Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is Liquinox 3032 Iron Zinc Chelated Solution.  This product is a mineral boost to my personally developed fertility program that I spent over a decade developing.

I selected this product because, iron and zinc are best utilized together by plants, and people too for that matter.   Liquinox 3032 is as the name implies a “chelated form” of these two minerals.  What that means in simple terms is it is in a form where the plants can instantly absorb and use these two minerals.

This also addresses two of the four most common mineral deficiencies in plants.  Those being iron, zinc, calcium and magnesium.  Today we will stick with iron and zinc but will cover the other two soon.

The most obvious symptom of iron deficiency in plants is commonly called leaf chlorosis. This is where the leaves of the plant turn yellow, but the veins of the leaves stay green.

Typically, leaf chlorosis will start at the tips of new growth in the plant and will eventually work its way to older leaves on the plant as the deficiency gets worse. Other signs can include poor growth and leaf loss, but these symptoms will always be coupled with the leaf chlorosis.

And what do you think zinc deficiency looks like?  It is mostly chlorosis.  Some other symptoms are, necrotic spots where leaf tissue has died due to chlorosis.  Stunted plants including stunted leaves, leaves that are smaller than normal and malformed leaves are also symptoms.  And when people send me pictures of problems with their plants, over half the time, this is the exact problem.

So there were some other things that made me settle on this brand, again back to cheleation, it allows a folliar feed.  This is where we add the product to water and spray it on the plants leaves.  This is best done early in the morning or late in the evening so the plants can absorb the liquid without being beaten on by the sun.

I use this specifically in the ebb and flow beds of my aquaponics systems, where I simply mist the plants with a half gallon sprayer where I add this to my other folliar fed items.

While this may seem complicated and expensive it isn’t.  You just add some stuff to a sprayer and mist your plants every 2-3 weeks, you don’t use much.  A small bottle of this stuff is 13 bucks and has 16 ounces in it.  You use one ounce to the gallon for folliar feeding so a 13 dollar bottle makes 16 gallons.  I mix up half a gallon at a time and it easily lets me spray 6-10, ebb and flow beds.

For my wicking beds or in ground beds I generally do a soil soak at the beginning of spring and about mid season.  I don’t use it any more than that unless I see signs of deficiency.  To put it bluntly I just ordered a bottle today, I did that because the bottle I bought two years ago ran out yesterday when I dumped the last 10% into my new aquaponics tank to kick start the system.

Oh and another nice feature of this product is it includes some aloe gel, this acts as a soil wetting agent and gets the supplement well into the soil so it doesn’t wash away the next time you water or it rains.

This post and the one that will come next on Cal/Mag supplementation will round out fully my personal program that again I spent over a decade developing.

I have for a long time used a 4 pillar core fertility program for my vegetables and perennials.  These include GS Plant Foods Liquid Kelp Fertilizer,  Garrett Juice Plus, Dr. Earth 4-4-4 All Purpose Fertilizer  and Endo Mycorrhizae Fungal Inoculation as the core of the program.  With a bit of mineral supplementation added to this your gardens can produce more then they ever have before.  So give Liquinox 3032 a shot and you won’t be disappointed.  You can always find my full fertility regime here.

Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com

P.S. if you use the links above for Liquinox 3032 you will find it goes to a search result with the 16 ounce option at the top.  The reason is for some reason Amazon won’t let me link directly to it, but I can link to the search result.  Just pick the 16 ounce bottle and you are good to go.  They also have a one gallon option you can find here.  While it is more than I need at one time, it is a good deal and since we are talking iron and zinc, it is shelf stable for many years.  So if you have a huge garden you may want to consider that option.