Fertilizers and vitamins can enhance or inhibit plant growth.
Plants have the amazing ability to manufacture their own food supplies. To do this, plants must rely on the availability of water, light and nutrients contained in the soil. Plants also manufacture vitamin materials within their cells. Under certain conditions, to plant soils can help promote growth processes, whereas vitamin applications can promote or inhibit growth.
Plant Growth
Growth processes in plants require water, light and carbon dioxide materials to produce food, or sugars. These sugars provide the fuel that feeds plant growth processes. Plants rely on nutrients drawn up from the soil to carry out plant growth activities. In total, 14 soil nutrients assist in the growth process. Plants require six of these nutrients -- potassium, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorous, sulfur and magnesium -- in large amounts, so these six fall within the macronutrient category. Plants use the remaining eight nutrients in small amounts, which places them in the micronutrient category. Plant micronutrients include iron, molybdenum, zinc, boron, cobalt, manganese, copper and chlorine. Each of these nutrients enables specific plant functions, such as photosynthesis, hormone production and cell growth, to occur.
Fertilizer Effects
Nutrient-depleted soil environments will cause plants to develop deficiencies that appear as distressed or damaged plant structures.Signs of distress may appear as dry leaves and stems, rotting plant structures or stunted growth. As plants ingest macronutrients in large amounts, soil environments can become depleted of these essential elements. Fertilizer applications help to replenish soil environments by replacing these missing soil nutrients. Most fertilizer materials contain varying proportions of nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, calcium, phosphorous and sulfur depending on the type of plant and soil environment involved. In effect, adding fertilizer enables plants to carry out normal food production and growth processes.
Vitamins
Plants use the food or sugar manufactured in leaf and stem structures to produce vitamin materials in their cells. Plant-soil nutrients also assist in the vitamin production process. Nutrient materials from the soil and from fertilizers enable cell structures to coordinate the chemical processes needed to produce vitamins. Within the plant structure, vitamins and hormones carry out similar roles in terms of initiating specific cell growth processes in leaves, flowers and stems. Plant vitamins consist of organic molecules that help to catalyze or trigger chemical reactions inside cells, much like hormones do.
Plant Growth Regulators
Much like fertilizer applications, plant growth regulators are applied to a plant's leaves and/or soil environment. Plant contain hormone and vitamin materials that have been extracted from plant tissues and in some cases, synthetic compounds. As these liquid materials come in concentrated forms, plants can only tolerate small amounts at a time. Five categories of plant growth regulators affect different areas within the plant growth process.
Auxin regulators affect flower formation, root growth and fruit growth, while gibberellin regulators encourage cell division processes and seed germination. Cytokinin regulators also stimulate cell division processes. When applied with auxin regulators, high concentrations of cytokinin versus auxins will stimulate shoot growth, while high concentrations of auxin will stimulate root growth. Ethylene regulators exist in gas form and specifically induce fruit ripening and eventual cell death. The fifth category--abscisic acid regulators--actually function as growth inhibitors that interrupt seed germination processes and increase plant dormancy rates in term leaves and fruit dying off.
Tags: growth processes, growth regulators, soil environments, vitamin materials, adding fertilizer