A Menu of Organic Fertilizers

Reader Contribution by David Wann
Published on February 13, 2012
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Gourmet Treats to Feed Your Soil

All fertilizers are investments, but some are more likely to give you reliable returns. Fertilizers that come directly from natural sources release a wide spectrum of nutrients slowly and steadily over a period of years, as opposed to the quick-release action of nitrogen-obsessed fertilizers that can wash away in the first heavy rain. If you choose to become an organic grower, you’ll inevitably become a broker in a stock market of materials that were once living, from alfalfa meal to manure to oak leaves. Your rewards are tangible: good yields, better health, and better flavor. (No wonder the last three White House chefs have cooked with organic produce.)

The overall strategy of organic growing is to feed the soil – not just the plants – with generous supplies of compost, manure, and side dishes such as alfalfa meal, bone meal, and rock phosphate – substances far more familiar and less destructive to soil organisms than concentrates that result in sub-surface boom and bust cycles. In a single wheelbarrow of fertile soil, there are more organisms than there are people on Earth, and they are an industrious lot! Organisms including bacteria, fungi, centipedes, beetles, and earthworms produce vitamins and antibiotics that promote growth and control disease; knit particles of organic matter together to create well-draining soil; and release carbon dioxide to help plants form new plant tissue. Good soil functions like an immune system; as long as beneficial organisms receive a high-quality diet they keep bad organisms in check.But when overdoses of chemical fertilizers or a shortage of organic matter weaken the plants, the villains come after our plants. Soon enough, many growers then resort to pesticides.

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