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Re: [APD] is Chloride Bad For Plants (CaCl2)
On Friday 06 January, Derek wrote:
> Is chloride bad for plants?
No. In tiny amounts chloride is an essential nutrient. Plants use it in
larger amounts then required and it can be found in some healthy aquatic
plant tissue at fairly high concentrations. Chloride is ubiquitous in
nature and I doubt there is a living thing on earth that doesn't happily
coexist with chloride; it is biologically benign.
When salinity problems occur chloride is often part of the problem, but the
problem is not unique to chloride. Anything that reaches sufficiently high
concentrations will cause the same problems.
Aside from salinity issues I have no idea where the idea came from that
chloride was a problem for plants. At one time the problems seemed to arise
from the similarity in the words "chloride" (benign) and "chlorine" (nasty).
Now there seems to be someone or something else that is generating the idea.
Calcium chloride is an excellent (and very inexpensive) source of calcium. As
with all things used for dosing or reconstituting, I would make sure that the
balance of components are reasonable before I decided to use it. But then,
that comes from my inclination toward balance and isn't really supported by
research.
Roger Miller
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