Educator

Plant Nutrition

• Just like humans and other animals, plants need a certain amount of nutrients to thrive and grow. In this Lesson, we’ll learn about these required nutrients and find out what happens when they’re missing from a plant’s diet.

• Because plants get most of their nutrients from soil, we’ll discuss how soil is created and how its composition can vary depending on water flow, plant life, and the numerous organisms that live there.

• The nitrogen gas in the air is unusable by plants, so they rely on bacteria to “fix” it into a usable form. In the last part of the Lesson, we’ll focus on the process of nitrogen fixation. We’ll learn about the different kinds of nitrogen-fixing bacteria and their relationships with plants and soil.

• We’ll also find out how farmers can improve the usable nitrogen content of their land with crop rotation and fertilizers, and we’ll take a look at the environmental consequences of commercial fertilizer use.