Friday, May 31, 2013Good morning,
Do you have a vegetable garden at home? Good for you. Or maybe you have a flower garden, or a butterfly garden or maybe a honey bee garden? Or maybe you just have a gorgeous yard landscaped with plenty of native plant and flower species.
Whatever kind of garden you have you probably fertilize it at least once a year, if not more. Most of the fertilizers you buy in the store rely heavily on chemical processing.
You might be surprised what goes into it.
Much of the nitrogen in fertilizers is gained through a process which utilizes natural gas. An incredible 1 percent of the entire world's annual natural gas supply is used to generate nitrogen for agricultural and gardening processes.
The phosphate and potassium which goes into commercial fertilizers comes from strip mining and chemically intensive processes.
You're using a lot of chemicals when you fertilize your lawn or garden.
What are the alternatives? Please scroll down for more.
Thanks for reading,
Your Living Green editor
Email the Editor**** Animal manureHorse, cow or chicken manure are all excellent natural fertilizers. Every spring, when I was a kid, my father would fill up the trunk of the car with every bucket he could find.
Then we would all take a drive to a horse stable in a neigh- boring town and fill up on horse manure. He would spread it on everything, including the lawn and his garden. You've never seen greener grass (plus, it was FREE). But when possible, manures should be dug into the soil to conserve nitrogen. Fresh manure should be kept away from the roots of young plants as it can burn the roots.
* SeaweedIf you live near the coast, you can collect washed up seaweed and either wash it to remove some of the salt or wait for the rain to do it for you. Then it's just a matter of applying it directly to the soil. Whole seaweed also helps to capture water and bind soil. If you can't collect your own, it's available as a liquid extract from most gardening centers and nurseries. Seaweed is an all- in-one fertilizer; it contains everything your plants will need.