Permies Poll: Do you Foliar Feed?

Foliar Feeding involves applying a diluted liquid fertilizer onto plant leaves utilizing a mister/sprayer. The idea is that the plant can uptake the nutrients directly through pores and benefit the plants growth.

My question(s) is, do you do it? How often do you do it? If you do it, what kind of sprays do you make?

Mostly no. I'm pretty skeptical of the claim that plants take in nutrients through leaf pores. On the other hand, spraying compost tea on the leaves, to inoculate with good-guy microbes who can fight off the bad guys, seems like a sound practice. (I mostly don't do that either, but I have the kit to make it in five-gallon batches because my wife got interested and did it for a couple years about a decade ago.) I'm kind of a lazy gardener.

I do foliar feeds as an alternative for more fragile plants, since my fertilizing style tends to be broadcasting rabbit pellets and clumps of yuck from the rabbit cages. Smaller plants may get squashed.

I also like to do foliar feeds with plants that are experiencing pest or mold issues. My tomatoes right now have some powdery mildew (not surprising, for winter tomatoes and very misty weather). This week I'll give them some sort of foliar feed and add something to adjust the pH, hopefully slowing the mold. it's sort of a 2-in-1. In the summer we reach a point where the aphids start attacking the long beans, and so the foliar feed will be something that they don't like (teas made from fermented onion peels or coffee grounds).

I Wouldn't do Foliar Feed because I think it's not Selective Enough and you get collateral damages. I am more Focus on Feeding the Soil and Using Biodiversity for Pests and Diseases.

I do not but I would like to😊

I've been making more comfrey,clover tea with some extra this and that this summer and keep thinking I should try some as a spray but it all goes as a drench since that's easier than getting out the sprayer and cleaning it afterwards...my methods are so shotloose I'm not sure any of it is really helping as much as the steady rains we've had up until now.

On a normal year there is no rain here from the end of April to the middle of October so the leaves close up to prevent ...the fancy word for evaporation of moisture trees do.  If we get a rain in the summer, it can kill a lot of younger trees as they open up their poors then don't close up again in time.  Even the older ones die back until the next spring. In our climate, it's easier to focus on soil health and let the leaves do their thing.

But I've seen this work in climates where it regularly rains one or more times a month in the growing season.

Hello r Ranson
From what i Read, the rain is not Killing the trees. The trees are dying in the raining season but the cause is the drought (kill roots, create embolisms in the seve, and the poors doesn't open anymore at all because of the damages).. So it looks like they are already dead before the rain
So that you know or are interested.
Cheers.
Julien

Julien Sueur wrote:From what i Read, the rain is not Killing the trees. The trees are dying in the raining season but the cause is the drought (kill roots, create embolisms in the seve, and the poors doesn't open anymore at all because of the damages).. So it looks like they are already dead before the rain
So that you know or are interested.
Cheers.
Julien

The diversity of plant behaviour is amazing.   We think we know all there is to know, then move to a new climate, all all the "rules" are out the window.  I can never get board of learning about plants.


Drought is a complicated topic and the trees use complex mechanisms to survive.

Example of complexity of living without rain for about 6 months a year.
Technically we don't have drought because it needs to be less rainfall than normal.  Normal is zero.   So, less than zero is difficult to achieve, whereas some places 2 weeks without rain is severe drought.  The world is amazing that way.

And yet, trees here thrive in a normal year.  In a Mediterranean climate like this, they go into a semi dormancy during the dry season.  The ones that thrive most usually have a waxy coating, quick responce to environment, or other survival mechanisms to prevent transpiration (i found the word!).   transpiration is also part of the mechanism needed to make foliar feed work.  But the plants find a way to turn this (and thus also turn off the other half where they get moisture through the leaves) Think Mediterranean herbs like rosemary, sage, bay...  more temperate plants need extra care in these conditions and as they can't go in and out of dormancy quickly.  They don't like being woken up in the middle of summer with something like wet leaves.

