Articles
FRITTED TRACE ELEMENTS (F.T.E.) AS A BASIC FERTILISER FOR PEAT
The content of plant nutrient, including trace elements, in this peat is so small that it can and must be regarded as negligible when it comes to practical cultivation.
After twenty years’ research at Kvithamar, the following use of trace nutrients has been recommended as from 1969:
Trace elements in g per m3 (= mg per l) of volume out
| Fe | Mn | Cu | Zn | B | Mo | ||
| The Norwegian triple | | ||||||
| fertiliser B 13-6-16 | 2 kg | 0.4 | | ||||
| Iron sulphate | 100 g | 20.0 | | ||||
| Manganese sulphate | 25 g | 6.2 | | ||||
| Copper sulphate | 25 g | 6.4 | | ||||
| Zinc sulphate | 25 g | 5.7 | | ||||
| Borax | 5 g | 0.6 | | ||||
| Sodium molybdate | 2 g | 0.8 | |||||
| Total per m3 | 20.0 | 6.2 | 6.4 | 5.7 | 1.0 | 0.8 |
One of the objects of our work was to ensure that the basic dressing should provide the plants with enough nutrition of trace elements for the whole growing period, or at least for a whole year’s cultivation, to avoid having to include trace elements in the liquid feeding.
It is simpler and cheaper to give as much as possible of the trace elements in the basic dressing.
The elements that needed most research before a final conclusion could be reached, were molybdenum and iron.
Weighing out each of these six trace elements separately is a sizeable job that calls for great care and attention.
For this reason we were on the look-out for "Fritted Trace Elements" (F.T.E.) that would correspond to our research results, but the majority of the existing F.T.E. products did not contain all necessary trace elements.
We were driven to try F.T.E. no. 181 as a "general purpose" product, and used this in our trials for several years, although the content of certain trace elements by no means agreed with what we wanted.
Finally in 1969 a product appeared which corresponded to our research findings.
This became known as F.T.E. no. 36. Here is a comparison of the contents of the two Fritted Trace Elements used in our trials: