Synthetic vs. Organic Fertilizers

Synthetic Vs. Organic Fertilizers: Can Plants Tell the Difference?

A 15-5-10 synthetic fertilizer is the classic 3-1-2 ratio high-nitrogen, synthetic fertilizer – the kind that the other guys recommend. These numbers mean that the bag contains 15 percent nitrogen, 5 percent phosphorus and 10 percent potassium. The remaining 70 percent of the material in the bag is filler. That can be hydrogen, oxygen and other compound parts but can also be just about anything – sawdust, sand, dirt or even toxic industrial waste. Now you might ask, ‘Why do we need filler? They distribute the N-P-K throughout the filler or carrier so you don’t burn the heck out of your turf when you apply it. Does that tell you something? When we use organic fertilizers we’re using very low amounts of buffered nutrients. Everything in the bag is useful to the plant. Our ‘filler’ is organic material with a variety of trace minerals. That translates too much better stimulation of biological activity in the soil. High levels of nitrogen and low levels of trace minerals force fast growth that results in very weak watery cell growth in plants. People see the plants are growing and flowering so they think everything is fine. But the imbalance and the watery cells bring on insects and diseases. Nature’s job is to take out sick plants and to encourage the survival of the fittest. And, the form of nitrogen is wrong. It works too fast. Plus, it’s soluble. If it rains after you put it out it washes away and leaches through the soil into the water stream. The second problem is the phosphorous source. The phosphorous in synthetic fertilizer is usually triple super phosphate 0-46-0 made by treating rock phosphate with phosphoric acid. Years ago the phosphorous source was 0-20-0 or super phosphate. It was pretty darn good even though it was created by a synthetic process. Rock phosphate was made by treatment with with sulfuric acid. It was a more balanced phosphate and did not tie up trace minerals. Well, somebody came up with the notion to use phosphoric acid to create more phosphorous for less money. So now all the synthetic fertilizer manufacturers use triple super phosphate. Big problem – the new material is so raw and so bare that when it’s put on the soil it grabs and locks onto magnesium, manganese and all sorts of other trace minerals. It ties up these nutrients making them unavailable to plants. The third problem is potassium. The source of potassium in most synthetic fertilizers is muriate of potash or potassium chloride. Potassium chloride is bad on specific types of crops – especially fruit crops. It’s also harsh on the soil. What we like as a potassium source is potassium sulfate. It’s made from the salt of The Great Salt Lake. My definition of a fertilizer is anything that improves the soil and helps to stimulate plant growth. For example, dead leaves that fall off a tree are fertilizers. As they break down they turn into organic matter or humus and feed the soil microbes. Microbes such as the beneficial fungi on the roots protect and feed the root hairs of the plants. This feeding process releases the nutrients to feed plants. That’s how it works on the prairie and in the forest. We’re just speeding up the process.   www.Think-GEO.com  ::  info@think-geo.com

Fruits & Vegetables Organic Food

Green Earth Organics – ‘Going Green – Fruits & Vegetables Organic Food‘

One of the reasons that industrial synthetic fertilizers gained popularity is that they helped to increase crop yields by allowing the production of a great many more calories per acre, to meet the growing demands for food driven by a population spurt over the last half century. However, as with everything else in life, there is an unintended downside to increased yield: decreased nutritional quality. USDA figures show a decline in the nutrient content of the 43 crops it has tracked since the 1950s1. According to the analysis, vitamin C declined by 20%, iron by 15%, riboflavin by 38%, and calcium by 16%. The result is the nutritional equivalent of inflation, whereby people have to eat more to get the same amount of various essential nutrients. According to a report titled “Still No Free Lunch” by Brian Halweil, a researcher for Worldwatch, today you have to eat three apples to get the same amount of iron as you would have gotten from a single 1940s apple!
One of the reasons for this nutritional inflation is that plants grown with industrial synthetic fertilizers are often nutritionally inferior to the same varieties grown in organic soil. One plausible explanation for this disparity is that crops grown with chemical fertilizers grow more quickly, giving them less time and opportunity to accumulate nutrients other than the big three (N-P-K). Another plausible explanation is that easy access to major nutrients means that industrial crops develop smaller and shallower root systems than organically grown plants; deeply rooted plants have access to more soil minerals. It is believed that biological activity in the soil plays a role; the slow decomposition of organic matter releases a wide range of plant nutrients. Also, a biologically active soil will have more mycorrhizae, the soil fungi that live in symbiosis with plant roots, supplying the plants with minerals in exchange for a ration of sugar.
According to Micheal Pollan: “In addition to these higher levels of minerals, organically grown crops appear to contain more phytochemicals—the various secondary compounds (including carotenoids and polyphenols) that plants produce to defend themselves from pests and disease, many of which turn out to have important antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and other beneficial effects in humans. Because plants living on organic farms aren’t sprayed with synthetic chemicals, they are forced to defend themselves, with the result that they produce between 10-50% more of these valuable secondary compounds than conventionally grown plants.”2
Recently, a handful of well-controlled comparisons of crops grown organically and conventionally have found appreciably higher levels of anti-oxidants, flavonoids, vitamins, and other nutrients in several of the organic crops.
1 In Defense of Food pages 118-120 by Michael Pollan
2 Ibid

* http://www.think-geo.com

** http://www.synergylandscapegroup.com

When is the right time to prune Crape Myrtles?

---

Let’s first start off with when is the wrong time to prune Crape Myrtles:  November and December.  Don’t let “peer pressure” by your H.O.A., friends or even other landscape companies trimming your neighbors Crape Myrtles push you towards pruning too early.  If you prune the crapes too soon (let’s say in November), and we get a warming trend in December or January, the trees might actually start putting out new growth.  That new growth will be highly susceptible to freezing weather after the warm spell.  New growth will also tend to draw the cold right into of the tree, forcing it to work harder thus causing needless damage to a tree that should be resting in dormancy.

So from the 12 years I have been in the landscaping industry, usually the best time to prune crapes is in February.

* http://www.SynergyLandscapeGroup.com