Example, last week we had unscheduled rain.  3 months early.  It washed a lot of dust off the leaves and lasted over several days.  Before that, the trees were all thriving, growing tender leaves as the soil moisture allowed.  Now the young chestnuts and even some of the well established mulberry are browning up and dropping leaves that were green and juicy two weeks ago.  Nothing changed in soil moisture, that's closely monitored.   Look outside my window and 3 big leaf maples that are a couple of hundred years old have are also responding to the rain by going brown and into full winter dormancy.  They wouldn't normally do this until dew starts in September.   Leave the dust and ash on the leaves, it acts as protection from evaporation.  

I know, it's counterintuitive to people not used to this climate.  Did I mention how amazing life is when it comes to adapting to stress?

Plants that are used to drought have very different mechanisms in their leaves than plants raised in moist conditions where it rains at least once a month on a normap year.  

What you say works well for conditions like most of the temperate zone.  And it makes sense where "drought" isn't the normal.  But in oter conditions, plants have different ways of dealing with stress and are really good at it.  My chestnut and mapls and all the others will come back even stronger come our main growing season (aka, late winter to early spring), except the younger ones without established roots.  Nothing killing the roots once established (i know, because we've done a lot of digging and observing in this climate) just water on leaves is a signal for switching from one semi-dormancy state to a more dormant state.  

Foliar feeding is used in agriculture where the soil does not have enough CEC to make it to the finish line for heavy feeders like corn. From what I have read, CEC soils of around 10 may get 3 foliar applications to provide the needed nutrients. I am going to do a foliar application on some heirloom field corn in the next couple of days, will leave an area untreated as a control and will report back. Early morning or late in the day is recommended I believe, will have to read up on this. I will be using Natur's Way soil biological and liquid humic/fulvic acid. This corn has become a bit pale in color, some of which is due to the dry July (.7" rainfall) and heat (360 cooling degree days, 195 is normal) we had here.

To sum it up: Last autumn I attended an outdoor workshop where I learned about spraying compost tea on various plants. The presenter was very supportive of the idea that one would "extend their microbiome" through the act of spraying: through both the plants they cultivated, but also through being exposed to the spray themselves as they fertilize.

I have yet to try this (we're a bunch of lazy gardeners, similar to what's been noted above, here at Wheaton Labs). But after attending that workshop the idea authentically fascinates me and has never left my brain-space. I think that, particularly if the plantlife in an area is stressed-out by other environmental factors, that this kind of fertilization ought to show a lot more promise.

From what I've heard about thr climate at wheaton labs, I bet it would be great for an experiment like this.  I've heard a lot of success stories.

Doug McEvers wrote:Foliar feeding is used in agriculture where the soil does not have enough CEC to make it to the finish line for heavy feeders like corn. From what I have read, CEC soils of around 10 may get 3 foliar applications to provide the needed nutrients.

I find that interesting. I can't see that I'd get round to foliar feeding, I'd need to dust off a sprayer and presumably find a dryish day to spray as well as make up a nutrient solution. I am still working on improving my Cation Exchange Capacity. It is still pretty low in my main growing area, but I'm pretty sure it has improved. If I can get it good enough to act as a good reserve of nutrients then foliar feed becomes redundant perhaps? Feeding the nutrient solution to the plants via the roots just seems more natural somehow, I would do this first rather than foliar spray. I suppose the foliar spray delivers some of the nutrients direct to the plant tissue where it is reuiqred which could be an advantage.

I sort or foliar feed under certain circumstances. I normally let the plant roots take up nutrients and deliver them to where they are needed. I am not pushing for maximum yield for most annual vegetables if the soil fertility can't keep up. But with fruit trees at critical stages of development, foliar feed can make or break a year.

