Put the Chemicals Away

Organic fertilization Vs chemical fertilization.

  • Topic: Fertilizing
  • Author: Mary Ann Walz
  • Keywords: fertilization, organic, chemicals, Fertilizing
  • Date: March 2004

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As a society, the amount of garden chemicals used in our home landscapes is staggering! According to EPA’s (Environmental Protection Agency) statistics, homeowners used 76 million pounds of pesticides in 1997. Their statistics also show that 74 out of 100 million homes (3 out of 4) routinely use chemical pesticides.

In recent years, though, gardeners have slowly become aware that runoff from pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers and fungicides applied to lawns and flowerbeds are also polluting water and killing our wild birds as well as the beneficial insects. Let’s hope we can move even further away from chemical solutions to more organic applications to our gardening problems.

We’ve done it with regards to raising organic vegetables. We can do the same in our ornamental gardens.

A good way to move away from chemicals to a more organic approach in our yards is to start nourishing the soil that gives life to the plants. We need to start rebuilding healthy topsoil in our landscapes. Chemical fertilizers do provide plants with nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. But they don’t add anything to the soil. In fact, the prolonged use of chemicals makes soil sterile. And plants can’t grow in it without an increase in chemicals. It’s a vicious cycle.

Soil is a composite of minerals or fine rock particles (the solid mineral particles are sand, silt and clay), organic matter, air, water, and microorganisms. A healthy soil has lots of living things in it: plant roots, animals, fungi, insects, bacteria and other organisms. Having a thriving living system is what determines your gardening success—[pullout]

How can you tell if you have healthy soil?

  • Establish what kind of soil you have. Soil texture—the proportion of different sized rock particles—determines how your soil drains or retains water as well as indicating the amount of oxygen that’s present.
  • See if organisms are present. If you have earthworms, it’s a good bet you have a fair amount of organisms.
  • Determine if your soil is lacking in any important nutrients. The best way to do this is to have your soil tested. The Cooperative Extension Service in your county can do this. If you do the soil test, ask for recommendations in using organic amendments.

To maintain a healthy soil, you want to add a regular supply of humus, which is organic matter at various stages of decomposition. Garden soils with plenty of humus allow plants to absorb nutrients much easier.

How can you add organic matter to your soil?

  • The easiest is using organic mulch. This will slowly decompose and become part of your soil. Organic mulches include pine needles, grass clippings (from non-chemically treated lawns), straw, or bagged composts available in garden centers.
  • Another way is by adding compost to your beds and incorporating it into the soil before planting. Compost is a decomposed mixture of manures, leaves and vegetable matter, which you can make yourself (or buy from commercial composters) and till into your soil.

If you test your soil, it’s fairly easy to select organic amendments to address any missing nutrients. But if you don’t know your soil’s mineral content, a general purpose organic fertilizer will provide a balanced amount of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium as well as trace minerals. Organic fertilizers are typically slow release and we recommend Yum Yum Mix because it won’t burn plants or promote growth that is so rapid it can deplete a plant’s reserves. We also recommend Gro-Power and Planters II.

So put the “Weed and Feed” fertilizers and other chemical fertilizer blends away. Your plants and our earth will thank you.