So, what are micronutrients?  Simply put, micronutrients are anything required by plants for proper growth that are needed only in very small quantities.  Plant micronutrients are analagous to human vitamins and minerals --- without them, plants usually keep growing, but they often grow slower or have problems.

Wikipedia lists eight main micronutrients which affect plant growth:

• Boron
  
• Chlorine 
• Cobalt (especially important for nitrogen fixing plants like legumes)
• Copper
• Iron
• Manganese (availability depends on soil pH)
• Molybdenum (especially important for nitrogen fixing plants like legumes)
• Zinc

This post is part of our Micronutrient lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Strawberry micronutrient deficiency? What are plant micronutrients? How many plant micronutrients are there? Adding micronutrients to the soil Less well known dynamic accumulators

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.

Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.