Nutrient/Water Retention

Crops and turfs grown in soil with St. Cloud Zeolite have faster growth rates and higher yields. By adsorbing ammonium, buffering soil, and preventing toxicity, St. Cloud Zeolite allows for more efficient use of minerals already in the soil, resulting in lower fertilizer and water requirements, as well as reduced amounts of fertilizers leaching into groundwater.

By promoting stronger and healthier plants, St. Cloud Zeolite reduces the expense of protecting crops and turf with costly pesticides and herbicides. Additionally, St. Cloud Zeolite is 100% natural and allowed for use in organic farms.

Zeolites for Better Plant Growth

St. Cloud Zeolite is particularly valuable in holding and slowly releasing valuable nutrients to plants, mainly ammonium nitrogen (NH4+), potassium (K+), magnesium (Mg2+), and trace elements. As a result, it promotes better plant growth by improving the value of fertilizers.

St. Cloud Zeolite can be applied to manure or compost to increase water retention, deliver nitrogen and other desirable plant nutrients to the growth zone, provide future capture of nitrogen, and increase the infiltration and aeration of the soil.

St. Cloud Zeolite can improve the quality and value of manure and compost, and reduce fertilizer and water costs, by providing nutrients and water to the root system when plants need them.

Increased Cation Exchange Capacity

St. Cloud Zeolite buffers the pH of soil and increases its overall cation exchange and nutrient holding capacity. The water retention capability of St. Cloud Zeolite also lowers irrigation requirements by increasing the water-holding capacity of sandy soils and improving drainage in clay-rich soils.

Due to its unique cation exchange properties, St. Cloud Zeolite has successfully been used to increase fertilizer efficiency and reduce nutrient leaching, a particular concern in environmentally sensitive areas. In a sand-based growing media, St. Cloud Zeolite has been shown to decrease NH4+ and N leaching by 75% to 88%.

Reduced Emission to Water

St. Cloud Zeolite – when properly applied to sports and agricultural field soils – not only controls high nitrogen levels, but can also have a significant effect upon reduced emission to water resulting from field runoff.

Field runoff contributes to high nitrogen levels in adjacent waterways, which reduces the water’s ability to adsorb oxygen and negatively impacts waterway ecology. Because of these negative effects, water authorities are concerned about the increasing levels of contaminants, including herbicides and pesticides, in water and the expensive outlays necessary to reduce these constituents to acceptable levels. Use of St. Cloud Zeolite in sports and agricultural field soils enables the capture of these elements prior to migration into the water system.

Better Fertilization

Growers of agronomic as well as horticultural crops often use an ammonia-based fertilizer to supply nitrogen as an essential nutrient. Too much ammonia supplied to emerging crops can be harmful and can lead to burning of root systems, resulting in poor plant performance or increased mortality.

This means fertilizer levels have to be rigorously controlled, often requiring successive application of plant nutrients. Ideally, a one-time treatment with an ammonia-based fertilizer without root burning would be most cost effective, as it would eliminate the extra labor and time required for several applications. Proper use of St. Cloud Zeolite helps solve this problem.

The correct application to soils may be expected to do the following: