Organic Garden Fertilizer

Why use organic garden fertilizers? It's common sense. Organic garden fertilizer is good fertilizer -- good for your plants, good for you, and good for the environment.

According to the EPA, almost seventy percent of pollution in water comes from the agricultural sectors whose chemical fertilizers often leach and cause soil erosion. Now, just because farm growers seem to be the major culprits in polluting our waters does not mean that home growers are innocent of all this. Farmers have been trying to make up for their mistakes by turning to organic growing. It is high time that we all join the organic bandwagon and use organic garden fertilizers not only in farms but in our homes as well.

The Benefits of Using Organic Garden Fertilizers

Organic garden fertilizers utilize organic soil amendments to increase nutrient content and soil characteristics of your garden. In organic gardens, the presence of decomposing organic matter acts as a natural organic garden fertilizer to supply your plants with nutrients essential for their growth cycles.

Organic garden fertilizers also help improve and maintain structure of your garden soil, no matter what type. If your garden has the clay type of soil, organic garden fertilizers are useful in preserving the tilth and structure to prevent soil from clumping. Organic garden fertilizer is also a great aid in maintaining the water-holding capacity of soil - perfect, if your garden is sitting on sandy soil.

The organic matter in organic garden fertilizers contains natural properties that would make micronutrients, such as zinc and iron, more available to your plants. With organic garden fertilizers, you will be able to productively use materials that would otherwise have been discarded. In this regard, organic garden fertilizers help you keep our backyard and the environment free from chemical pollutants.

Organic Garden Fertilizers: What's in the bag?

A good gardener should know what is in a bag of organic garden fertilizers. Knowing what nutrient comes from what type of material is a skill to be learned if you plan to be a home grower.

There are three major nutrients that plants need in order to grow. All these - nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus are found in organic garden fertilizers. Because organic materials, from which organic garden fertilizers are made, do not often have all three nutrients (ex. Manure may be high in nitrogen but has less phosphate), most suppliers make up for this by combining and mixing different kinds of materials in their organic garden fertilizers.

Alfalfa meal is a green manure-based organic garden fertilizer preferred by rose garden owners. With its 3N-1P-2K formulation, this organic garden fertilizer is an excellent source of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium (K) for your plants. Alfalfa organic garden fertilizer also contains the hormone Triacontanol that helps regulate plant growth.

Another organic garden fertilizer is the blood meal which has a formulation of 12-2-1. A slaughterhouse by-product, this organic garden fertilizer is great source of quickly available organic nitrogen. For an excellent calcium and long-lasting phosphorous source, bone meal organic garden fertilizer may be used. Both of these meal organic garden fertilizers can be mixed and blended together for better results.

Kelp meal organic garden fertilizer has very high potassium content levels but zero phosphorus levels. To compensate for the lack of phosphorous, this organic garden fertilizer may be used in conjunction with bone meals.

Organic garden fertilizers can contain several micronutrients and may also lack several of them. The trick is to know what's in the bag.