Commercial & Organic Fertilizer Basics

Video Transcript

"In a previous segment we talked about how the organic fertilizer and commercial fertilizers are used the same way by the plant. But, there's some major differences in the two of them when it comes down to the concentration of fertilizer that is in a hundred pounds of it or in a ton of it. Generally speaking, organic fertilizers are notoriously low in yield or analysis. The analysis of commercial fertilizers is sometimes three and four and five and six times as much plant food in a ton or in a hundred pounds percentage wise, than organic fertilizers are. Therefore, from a large production standpoint, the amount of product that you have to haul to the field in order to increase the nutrient level in the soil gets to be a prohibited product, especially with the price of fuel these days. You can take a ton of commercial fertilizer to the field and get the same nutrients that it would probably take three or four times of organic fertilizer, or especially if you're using compost, fumus and all that kind of stuff to get it to the field, to get it on the ground. And then you're talking about the application process. And then you're talking about the corporation process where you would mix the fertilizer into the soil so it would be in the root zone for the plants to use. You can't just put it on top of the ground and expect it to do everything. These kind of constraints make organic, or has held organic back in the past, when it came to high production or high output agricultural and horticultural situations."