of sediment left in the bottom of hydroponic reser-
voirs creates a problem. Traditional organics unfortu-
nately fails in most of these 101 areas of agriculture.
Traditional agriculture uses predominantly soil-
less media, drip systems, fertigation systems, inline
water treatment and fi ltration systems, and pressure
compensating drip emitters. Most traditional organ-
ics fertilizers do not work in these systems due to
the clumpy and chunky non-soluble powders & thick
liquids that leave behind a lot of sediment and cause
bio-slime. We now have the technology to make our
powders smaller more easily soluble and even use
technology to do fun things like nanoparticle enzy-
matic encapsulation.
Instead of telling a large-scale commercial culti-
vation facility the only way they can become a 100%
organic cultivation company is to change their entire
operation. This would include switching over media,
potting system and size, incorporate composting,
top dressing, cover crop, spike layer and zoning into
media, and even need to learn how to monitor bacte-
rial versus fungal populations, benefi cial nematode
population, ciliate vs fl agellate and general soil
health. This simply is not feasible when you start
talking about hundreds of thousands of square feet
of warehouse and acres of greenhouse. They need to
have cost-effective, easy to run products that allow
them the maximum control for what their plants spe-
cifi cally need.
Concentration
Higher concentration and higher percentage
of active ingredients is the name of the game with
powders and granular fertilizers. Depending on the
extraction methods this can yield concentrations up
to 99% active ingredient. This effectively it means a
grower needs less product to cover a larger volume
of treated water or plants. Depending on the cost of
that fertilizer this should lead to a lower fertilizer cost
per gallon. Effectively the higher concentration of
active ingredient the lower the cost should be. Unfor-
tunately some manufacturers do realize they have a
high quality product and a high concentration or are
not able to scale production quickly enough. They
may also not have access to enough material; have an
effi cient enough manufacturing packaging or a logis-
tics process, or other things that can a tribute to costs
associated with a product that is not commercially
affordable. Concentration percentage and the type of
active ingredient being extracted go hand-in-hand.
Versatility
Powdered products can be used in a more versa-
tile manner than liquid products. They can be used
in soil amending, top-dressing, reservoir applications,
Arcadia
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May 2018