The Pros and Cons of Organic vs. Synthetic Fertilizers
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- Опубліковано 22 лип 2024
- Do you use synthetic or organic fertilizers in your garden? In this video, we discuss the pros and cons of both options and share why we made the switch to using only organic fertilizers in our backyard garden. Find out the benefits of building soil biology and creating long-term fertility with organic fertilizers. Plus, stay tuned for a chance to win one of our raised beds in our exciting giveaway! Subscribe to our channel for more gardening tips and tricks!
0:00 Intro
1:11 Why Did We Switch to Organic Fertilizers?
5:02 Organic vs. Synthetic - Which Is Best?
8:29 Metal Raised Bed Giveaway
10:08 How to Transition to an Organic Garden
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#backyardgrocerystore #growyourownfood #vegetablegarden #sustainableliving #homesteading #homegrown #organicgarden #neverstopgrowing #sustainableagriculture
It is nice to see someone in organic gardening admit that when getting started there is nothing wrong with using synthetics. I still lean on synthetics pretty heavy when planting heavy feeders but have used organics more when I can, esp. in raised beds.
The hybrid model is the best approach.
@@AnenLaylle7023agree!
We use synthetics in our field plots because they’re massive and we don’t have the compost to keep them healthy. We also plant a lot more than necessary in the field to account for losses. They are tilled every spring as well. We don’t flood them with synthetics mainly for the reason you mentioned. There is a good chance the plants miss the nutrients if a hard rain comes and we also don’t want to burn them with synthetics.
We use organics around fruit trees and raised beds. My favorite thing about organic fertz is there is practically zero chance of over-fertilizing.
Good to find another gardening channel that isn’t telling their viewers you have to use organic to have a good garden like most of the big name garden UA-camrs out there.
There are pros and cons to both and both can be successful depending on your situation.
Makes perfect sense.
Just make sure that if you get manures from some other place make sure they didn't use graze on its a herbicide that will kill your plants
Just for clarification, it's Grazon, which contains Aminopyralid from Dow AgroSciences. It's a herbicide used on grazing crops that kills weeds, but also passes through the digestive systems of the animals that eat it, and makes their manure toxic for gardeners!!!
Be very careful about brining external sources of manure and compost to your property; this stuff lasts for years, and composting does not break it down to safe levels.
SO glad you did this topic! We love ya'll and appreciate you to the moon, stay frosty and stay blessed everyone 🤙🇷🇺
I like your two cents worth. Synthetic is also a good back up when you can’t find your organic!
Wow, this is the best video I have saw on this "controversial" subject I have seen. Most content creators say you "have" to use organic. I believe that it should be every Gardener's goal to grow all organic but I feel like the gardening industry are doing the new gardener a great disservice by telling them to only use organic because what happens is new gardeners go out open up a plot of land with no skills using organic fertilizer and they fail. Then next year they give up. Like you said it takes a lot longer for some of the organic fertilizers to break down enough for the plants to use the nutrients. Sometimes 6 to 8 months. By that time the new gardener has given up. My previous garden plot I had a garden for 4 years and was at 75% organic. Last year on my new property plot I was only at 15% organic. Got to build the soil. This year I plan on being at 50% organic. Great video
Personally I just use organic fertilizers. It’s what I prefer. I focus on my soil health and building a healthy environment for my crops. I do pretty well on the growing side. Where I do struggle is on the processing side. I end up with way too much to can, freeze, pickle, and ferment. Time management is my main issue. But what doesn’t get processed goes into the compost piles to feed the future.
We use a combination. We produce quite a bit of our own compost because we raise rabbits, turkeys, and chickens. I still add synthetics in some situations though. I usually rotate between side dressing with our compost and using 10-10-10. We also utilize cover crops and adding organic material like pine straw from our pine trees, and oak leaves from the numerous oaks.
I’m a organic grower I love it
I use both, but I find myself using more natural/organic than synthetic. Natural seems to grow a little slower but much more steady plants. Food production is more flavorful and abundant imo.
