First of all, let me say that there is nothing wrong with anyone using organic fertilizers.
I use some bat guano myself because, well, it works. This is an opinion piece, and not a test result or tutorial. I know organic fertilizers are all the rage right now, and I’m not advocating anyone using them to switch, I’m just stating a different point of view for your consideration-amusement.
I think that if you could determine exactly how much of each nutrient, micro-nutrient, mini-micro-nutrient, inert requirements, etc. a plant needed at a given time, then you could assemble a group of chemicals that could meet the needs of a particular plant.
It may be of use to note that I am of the exact opposite opinion when it comes to pest control. Chemical insecticides scare me. I’ve never claimed that I’m consistent, just that I’m opinionated.
I grew up on a ranch, and if there is one thing that growing up on a ranch taught me, it’s that mother nature is a lot more concerned with what works than what’s efficient. Take the noble bovine for example: the simple cow takes in massive amounts of material, and produces massive amounts of material, and lives on the difference. Does it work? Yes, and it works well. Is it efficient? Well, let’s say it may have some room for improvement.
Organic fertilizers have a similar (if less pronounced) issue. Organic material goes into the grow system, the system uses what it can, and then you are left with, well, what’s left. Depending on what technique you are using, that might not be an issue, but as I am a fan of drip and passive hydro systems, I get very touchy about introducing anything that might clog things up. If you don’t have to worry about clogging anything up, organics are fine.
Except that it’s a little creepy if you think about it. The grass in the field is eaten by the cow, who in turn fertilizes the grass. It’s cannibalism by the grass, where it hides the bodies in an ambulatory four-legged leather trunk for a while.
Imagine if you were sitting with your friend Mary. Someone comes along, snatches up Mary, sends her to the C.O.W. Inc. Mary processing plant, brings back Mary on a plate, and you have lunch. It’s the same thing.
Okay, so some paths are dead ends; sometimes you have to admit you’ve gone too far, take a compass reading, and take a different direction.
Join me next time for an update on radish seeds soaked in hydrogen peroxide.
Peace, love and puka shells,
Grubbycup
i hear lots of people saying things like ‘well, this crop will probably taste better because it’s organic’ or ‘this is better for you because its not chemically fertilized’ all the time.
i guess first you must define organic. i always fancied myself as a scientific hobbyist, so to me that meant that the nutrients provided to the plants were carbon based (you know, like what organic chemistry was about)… well, the so-called chemical fertilizers i was using fit that description. technically speaking, there isn’t a plant food you could use that wouldn’t be organic by that definition, so there had to be more to it.
so i read more and see that the term organic (as in organic farming) was coined in the ’30s or ’40s by some farmer (Lord Somethingoranother, sorry) to describe what i would consider more holistic farming than organic, whereby the farm is treated as living entity and is home to an entire ecosystem. he even goes further to say that manual propagation and chemical farming cannot be sustained indefinitely without disrupting the balance… blah, blah, blah.
so after taking all that into consideration i said ’sheesh! how could anything be truly organic?’ and instead of concentrating on natural sources of N,P, and K, i leaned towards being able to quantify the amounts of N,P, and K from so-called chemical fertilizers available on the market.
there was a point in time when i spent hundreds of dollars for fertilizers… part A of this to part B of this and then add this a drop to a gallon etc, etc. these days i use superthrive and shultz and can notice little to no difference in color, taste, or smell… if i do notice a difference, i can usually chalk it up to me not paying attention to what’s wrong in the first place…
and you know what, i’ll take the Pepsi challenge with any of the produce i produce (alliteration not intentional, heehe) versus the same item grown in cow poop. and if that means feeding my plants concentrated plates of their fellow photosynthetic friends, then so be it.
i think grubbycup is more on point with the aspect of being able to define a nutrient base that meets all of the said plants needs versus making sure that the only processing of the feed was done by microbes or a cow’s colon.
and nature is great, but you’re right… not very efficient sometimes. i feel like using chemical fertilizers is just improving on what nature cannot provide all the time…
i will also agree that chemical pesticides are not cool at all, regardless if they come from chrysanthemums or other plants. there are too many good pest deterrents that are naturally occurring and wholly renewable, like neem oil and predator mites… just check out the past issues of UGM for a really good look at pest predators for your garden! (http://urbangardenmagazine.com/category/pests-disease/)
grubbycup rocks for saying so! rock on root-N-bloom!
This is an interesting thought Grubbycup.
When Wolfram discovered that simple cellular automata could generate a complex system he had the Aha! that by using computational systems science could eventually recreate the mathematics that would lead to a Unified Theory.
Science is the domain of simple systems usually. It can take a bee pollinating a flower and isolate particular variables to define what occurs both to the flower and the bee – but to compute the complex system of chaotic air currents, particulates in the air and on the flower and bee – generally random micro variables that in reality number in the billions. This just isn’t possible.
We have already discovered what a plant technically needs, and we can call that the limit if we like. Science will regardless continue to discover compounds, molecules of elements in different arrangements, and subtle relationships between compounds and plant processes.
“Science” is the limit of what we agree on, not the limit of what exists, and as much as an organic compound will always be composed of elements which we can isolate and remove, concocting a slurry of the same elements do not produce an organic compound.
So yes, if we could knew all of the “micro-nutrient, mini-micro-nutrient, inert requirements, etc. a plant needed at a given time” they could possibly be assembled since we are provided with the same elements nature is – however it may be well beyond our time before the discovery (let alone assembly) of all usable compounds are found.
We may know minimum requirements today, but potential optimums… it’s improbable. In the meanwhile we can gaze at the cows in the field and jest at the great Ouroboros of life’s recycles.
As far as considering the use of fertilizers derived from subterranean organic chemicals…
It took billions of years for organisms to fix inorganic chemicals (toxic to us) into organic sludge leeched deep into the earths crust – and in a relative instant we have drudged them up and dispersed them back onto the soil and into the air. Take even a simple grower …dumping old nutrients into the drain, dumping peat into landfills – actually preferring petroleum-derived fertilizers for the convenience of clog-free growing. And you think cows producing material from material is inefficient?
Humans making decisions based on the needs of the self is natural – perhaps before we have the capacity to chemically synthesize or isolate every possible compound advantageous to our gardening we will adapt our perception to realize we need to protect our ability to have a garden by the time the technology exists.
For now we can stumble over each other like ants on a sandwich exploiting everything we perceive will fill our coffers, indiscriminately destroying by way of collateral damage that biosphere which provided the sandwich in the first place. As long as it makes our lives easier, right Grubby?
Oh I completely agree, in fact I’m so lazy, I’m trying a semi-closed system where everything – media, roots, everything but the flowers-fruit, goes into a worm bin. Then after the worms have eaten everything they will eat out of it, sifting, drying, and using the casting permiated media in a clog resistant drip system. Just so I don’t have to haul bags of stuff in or out, because that’s my kind of lazy! Well, unless it works out well enough to have to write a post about it.