How are liquid fertilizers manufactured?

J

Jayybeee

New Member
Specifically referring to bigger/budget brands. Fox Farm, Cutting Edge come to mind.

Where do these brands get their nutrients from to include in their liquid fertilizer? Specifically, where do they actually "source" their nitrogen to put into their liquid blends? Does it come straight from an organic source? Is it some kind of laboratory manufacturing process?

Do any of these brands publish sourcing/manufacturing info that I could peruse?

Thanks in advance for any insight.
 
MisterBlah

MisterBlah

Well-Known Member
For purely synthetic fertilizer blends, they use dry fertilizers like calcium nitrate or monopotassium phosphate and they just dissolve it in water. There's nothing special to it. All the chemicals they use are common agricultural fertilizers and they likely use greenhouse grades for purity, which are kind of between lab grades and agriculture grades. There is no benefit to using lab grades for making a fertilizer. Chances are, they mix it in 275 gallon totes or larger tanks depending on their requirements for bottling volume. They likely buy the water soluble fertilizers from large fertilizer manufacturers or they import them to North America from China.

For any organic blend, they will first put the fertilizer in water. Then a constant mixing while they let it ferment for 24 hours or longer, depending on the microbes and solubility of the organic fertilizer. When they are done, they will likely pasteurize the fertilizer blend by heating it up above 140°F or higher to kill the microbes so they don't continue to do anything. Likely they will filter out any solids at the bottom of the tank after that before they bottle it.

It's not that hard, really.
 
Mr.5280

Mr.5280

Member
It is sad how much extra we are charged from these companies just to have them dissolve and bottle these nutrients because it truly is a super simple process. It would be one thing if the liquids were super concentrated but we are paying for mostly water, witch every grower already has... I think eventually everyone will catch on and powders will take over because they are way more concentrated and the cost of shipping is WAY lower. I have already made the switch (Veg+Bloom-Key To Life-Kelp4Less) the only liquid I have now is Cal-Mag a.and once it gone I don't think Ill ever go back to liquids.
 
J

JDMase

Well-Known Member
Isn't there a thread here which lists ingredients for making your own nute blends? I may give it a go. Although £20 a bottle which is lasting my 7 plants about 3 months isn't too bad for me.
 
rene112388

rene112388

Well-Known Member
MisterBlah said:
For purely synthetic fertilizer blends, they use dry fertilizers like calcium nitrate or monopotassium phosphate and they just dissolve it in water. There's nothing special to it. All the chemicals they use are common agricultural fertilizers and they likely use greenhouse grades for purity, which are kind of between lab grades and agriculture grades. There is no benefit to using lab grades for making a fertilizer. Chances are, they mix it in 275 gallon totes or larger tanks depending on their requirements for bottling volume. They likely buy the water soluble fertilizers from large fertilizer manufacturers or they import them to North America from China.

For any organic blend, they will first put the fertilizer in water. Then a constant mixing while they let it ferment for 24 hours or longer, depending on the microbes and solubility of the organic fertilizer. When they are done, they will likely pasteurize the fertilizer blend by heating it up above 140°F or higher to kill the microbes so they don't continue to do anything. Likely they will filter out any solids at the bottom of the tank after that before they bottle it.

It's not that hard, really.
Click to expand...
The organic vs inorganic simply mean does the formulation contain carbon
 
rene112388

rene112388

Well-Known Member
Jayybeee said:
Specifically referring to bigger/budget brands. Fox Farm, Cutting Edge come to mind.

Where do these brands get their nutrients from to include in their liquid fertilizer? Specifically, where do they actually "source" their nitrogen to put into their liquid blends? Does it come straight from an organic source? Is it some kind of laboratory manufacturing process?

Do any of these brands publish sourcing/manufacturing info that I could peruse?

Thanks in advance for any insight.
Click to expand...
Organic materials are usually dry materials derived from something living like blood meal, or seaweed.
Most fertilizers are created in labs by the haber process and then each company creates a blend using different types of the concentrates as well as different amounts
 
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