I'm a synthetic user. Difference is I use both granular scratched in, and water soluble synthetic in precise ratio's via drip irrigation. I also have been using the commercial hydroponic blends, and I tweek for specific ppm applications. Not just throwing fertilizer out, but x grams per sq foot for this granular fertilizer, and x ppm per gallon as applied for the liquid for spoon feeding the plants. The granular is cheaper than the water soluble, but the water soluble is like a shot in the arm of instant vigor (all be it, a micro dose shot), and a 20 pound bag goes a long way in micro-doses. Also with those targeted micro doses via drip at the root zones, I don't loose as much to rain dilution, as general spray application might be.
My best friend growing up took steroids after highschool for 3 yrs and got amazing results, he was stronger and bigger than those of us that did not take them. We’re in our 40s now and he has MAJOR health problems… but he was awesome for 3 years.
I feel like I’m 25 and take no medications
I've never taken steroids, but know folks who have. Seems to mess with their mental health as well. When I was younger I used to take some of that pre-workout stuff that gets your heart racing, but haven't in many years. I don't think that stuff is very good for you either.
Amen bro. I did the same thing with the stuff that made the ol’ heart race… scared me so I left it alone
Great video and I love your work!!
New garden pictures from me I'm in Missouri
For some crops, synthetic fertilizers are almost a necessity. Tobacco is one of them. The idea is to give them plenty of nitrogen during the growth phase but not so much that they can't use it all. As the plant matures, it needs to run out of nitrogen. You also have to use low chloride fertilizers on tobacco, so 10-10-10 should not be used because of the chloride in the potash component.. Manure can be high in chloride so you have to apply it in the Fall so some of the chloride can dissipate.
The same with fruit trees. Some apples just don't like highly organic soils. Take a look at what those apples grow in at Hendersonville, NC. Mainly red clay. LOL Same for peaches. They generally grow best in almost sterile soils such as the sandy clay ridges of northcentral South Carolina or the Sandridge of Georgia and South Carolina.
I use synthetic fertilizers on my corn because it takes up 2/3 of my growing area, and I can't afford the organic fertilizer required for that much area. Some areas of my garden will get planted in corn three years straight. I might plant one Winter cover crop in one of those years. It doesn't burn up the soil and I still have lots of organic matter built up. It will get a one year break from corn and will then be heavily amended, and then go right back to corn. I plan on putting down pig manure this Winter in the areas I plan to plant in field corn in the Spring.
I am definitely trying to feed the soil instead of the plants, but I just got a house built on some land and starting a new garden. Turned it over, and tilled it. Sent a sample for testing. Almost completely devoid of Nitrogen and Phosphorus, low on Potassium. It will take time to build it up from crap dirt to garden soil. Hit it hard with some organic granules and using fish emulsion to give plants a boost.
But if I need to hit with synthetics to get a harvest this year, I will. I can be patient and build up the soil, but I still want the groceries.
I use both. I preplant with organic and use synthetic for a boost when needed. I have noticed that I am using less synthetic as time goes by.
Oh snap! My garden is actually a little festive! I’m about to try to win this bed! LETS GOOOO lol
One of the things we don’t talk about is how fertilizer is affecting our water quality. Synthetic fertilizer many times is not totally absorbed and when heavy rains occur, the leftover fertilizer is washed into streams and lakes. As a result, many bodies of water are being affected by these chemicals. Now overuse of organic fertilizers can also create these issues BUT not like chemicals.
You're right. Too much nutrient runoff can cause eutrophication in aquatic systems.
I guess I'm organic gardener because I use only my home-made compost, supplemented by commercial compost when I don't have enough of my own. I do this only because I'm cheap I also would be considered a "no-dig" or "no-till" gardener only because I'm lazy.
I think I'll market my approach and call it, "Cheap and lazy gardening." And I'll write a book that I could sell cheaply. It would have one small page. And I would post a 30 second video.
Successful gardening is simple.
To make it simple, when asked i normally suggest to new gardeners , lots of leaves , grass or straw for soil life and moisture , triple ten for macro nutrients and some type liquid " miracle grow " type for micros and trace elements
Using some synthetics to step feed on cover crops can really inrease your organic matter and N store without having to haul in so much manure. Not as much nutrient goes to waste on a cover crop since you dont have idle dirt. Also adding synthetics to a high carbon compost and covering it is a great place to use synthetics. Turning synthetics into organics when useful is my train of thought.
