Show #34/5308. Cooking Fresh From The Garden

Rain Contains Nitrates

The second round was planted the beginning of June which worked out well because they started getting consistent rain at that time of year. So it germinated in rain and just shot up, it was as happy as could be. She didn’t even put compost down in this area. She has been thinking about that and did some research and just recently found out that rain actually contains nitrates which was new to her. Eric adds some information - yes, that’s especially valuable for corn. We are talking about a grass or a monocot, it's a c 4 plant, which means it has to have a lot of Ammoniacal nitrogen. Broad leaf plants use more nitrate nitrogen, they are then broken down through bacterial processes. But with corn, especially since water is the number one most important nutrient for all plants (don’t let anyone tell you differently), water is the most important nutrient. So the timing of the occurrence of rainwater, which is super high in nitrogen, really, really gives one an edge with corn. So one can’t always do anything about timing of rain but when it is on your side you can definitely see it helps. It’s like magic.