Organic Plant Food – Healthy Treat for Plants
by Anna Hart
Filed under Organic Garden
If you are a seasoned gardener, but new to organic gardening, you are probably accustomed to using sprays, fertilizers, and other chemicals to raise plants. You have used these wonderful products on indoor house plants, in the herb garden, and in the vegetable garden. You can’t imagine getting the same huge blossoms and produce with organic plant food.
Organic plant food has many advantages, however, which you will come to appreciate as you use it. Above all, you will appreciate giving your plants a healthy treat rather than chemical-laced food.
Advantages of Organic Plant Food
* Organic plant food spreads more slowly, delivering a stable, steady release of nutrients to your plants. They will not go from underfed to overfed and back to underfed in a matter of days. The nutrition will come at a more consistent rate.
* Organic plant food supplies a number of micronutrients that your plants need, but that are not found in chemically produced plant food.
* Organic plant food serves as an effective soil conditioner. By supplying needed organic compounds, it keeps the soil friable.
Disadvantages of Chemical Plant Food
* Fertilizers with chemical compounds usually cause an unwanted accumulation of inorganic salt. This can greatly affect soil condition, which in turn will affect the development and health of your plants. Inorganic salt build up will also decrease the population of helpful microbial and soil insects. While organic plant food can have minor build-up of insoluble salts, less harm is done to the soil.
* If you use chemical rather than organic plant food, you can easily burn your plants. The chemical-based fertilizer, being released quickly into the soil, can harm roots. In addition, application of too much chemical-based fertilizer will also burn plants. Organic plant food, being released slowly, does not present this danger.
Switching from chemical fertilizers to organic plant food can be a challenge, but the reward is healthy plants and healthy soil.
Hello
Can I add a point to your excellent post. For many years i was a chemical gardener using lots of sprays, pellets etc. One year we had a bad batch of the fertilizer and instead of getting a large crop everything was killed in a matter of days. This was a bit of a wake up call for me and from that moment onwards I have not knowingly used any thing other than organic products on the vegetable patch. However for the first few years the crops where a lot smaller and not as healthy but that didn’t put me off as i figured that i must have been damaging the soil for years and that it would take some time to get back to normal. Today i am now getting better crops than when i was using chemicals and I feel healthier as well.