I began to notice this after using synthetic fertilizer on my sweet corn every year and later in the year planting a fall crop of vegetables. They just didn’t grow well and they were small and not productive. I’m beginning to phase out the use synthetic fertilizers in my garden plots as well. But I do plan to keep a certain amount of synthetic fertilizer around when I need some faster growth in certain vegetables.
This fall I followed a bed of tomatoes with a planting of beets. I had to keep pouring the fertilizer to those beets to get them to do anything. Even then some of them just wouldn't take off
I combined the 2 this past growing season and had the best results ever.
If you use Cow Horn manure tea as a foliar spray plant and top of soil you have far fewer pest problems and to fix the problem of having to use synthetics in the beginning use Ferment products in your watering routine
Good common-sense discussion of synthetics versus organic. I'm trying to keep long-term in mind for my raised bed vegetable gardens, developing good soil with proper regard to the organisms that occupy the space between compost and plant.
Exactly what I have been doing, learning thru you, row by row, and others…
Merry Christmas and Happy new year
Same to you Holly!
Great info and mostly non biased.
I've been interested in organic gardening since the early 1970s. My Father had a copy of Rodale's Organic Gardening that I read like a Bible. However, I soon learned you can't believe everything you read. It was valuable because it listed the composition of various organic materials. However, the wide, sweeping claims were sometimes ridiculous. The reason for failure always seemed to be that you weren't organic enough. LOL
I eventually tried biodynamic French intensive gardening using double-dug, raised beds that were 5'x20'. The beds didn't have wood or metal sides, they were all dirt. You didn't walk or stand on the beds when double-digging them. You put a small sheet of plywood in the bed to stand on. Double digging means starting on one end and shovel out 1 foot trench of soil across the five foot width and put it in a wheelbarrow. After that put down a few inches of compost/manure in the trench. Then you take a digging fork and push in into the compost and subsoil and break it up a bit. Then you shovel another trench out and put the topsoil into the first trench. Then add compost. Then break up subsoil. And repeat until you get to the end. Then you put the wheelbarrow of topsoil from the first trench into the last trench. The result was a soil so loose you could easily push your fist into up to your elbow.
The idea was to primarily use transplants to always keep the soil producing. When one crop was harvested, you immediately transplanted another in it's place.
I was very successful with that method and after three years of double-digging, I no longer had to do it. I just added compost or manure to the tops of the beds, or planted cover/green manure crops. The only fertilizers I added were manure, cottonseed meal, wood ashes, and bone meal. I probably grew some of the biggest vegetables I've ever grown in those beds.
The problem was keeping up with rotations and soil diseases building up. It required a lot of work the first three years. When I moved, I stopped using that method.
I have enough room now that I'm not trying to squeeze every bit of soil for what I can get out of it.
Great video
Great information!!! I used both in my garden with the synthetic mainly on heavy feeders but every year I've been using more organic and less synthetic
Yessss I been waiting for this video from you guys! Let’s gooooo! Lol I’m excited to watch, I doubt this will be my first and only comment 😂
Always enjoy your videos Travis. Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas Eric!
Right minded , reasonable thoughts , great soil feeds the plants the best but synthetic fertilizers can grow mass that grows soil life over time
I use a combination of annual compost and inorganic fertilizer, I think I hit the sweet spot for soil improvement and fertility! Please don’t forget that plants take up NPK in a ratio of 3-1-2 and compost is 1-1-1; if you use nothing but compost you will end up with excessive phosphorus in your soil, assuming you add enough nitrogen! I do follow the Lazy Dog technique of adding a balanced pre plant fertilizer (10-10-10 in my case) and then give the heavy feeders small doses of nitrogen incrementally. I use Urea (46-0-0) for nitrogen additions, it’s the cheapest nitrogen on the planet and guess what, it dissolves beautifully in water!
Klaus
My chances of winning one are about zero, but i really enjoy your content...
My dad grew up on a farm, plowing with a mule. He always used synthetics. And he never got skunked. He could plant a couple rows of yellow squash in a sand bed and pick a 5 gallon bucket of squash every day. I can't do that. And, even using synthetics now, I have your problem. Some of my collards and kale are two months old and still about 8" tall and growing slowly. Now I'm mixing both organic and synthetic and tilling in a lot of compost and leaves. I'm also trying mustard greens to fight the nematodes. I got 'em bad.
That's the problem I have with my Dutch cabbages wilting look on the leaves it's nematodes, I'll try raised bed next time.
