Commercial Organic Fertilizer

Organic gardening is an agricultural trend that has more and more people composting manure in their backyards. Unfortunately, not all organic home growers have farmer's access to manure or even a backyard on which to do the composting. To answer this growing need, manufacturers have developed commercial organic fertilizers.

Commercial organic fertilizers makes it possible for those people who have little or no access to organic dumps to still treat their soils without resorting to synthetic or chemical fertilizers. And commercial organic fertilizers are widely available. You can even purchase commercial organic fertilizers by the bucketful from the country for many local governments are now sponsoring composting projects at landfills.

What to look for when you buy commercial organic fertilizers.

The first thing you need to do before buying a commercial organic fertilizer is to check the N-P-K number listings on the label. N-P-K stands for Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium respectively. These three commercial organic fertilizer ingredients are the three major nutrients that help plants grow.

The way to know whether or not the fertilizer bag you're holding is commercial organic fertilizer or not is to check if any of the numbers of the N-P-K ratio go higher than eight or when all three are summed up, can total to more than fifteen. If they do either two, that means that you are holding a synthetic fertilizer and not the commercial fertilizer that you are looking for. Keep in mind that when dealing with commercial organic fertilizers, the N-P-K ratio might not be as high as you are used to using chemical fertilizers.

The second step would be to scan the list of ingredients used in the commercial organic fertilizer. Ammonium, muriate, urea, nitrate, phosphoric, or superphosphate - these are words you d not want to see on the label of your bag of commercial organic fertilizer.

Other than those ingredients mentioned above, you should also be careful with commercial organic fertilizers that contain cottonseed meal and leather tankage. These products are perfectly natural and it should make perfect sense to use them in commercial organic fertilizers. The only problem is that they may contain some harmful residues not good for an organic garden.

The instructions indicated in the label of your commercial organic fertilizers are placed there for a reason. Follow the steps specified in applying the commercial organic fertilizer.

And before going all out and buying a commercial organic fertilizer, be sure that you have tested your soil first for organic matter level. Most commercial organic fertilizers do not add to the organic matter in your soil (but this is unless the commercial organic fertilizer you have bought is made from composted manure).

When buying commercial organic fertilizers, it is important that you never take the word "organic" at face value. Driven by the lure of making sales, many companies have succumbed to just adding tiny bits of organic materials, like fish meal or seaweed, into their synthetic nutrients and then label them commercial organic fertilizers. It is also equally important that you do not take the word of the sales guy in your local garden center. Look into the bag of commercial organic fertilizer and judge for yourself.