Application of boric acid for plants

Boric acid for plants, its uses, and its benefits will be discussed in this article. Today, if you visit a gardening store, you'll see a wide variety of fertilizers and preparations. However, it's important to remember the tried-and-true simple remedies and recipes that have long been helpful to gardeners, vegetable growers, and flower lovers.

For example, boric acid is suitable as a cockroach repellent, as an instillation agent for childcare, and, of course, as a stimulant for seed production, increasing yields, and also as an insecticide and fungicide. About its uses coffee grounds as fertilizer.

A little about the composition and properties

Boron is an essential micronutrient required for plant life and development. It is essential for the normal synthesis of nitrogenous substances, improves metabolic processes, and increases the amount of chlorophyll in leaves. If boron is available in the soil, crop yields will increase, fruit production will be abundant, and any plant will become more resilient to many adverse growing conditions.

Boric acid has the formula H3BO3, which means it's a simple and readily available boron compound. It's widely used in many complex fertilizers, but can also be used on its own. Boric acid is a colorless, odorless crystalline substance. It forms flakes that dissolve quickly in water. Its acidic properties are weak.

Boric acid is especially recommended for growing plants in gray, brown, and forest soils. However, it's also excellent as a fertilizer for black soil. If your site contains a lot of carbonates, or the soil is waterlogged or acidic, then boric acid is the optimal solution.

Additionally, it's worth noting that when properly diluted, boric acid for plants can increase the number of ovaries on fruit trees and berry bushes, stimulating new growth points in stems and roots. Furthermore, this versatile fertilizer can improve the taste of fruit.

Boric acid is classified as the fourth, lowest, class of fertilizer in terms of hazardous substances. It is harmless if it comes into contact with human skin. However, remember that boric acid can accumulate in the body because the kidneys excrete boron slowly. Read about it. How to dilute quail droppings as fertilizer.

About the amount for fertilizer

The plant requires boron throughout the growing season. However, it's important to remember that excessive amounts of the substance in the soil can be dangerous, as it can burn the lower leaves and cause leaf edges to dry out, ultimately leading to leaf dieback and leaf drop. Therefore, boric acid must be used correctly as a fertilizer.

Considering the boron requirements of garden crops, the use of this acid can be divided into three groups:
1. A high concentration of boron will have a beneficial effect on apple and pear trees, and will stimulate the growth of Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, beets, and rutabagas.
2. Tomatoes and stone fruits thrive in soils with moderate boron levels, and you can also add beautiful carrots and lettuce.
3. As for the low content, it is simply necessary for grass and strawberries, beans and peas, as well as for potatoes.

Important! You can tell if there's too much boron in the soil by the behavior of your plants. Leaves become dome-shaped and curl inward at the edges and begin to turn yellowOlder leaves are the first to suffer. High boron content in plants can lead to chronic diseases with severe complications in animals that eat these plants.

About the methods of use

Boric acid for plants, and its use in tomatoes and other crops, should be considered separately. First, this acid can be used to stimulate seed germination. In this case, just 0.2 grams of boric acid is needed per liter of water. This solution is suitable not only for tomato seeds, but also for onions, beets, cabbage, and cucumbers. When sowing large quantities of seeds, it's best not to soak them, but to sprinkle them with a powdered mixture of boric acid and talc.

Soil preparation

A boric acid solution prepared at 0.2 grams per liter of water can be used to water the soil before sowing seeds or directly planting seedlings. The first rows of plants should be watered with this solution; ten liters are required to treat ten square meters of soil. After watering, loosen the soil before sowing the seeds.

Advice! This solution can be used as a preventative measure if boron deficiency is suspected. Why can it be used as a fertilizer? use eggshells.

Foliar feeding

If this type of feeding is necessary, dissolve one gram of boric acid in one liter of water. Spray during the budding phase and then repeat when flowering begins. A third spray is done during the fruiting period. This type of feeding can be combined with mineral fertilizers. However, in this case, use no more than 0.05 grams of boric acid per liter of water.

Root feeding

For every liter of water, add 0.2 grams of boric acid. However, this feeding method should only be used if the plant is severely starved and the gardener is certain that the cause is a boron deficiency in the soil.

In this case, the plant should be watered first with plain water and then the boron solution added. This is crucial to avoid burning the roots. This feeding method is typically suitable for flowering plants growing in soils made from a mixture of peat and sand.

It's important to note that boric acid only dissolves in hot water. Therefore, it's always recommended to first dissolve a packet of the acid in a liter of hot water, and then add room-temperature water to make up the required volume.

Boric acid for strawberries

Now, let's look at the possible signs of boric acid deficiency, crop by crop. Let's start with strawberries: their leaves become twisted and their edges become necrotic. Preventative feeding, within reasonable limits, should be used to improve the berry's flavor and increase its yield.

To do this, water the strawberries with a solution of boric acid with added potassium permanganate. To do this, dilute one gram of each solution in 10 liters of water. The recommended dosage is ten liters of water for forty plants. You can also apply a root-feeding solution once per season by diluting five grams of acid in ten liters of water.

Important! Foliar feeding is done just before flowering, when buds have already appeared. To do this, dilute two grams of boric acid and manganese, along with a cup of sifted ash, in ten liters of water. An extract is first made from the ash: pour it into a liter of boiling water, let it steep for 24 hours, then strain, and use this solution as the main fertilizer. It can also be used as an excellent fertilizer. use chicken manure.

Apple and pear trees

The main signs of boron deficiency in these garden crops are thickened leaves, which curl, and darkened veins. If the boron deficiency is severe, leaves begin to fall out and tree tops die. Pears have essentially the same problems, except that the blossoms will dry out and become misshapen, and the fruit will be uneven, pitted, and have damaged tissue.

As for apples, a boron deficiency will cause light spots a centimeter in diameter to appear inside the apples, which will later turn brown and resemble a cork or sponge. For these crops, it's best to spray with boric acid, diluting 20 grams of the solution in ten liters of water. This will definitely dramatically improve fruit production and quality.

Fertilizing should be done in the evening or early morning on a cloudy day to prevent leaf burn. Spray evenly over the entire crown. Spray the first time when the buds begin to open, then repeat the process a week later.

Interesting! This treatment will not only reduce the number of fruit buds that fall off, but also increase your apple or pear yield by up to 30%.

Grape

Another plant that absolutely requires periodic boric acid fertilization. Signs of a deficiency include the appearance of spots between the veins on the leaves. If boron levels aren't replenished, the new grape seedling will die within a year of planting. A single application will preserve the flowers and reduce ovary drop.

Taking into account the characteristics of a particular grape variety, you can add 5 grams of zinc sulfate to 5 grams of boric acid per ten liters of water.

Tomatoes

Boric acid for plants requires special attention, especially for tomatoes and cucumbers. Tomatoes indicate a deficiency by blackening and dying off the growing tip of the stem. New shoots begin to grow vigorously at the root, but young leaves become brittle. As for fruits, a clear sign of boric acid deficiency is the formation of brown spots at the top of the tomato.

As a preventative measure, you can soak the seeds before planting in a boric acid solution, diluting 0.2 grams per liter of water. Leave the seeds for 24 hours. Before planting, you can apply additional fertilizer to the soil and, of course, spray periodically during the growing season.

Boric acid for plants, and the use of this versatile substance for various crops, as can be seen from this material, follows a fairly standard pattern. However, it should be noted that each crop will signal a boron deficiency in its own way. Moreover, these signals can be received at any stage of plant, vegetable, or tree growth. Therefore, gardeners and flower growers need to be extremely vigilant.