Insta-Gro / Gantec / AIM4G Plant Foods?

I was invited to a sales promo for those foliar spray products. Seems sort of suspicious, the ads claim it cures everyting, reduces stress, enhances growth, fruits / vegetables / row crops/ everytihg, for every product. "Healthy Plants/ Healthy People / Healthy Planet". The web sites they list do not come up. Anybody have any experience with those products? Free breakfast wasnt' bad, anyway.

Not those specifically.

One needs to start with good soil.

And good moisture as well as drainage.

Then get the soil right - p and k and ph.

Add n as each crop uses.

Getting the biological setup right can help next.

Then after all that, if you are at the top end of the scales on what you can produce, such foliar feeding can help push you up another notch, and be worthwhile. But you already need to be in the top 10% of your field! have everything working well.

That foliar stuff, if it is good, is low salt, absorbable, and very high priced.

It is an awful waste of money use this stuff until you get to that last step. You need it right to begin with before you add that last little bit of high priced stuff.

Put your money into manure or granular fertilizers and lime if needed first, by far a much better bang for the dollar. By far!

Until you get everything in shape use the cheapest products to make the biggest changes you need.

They sell this stuff as a cure all for any problem. If you have a problem, this stuff is 1 or 3 lbs of available nutrient that perks up and greens up and makes look pretty a crop that is deficient. You feel good because it makes your crop look nicer for 2 weeks, greener.

But it really didnt help your yield, and it cost 5x what you could have bought to really help your crops long term.

Again, foliar feeding can be a useful thing, but you need to be starting at the top already, and you likely need to be working with a valuable crop. Some of those nut and fruit and veggie crops it can pay off ok. $7 corn and $16 soybeans it maybe even paid on some of the grain crops. Today with $3.50 corn and $8.50 soybeans, probably best move is to keep your money in your pocket on that sort of stuff, work on the bigger issues you have.

Paul