I use a combination. Last year everything grew superbly. However this year, things haven’t grown as good. Some plants actually died. After watching this, I believe my pots may have an accumulation of salts. We’re moving back to the homestead in April and I’ll be growing in raised beds. I’m going to be using more organic than synthetic.
What he said :)
It's the drip irrigation coupled with the salts from the synthetic fertilizer. Your soil doesn't really get washed out unless it rains, explaining the likely salt accumulation in the cabbage/broccoli plot you referenced. I switched to overhead/mulching years ago and I swear overhead irrigation has increased the yields in my particular setup. The research says both drip and overhead produce the same yields, but in my area I just get better results with overhead. I even irrigate my tomatoes with overhead irrigation without issue. I use both synthetic and organic fertilizer, but I prefer synthetic fertilizer. I mainly use the fertilizer they grow marijuana with, because the quality is so high, no pun intended. The synthetic fertilizer they sell for marijuana tends to have lots of trace elements added in. Really good products.
My technique is to top my beds off with an inch of cow manure every year and then use the regime of 3 different marijuana fertilizers, one for seedlings, one for vegetative, one for flowering. It's essentially hydroponic synthetic fertilizers. My entire farming operation is no-till, too, on permanent raised beds with overhead irrigation. A bit different than Travis, but it's effective.
i also like to "chop and drop". also helps enrich the soil. 🤍🕊
OK Travis today is Dec 9th 2023 and it's snowing right now the day after you published this video. I live in zone 4b and my gardens are resting with snow on them so that leaves me out of the free garden bed.
I use 10-10-10 on my potatoes and onions, everything else I use organic. No place to upload pics for your giveaway
I'm a proponent of of the big climate change hype but more into the sun cycles and its effects on our growing success. The cycle right now is really messing with the weather including causing more volcanic activity and that effects the weather patterns. I use organics as much as possible.
I just got a dual fuel fire, wood & coal. I am reading conflicting information on what to do with the as. Some say put it in the compost, some say dont put coal ash in the compost, wood only, any thoughts on this?
Can I add synthetic fertilizer in a potted fruit tree With organic fast release fertilizer
What is your best guess of difference in yield between hen manure and triple 13? I have 27 gallons of hen manure aging from my farm. I’ve been using balanced synthetics most of my adult life.
I'd recommend trying to go with just the hen manure and see how the plants do. Keep the triple 13 in case they run out of juice. But you might find that you don't need to be as reliant on the triple 13 as you think.
Dang I’m older and can’t do a video or photo of Christmas anything. Wish it was just random so I’d have a chance
As I understand it, it is not possible for plants to use all the synthetic fertilizer. They are soluble salts. They dissolve in water and go into solution. That solution wants to stabilize it's concentration across the entire medium, the soil, it is in contact with, including plant cells in contact with the soil through roots. The semi-permeable membranes of plant cells allow the salts to infiltrate and stabilize the concentration through osmosis. So a plant cell who's free nitrogen concentration is lower than that in the wet soil full of dissolved ammonium nitrate will be forced to take in more nitrogen ions to make the concentrations balance. Now, while in the plant cells, it gets used for growth. Meanwhile the rest of the balance, by default, has to remain in the soil - to keep the concentration balanced.
This is why, if you use too much, you fry the plants. They are forced to take in toxic levels.
If you use too little, you are wasting your time and money as the concentration in the soil doesn't get high enough to pass the threshold needed to force some into the plants to maintain the concentration balance. In some cases that may, instead, actually force some of that nutrient to leave the plants to make up for the lower balance in the soil.
Meanwhile, these cellular level balancing acts to maintain salt concentrations are being forced upon all the other life in the soil. The bacteria, the fungii, protozoa, amoebas, nematodes, etc... all are being force feed extra N-P-K. Some may do ok. Some may thrive on it. Others just get fried. This may be why your soil seems spent after growing long season heavy feeder crops on synthetic fertilizers. It's altering the life balance in the soil.
Man I would LOVE to know how y’all got rid of those pine trees, bc I have an area of my yard that would be GREAT for some in ground beds but it’s covered in tree roots from some trees we cut down but didn’t remove the stumps.
