can see if we trace along, these veins are green and the veins are much more apparent, right?

So you can see the main veins and then you can see all these sub veins here because the leaf structure has become so yellow. So the yellower, imagine if your hand became translucent. You'd all of a sudden be able to see all these veins that you normally wouldn't be able to see, right?

And so that's kind of what you're seeing with leaf chlorosis. Manganese, look at this deficiency symptom. Manganese needed for chlorophyll production.

That is an intense deficiency symptom right there. So one thing I have to talk about here is there is a difference between magnesium and manganese, and they're very similar in their sound, but they have a lot of different properties. So magnesium is part of chlorophyll.

So plants that are lacking in magnesium will become pale green or yellow because they are not able to photosynthesize properly. Manganese is not part of chlorophyll. And so when you're seeing a manganese deficiency, what you're going to see is very similar to a deficiency in magnesium, because manganese is involved in photosynthesis.

Leaves will become yellow, which you. See right here. It's very stark though.

This is a very stark difference. Deep pale yellow here. And then you have this green hugging around the veins of the leaves.

And that's how you can tell you have a manganese deficiency. So manganese is going to be less mobile. And if we've learned anything in this video, we know that a less mobile nutrient is going to show up on new growth, not old growth.

That's how you're going to be able to tell the difference between maybe a magnesium and a manganese deficiency. All right, now we have. Molybdenum, I believe.

That's how you say it. So here is a deficiency symptom on a cauliflower leaf. You can see this curling and shriveling.

Molybdenum helps plants use nitrogen. So in a non legume, like a cauliflower, molybdenum enables the plant to use nitrates taken up from the soil. So if you're going to have insufficient molybdenum in your soil, then nitrates are going to accumulate in the leaves because the plant can't use them, right?

And so then you have stunted growth with symptoms very similar to nitrogen deficiency because the plant, the absence of molybdenum is meaning that the plant cannot use the nitrogen, right? So you're going to get a nitrogen deficiency because of that. So let's move on.

Zinc. Here is. Zinc deficiency symptoms.

And you're seeing a whitening of the leaves on the outer edges and sort of a mottled appearance right there. That is a symptom of zinc deficiency. So zinc is used, excuse me, in the development of enzymes and hormones.

So it's used by leaves, needed by legumes to form seeds. Leaves are going to discolor, the plant growth is going to be stunted. And again, you're going to get chlorosis.

So the veins will remain green and the tissue, the leaf tissue itself, is going to be become whiter. All right, there we go. Those are the nutrients that a plant needs.

A brief rundown of what they do in the plant. And then if they're missing, what's going to happen to the plant as a result. Now there's a lot more information about soil testing and things like that.

You can check out epicgardening. com for that. But I wanted to do this video, and I know I've done a lot of these lecture style videos lately.

But we're going to get back to live action soon. I've got some mushroom stuff, some microgreen stuff, some hydroponic stuff, and some soil test stuff coming up. But I wanted to get this one out there cause I think it's important and I really hope it's valuable.

And if you have any Comments, leave them down below, because again, I'm not a botanist, I'm not a horticulturalist. I'm just a fellow gardener sharing the information that I know. And because I learned it all sort of myself and out there on the internet and books and from other gardeners, a lot of the times there's patches in the knowledge.

And so some of you might know more than me about a particular nutrient, and I'd love to hear about that. So let me know in the Comments down below. And if you want, you can hit the Subscribe button.

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Speaking of book, which I just misspoke on, I do have a book that's going to be coming out spring 2019. It's called the Field Guide to Urban Gardening and you can get on the early reader list. So the early reader list is at epicgardening.

com/book, which I'll put in the description down below. And until next time everyone, thank you for watching. I know this is kind of a long video.

I will see you on the next video. Keep growing good luck in the garden. Peace.