Sometimes, what seems to be an easy question is not so easy! With that in mind, this is the first of two articles discussing how fertilizers work and then the difference between organic and inorganic fertilizer.

If we go back one step, we can ask, “Why bother with fertilizers at all?” Mother Nature does a pretty good job all by herself without having to add fertilizers to anything. Mother Nature is the ultimate recycler. In a field or forest where Man is not a factor, nothing is removed; everything is used over and over. When things die, they return to the soil to decompose so that they can be used over again.

When Man enters Mother Nature’s scene, he seems to upset the fine balance she has established. We walk upon the scene and decide it (the environment) needs to be changed. We remove trees, plants and soil and build roads, houses, malls, parks and so on. We want to grow things Mother Nature had not intended us to grow in her domain. We constantly remove materials from the environment which plants might need in order to grow. In our greed, we often want to grow things bigger and faster than Mother Nature had intended.

Now, what does fertilizer have to do with Mother Nature, her recycling and the human factor? Somewhere we learned that for plants to grow properly there had to be the right things in the soil. Soil is composed of lots of "stuff." It starts off as decomposed rock, which becomes sand, silt or clay depending on its size. This is the inorganic part of soil and as the particles dissolve, they provide the mineral part of the soil--things such as iron, potassium, and calcium. The organic part of the soil is composed of dead things--plants and animals. The bodies of these dead things will contain small amounts of minerals which were part of the food that the living plants or animals consumed.

There are also living things in the soil: worms, grubs, beetles and such, plant roots and bulbs and then countless billions of bacteria, fungi, algae and protozoa. All of these organisms, especially the bacteria and fungi, are important because they break large dead things down into a form usable by plants. Of particular importance are types of fungi called mycorrhizae which attach to the tiny absorbing rootlets of plants and bring nutrients into the plants.

The soil also contains air spaces which provides oxygen for the roots and water which serves as the blood stream and circulatory system of plants. The bacteria and fungi also need air to survive much the same as you do.

Our Bay Area soils are composed largely of clay. Clay is difficult to work with but actually contains sufficient of all the minerals plants need for growth except Nitrogen. Plants use nitrogen to make proteins. Proteins are used to make cells, cell parts and enzymes. Animals eat plant proteins and make animal proteins for cells, skin, muscles, hair, feathers or enzymes. So, if there is not enough nitrogen in the soil, life stops. Every time we remove a crop; corn, cotton, lawn grass or a tree, we deplete the nitrogen which was in the soil and have to replace it. The quickest, simplest way to replace the Nitrogen in the soil is with inorganic fertilizers such as Sulfate of Ammonia, Ammonium Nitrate or Urea. Unfortunately, the only form of nitrogen which most plants can make use of is nitrate nitrogen. One form of soil bacterium changes oxygen and the ammonium or urea to nitrite nitrogen and another bacteria changes more oxygen and nitrite to nitrate nitrogen which the plants can use. A few fertilizers such as our Fall & Winter Fertilizer contain small amounts of nitrate nitrogen which the plants can use immediately and will green up a lawn in two or three days.