We pushed them over with a front end loader -- they were a good bit smaller than they are now. The we had to harrow the area extensively with a tractor before it was ready to plant. And the first year or two was tough just because those pine trees had sucked all the juice out that soil.
@@LazyDogFarm I wonder how I could prepare a much smaller plot that has a lot of tree roots in it? I just assumed I was going to have to get out there with shovels, an axe, and a saws-all and manually remove all those roots. It would be a lot of work.
So what organic fertilizer do I need to start with or what process?
Find a somewhat balanced granular organic fertilizer and use that as a pre-plant fertilizer. Put it in the furrow prior to planting or mix it into the soil in raised beds or containers. That will do wonders by itself.
I use both because going purely organic just has a lot of cons to it and you tend to have quite a lot of issues with some crops due to the low percentages of nutrients in quite a lot of organic fertilizers or the fact that if its cold enough organic fertilizers take a long time to break down. Synthetics are better for heavy feeders or crops with short growing cycles where organic might not break down fast enough to truly get the benefits from it by the time the crop is ready to be harvested.
Onions in particular really need synthetic fertilizers they are such high fertilizer sinks and since we plant them in the fall here in california temps are averaging 40-60 during day and into the 20's and 30's and 40's at night and organic fertilizer will do literally nothing all fall and winter it just doesnt break down. You have to use synthetics on onions to feed them as they are huge nutrient sinks.
The last couple years we've been able to grow some pretty big onions using only organics, but our chickens do help us out quite a bit!
I dont have chickens, I also unfortunately have sandy soil with a extremely minimal organic matter percentage, it has been the biggest gardening pain ever, fertilizer bleeds out of it super fast no matter what kind it is, and compost has not helped despite mixing in compost for several years to try and increase the organic matter, have also been inoculating with soil bacteria and etc to help it out, it is also super acidic ph of like 5.0 last time I checked it. I have spent thousands on compost and lime so far. It is just getting expensive to try and maky my native soil work for anything, been having massive issues with my vineyard because of how rough my soil is. @@LazyDogFarm
I was eyeballing the coop gro fertilizer you guys sell and then I looked it up in the OMRI database and it says (cannot be used on crops meant to be eaten) literally on the listing and I was like so they got it listed but gamed the system because OMRI does not list it as foodsafe for crops eaten by humans. @@LazyDogFarm
What type of pollinators do you have?
We have a lot of native bees around here.
Good explanation. All I would add is the the most common soil deficiency is carbon, which is never in synthetic fertilisers. If you do choose to use synthetics make sure to add some form of carbon to the soil.
How big is your property?
2 acres
One of the best things about Organics is that they tend to be "slow", which gives to time to fix any mistakes you might make in terms of dosage. Synthetics can work very fast and do harm before you even notice, or have time to save them. "Slow and steady wins the race."
Can you tell that only using organic fertilizer has made your soil healthier ? I like using organically, but I have also used a small amount of synthetic fertilizer because it didn't seem to be benefiting my onions very much. Blood meal is a nitrogen source but it's very expensive and comes in small packages. My chickens put out a lot of nitrogen but it's to hot to use until it's been composted for awhile.
I would love to have one of those raised beds but I can't afford them and I don't decorate my house for Christmas because Christ was born in a stable that wasn't decorated with anything but animals and dung, so I'm certainly not going to decorate the garden.
I don't really know how to tell if the soil is "healthier" or not, but we do see a lot more beneficial fungal associations in the soil -- which I presume is a good thing.
@@LazyDogFarm yeah that's a good thing
The periodic table is the periodic table. Nobody makes elements. Element are elements.
What the problem was. After WW2 They had all the chemicals. So they made fertilizer. The farmers were using manures. It was easier to spread chemical fertilizer. Everything work good until the organic matter in the soil started getting low. Or non existent. Then the yields started to decline. If they would have used cover crops. And kept the organic matter up. . But the chemical fertilizers only supplied NPK. No trace minerals. Where a good cover crop like alfalfa would have pulled up trace minerals from deep in the soil . And the NPK fertilizer would have worked
Thats not true, synthetics all have micro and macronutrients and NPK, they had trace minerals.
@@pilsplease7561 If it is not on the label it is not in the bag.
The only problem i have with organic fertilizers animals come dig in my garden beds.🤬
Feed your head and feed your soil.
Plants and microbes can’t tell the difference…