As more and more people make the switch to Mega Crop I’m seeing a lot of misconceptions of what it is, or is not. Let’s examine further. To keep the high-brow scientific speak to a minimum, we’ll keep it simplified and in basic terms.
First let’s review some basics. The word “Salt or Salts” is thrown around often and it’s grossly misused. For the full article on Salts, see
HERE in my journal. Otherwise, let us summarize. The general public thinks of Salt as the white granular stuff season your food with, NaCl, which is toxic to plants. This is NOT what we are talking about here. We are using the chemist view of Salts which is, “
any molecule that is made up of two or more ions.” They are normally crystalline solids. There are hundreds of different kinds of Salts, some like Ammonium Nitrate and Potassium Chloride are common in fertilizer.
When salts are dissolved in water, the ions in the salt separate and are no longer joined together. They are now properly called ions, not salt.
To recap, if you are using a DRY fertilizer that contains things like Potassium Nitrate (combination of Potassium and Nitrogen ions), Calcium Nitrate (Calcium and Nitrogen ions), and Magnesium Sulfate (Magnesium and Sulfur ions), these ARE Salts. Once you add that powder to a gallon or liter of water and dissolve it, it is no longer Salts its IONS. So guess what. Mega Crop IS a Salt based fertilizer. Is that bad? NOT AT ALL! In organic gardening, you may have substance that is consumed by a microorganism and it excretes a Nitrogen ion as a byproduct. That Nitrogen ion is NO DIFFERENT than the Nitrogen ion that is released when some Potassium Nitrate was dissolved in water. AN ION IS AN ION, THE PLANT KNOWS NO DIFFERENCE.
What about Salt build up? If you are this point and you’re asking this question, reread the previous two paragraphs. The moment you dissolved that solid into water it became ions, not salts. The question should be, What about a buildup or imbalance of unused ions? It may be nitpicky, but let’s use the correct vernacular. It could be that you supplied more of a particular ion than what the plant needed. Let’s pick one for examples sake. Let’s say that you provided more Phosphorus than the plat needed. That excess Phosphorous will build up in the growing medium over time and could cause issues. This is why it’s recommended that you water until there is a good runoff or periodically rinse your medium, to reset the balance of your intended feed.
Enough about Salts, let’s talk about Chelation. What is it and why is it necessary? In really simplified form, the metal trace elements needed for our plants tend to react poorly with growing mediums that are a pH level of 6.5 and above. Instead of being readily available to our plants, they bind with the medium instead. Think of a Chelated trace elementa as an M&M. Say the plant wants chocolate, but when you try to give it chocolate, it melts all over your hands, and not in the plants mouth. The solution? Let’s put a hard candy shell on the chocolate and turn it into an M&M. The plant consumes the M&M, getting the chocolate it craves from inside the hard candy shell, and you don’t get chocolate all over your hands. Chelation works much the same. The barrier that the trace element has been chelated with keeps it from sticking to the soil so the plant can uptake it though the roots or leaves.
Now that we know what Chelation is, what types are there? Traditionally EDTA has been used to Chelate the metal trace elements in fertilizers. It does its job quite well. The other type is Chelation with Amino Acids. Is this something new? No. Although you can find studies dating back to 2006 on Amino Acid Chelation, you haven’t really seen many products adopting it until 2015. So what is the difference? EDTA is a synthetic, non-biodegradable, product. It is considered a pollutant and can build up in animal and human tissue. Amino Acids are organic and biodegradable. They are not considered a pollutant to the environment and are more sustainable. In the 2006 study mentioned above, using rice crops as a test subject, the Amino Acid Chelated fertilizer produced 10% more yield. Amino Acid Chelation is more efficient than EDTA and supplies that plant with more of the trace minerals. Which type of Chelation does Mega Crop use? Amino Acid, whereas many of the other fertilizers are still using EDTA.
The low down on Chelation. It’s not a dirty word. You want your fertilizer Chelated. You want your trace minerals available over a wide pH range and available to your plant. The only valid argument against Chelation is that it was Chelated with EDTA and that it is a pollutant, non-biodegradable, and can build up in human tissue. Problem solved with Amino Acid Chelation.
So there are the meat and potatoes of Mega Crop, but it doesn’t end there. In your bag they also decided to throw in a side salad. Mega Crop also includes other amino acids, kelp extract, B vitamins, and a small amount of Silica. These are some things that growers have been supplementing their plants with, so they decided to add them to the mix. The benefit to you is that you now don’t have to have a bunch of extra supplements. Everything you need to grow a nice plant is included in the bag. Can you decide to supplement other things with Mega Crop? Yes. It’s up to you to make that decision, but it isn’t necessary. If you do, however, use caution, especially with high K boosters. Mega Crop has quite robust in K to begin with. Too much and you could lock out other things like Calcium.
Summary
What it is. Mega Crop is a complete powdered 1 part fertilizer. Being a dry fertilizer, you’re not paying for water which you could add yourself. You’re not paying for the shipping cost and weight of that water either. Plus you are getting a full strength product, not a watered down, diluted version. It contains all 17 required elements for plant growth. Many of the other products, both dry and liquid, will only contain the 8 essentials. On top of that it also contains some additives that many growers choose to supplement, cutting down your supplement cost. Since its one part, you also aren’t spending needless time mixing several bottles. It’s quick and easy.
What it is not. Mega Crop isn’t unicorn horn dust. It works just like any other fertilizer. Other fertilizers are Chelated too and allow for the uptake of required elements over a broad pH range, most just do so with EDTA instead of amino acids. It’s not “Salt Free”. The sources of N-P-K are the same “Salts” that other fertilizer companies are using. Look at a label where it says “derived from” (see photos of Mega Crop and Dyna Gro Foliage Pro below). There is no guarantee that unused ions will not build up in your growing medium. It is still recommended to feed to runoff, or occasionally rinse your medium, to maintain the optimum balance of all the nutrients. You can check this yourself quite easily. If you don’t water to the point of runoff for several feedings, do so once and catch that first bit and check it with your TDS meter. What I can guarantee is that it will be higher, probably significantly higher, than your input. Pour another gallon or so at your pot and check the runoff again. You will see a decline. So why was that initial runoff so much higher? Build up! It’s not a knock on Mega Crop at all. It’s just fertilizer basics 101. You will not be able to feed every element in exactly the amount the plant wants. The goal is to make sure there is an abundance, but not overly excessive amount, of everything it might want. It will pick and choose from the buffet from there. It won’t eat the whole buffet. There will be leftovers. Those leftovers will remain in your medium. They aren’t sucked in by the roots, travel up the stems, and transpired out the leaves. Your plant isn’t Bulimic.
I’m sure someone with a PhD in Botany will want to say I over simplified something or mince points. Please provide supporting documentation. I could have linked every article for reference material but chose to try to put things in everyday language and examples the average stoner can understand, since that's what most of us are.
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