Last year my seedlings pawpaw tree started to flower for the first time. It self pollinated just fine but I noticed fruitlets and flowers dropping about 2 days after each heavy rain episode. I suspected it had to do with cold soil and low calcium concentration below what the fast developing buds and fruits required. Noted naturally pawpaws are understory trees growing in moist area. They don't experience the exposure and quick change in soil CE as in my upland tree. This year during the flowering period, we had one deep freeze, four severe storms including two hail storms. Each time the heavy rains came at night dumping 0.5 up to 3 inches of rain water and it turned sunny the next morning. The feeder roots had to take in very diluted water for transpiration. I tried foliar sprays with home made calcium citrate on the stems, bell-shaped petals and fruitlets with some untreated for control. The ones received calcium stayed firmly attached and those didn't fall off. Maybe I can slowly build up soil calcium level, or hope for less extreme rainfall next year, or have a bigger tree with so many flowers that I don't care losing some. I am glad that I tried and I finally have one pawpaw ripening this year.

Nancy

I am reading from Donald Schriefer's book, Agriculture In Transition. He says foliar feeding is done to increase chlorophyl in the plant. The improvement happens most quickly through the leaves. It is a somewhat complex subject and I need to learn much more about foliar. A lot of this ties in with "row support" of crops, fertilize just the row and the plants. Most of Schriefer's writing is on conventional farming and synthetic fertilization but I think the concept is worth considering in all types of gardening and farming.

I might add, percentage organic matter is so important, I work very hard to increase this in my garden. What I am seeing this year with my garden oat cover crop is really nice looking, smooth skinned potatoes. When I hilled them the dirt was full of oats and oat roots, green manure hilled around the plants. This provided food for the soil life and good pore space around the growing potatoes. This hot and dry summer has produced a really nice looking and bountiful crop.

According to Gary Zimmer. A sandy soil will have a CEC between 5 and 10, a clay soil will have a CEC between 20 and 50 and humus has a CEC of between 100 and 300. To best raise the CEC, improve the humus level of your soil.

No. I work my arse off to provide amazing soil and water as needed. If that's not enough for plants to thrive, they feed the compost heap. This is a food project -- I don't keep an aristocratic rose garden.

Sometimes, and almost always before the heat in Spring. Typically this coincides with a yearly worm-tower harvest, the tower provides an annual surplus of worm castings and effluent. When thinned out that rich effluent is very good at providing a boost to Spring plants with a protective barrier and colloidal mineral feed while temperatures are lower and the sun is out.

Last vote in apple poll was on August 3, 2026

Foliar Feed Report # 1

I applied a one ounce Natur's Way Soil Biological to one gallon of water foliar spray yesterday at 9:00 AM. Would normally start earlier but it was cloudy and somewhat cool. I sprayed everything in the garden less the potatoes, they are mature or nearly so. The MN 13 field corn did not look any different this morning, it had recently been fertilized and watered. Here is where I saw a change in one day, zucchini was much greener and robust and cucumbers looked more green to me. We missed the rain yesterday so I have to think the foliar feed made a difference. It is also cooler this morning so that helps in a dry period. The zucchini plant is part of our garden that we share with some good friends. They also grow Roma tomatoes, radish, green beans, beets and peppers. I do the fertilization and they do some watering. This zucchini plant has never been really prolific like in some past years, but it has produced some and is blooming these days. Very noticeable change in vitality in 24 hours. Donald Schriefer, the famed environmental agronomist says the change in field crops can be noticed within 24 to 36 hours after a foliar application. Foliar feeding is done to increase chlorophyl in the leaves and send more sugar to the roots. The roots feed the plant but the leaves also feed the roots, a 2 way street.


https://www.naturs-way.com/soil.htm

I have used this product for years but only on the occasion where thing look weak. It is supposed to be used within one years time and the gallon I have just about used up is at least 7 or 8 years old. There must be good things in there that do not lose potency over time like the humic acid and I think molasses. Jerry Brunetti in his book, The Farm As Ecosystem, has many recipes for foliar and drench type fertilization. I need to review this as he was a visionary on soil and animal health.

It helps when the soil ph is too high and iron and other micros don’t get absorbed as well as they should. Compost tea and fish juice are my favorite. They keep the 2 legged squirrels away as a plus.