Organic Farming, Organic Gardening


flowers in a garden

Whether you practice organic farming or organic gardening, determining which top organic fertilizer to use is essential. Using a natural fertilizer is of course an obvious choice, but particularly worthy of your attention are organic low phosphorus fertilizers.

Phosphorus is one of the many elements found on the periodic table, identified by the letter “P” and its atomic weight of 15. A natural fertilizer, phosphorus is required for all plant and animal life, and is particularly concentrated in fossils.

Often top organic fertilizer will contain phosphorus obtained from marine fossils or from the more recent plant and animal material present within it. However, despite phosphorus’ importance, many experts agree that the best organic fertilizer is actually that which contains little or no phosphorus. Believe it or not, too much natural fertilizer can actually be a bad thing.

All plants require phosphorus to complete their life cycle. The element is a natural fertilizer, the plant kingdom’s equivalent to carbohydrates for animal life. Phosphorus provides plants with the energy necessary for successful root growth, and also facilitates the conduction of energy from the leaves of a plant to other parts of its structure.
But even though it is often present in top organic fertilizer, sometimes even the best organic fertilizer, that doesn’t mean that high-phosphorus fertilizer is right for your organic farming or organic gardening operation—in fact, organic low phosphorus fertilizers may be a much better choice.

Using a top organic fertilizer that has low levels of phosphorus is often much healthier for the environment. Studies conducted in Lincoln, Nebraska found that phosphorus caused more damage to local lakes and streams than did any other element. While using a top organic fertilizer that contains high percentages of phosphorus can help your plants, excess phosphorus from organic farming inevitably runs off into waterways. Organic low phosphorus fertilizers don’t lead to such pollution, but a top organic fertilizer that is rich in phosphorus might be more than the waterways can handle. The nutrient-charged water suddenly becomes an elixir of life, resulting in an imbalance of the local ecosystem.

The unnaturally high quantities of phosphorus present in the water cause incredible levels of growth in underwater plant life, and can lead to large algae blooms. While all that phosphorus can really help your organic gardening, it can damage the local environment through a process known as eutrophication. The water becomes murky and the increased levels of decaying plant life can even kill off fish populations. This is why the best organic fertilizer today is often seen as one that has little or no phosphorus. Choosing organic low phosphorus fertilizers is usually the responsible thing to do for the environment.

In the past, many soils contained less than ideal amounts of phosphorus, which often meant that yields from organic gardening or organic farming were often insufficient. High-phosphorus natural fertilizer became increasingly popular, especially in the realm of organic gardening for use with bulbs planted in the fall, such as lilies and daffodil. Individuals involved in organic farming found high-phosphorus natural fertilizer beneficial as well for fall-planted or flowering crops.

The top organic fertilizer was always one which had high concentrations of phosphorus, but the repeated use of such fertilizers resulted in permanently higher levels of phosphorus in the soil. With so much phosphorus already present, introducing more with some of the best organic fertilizer does nothing to help your plants, and can lead to dangerous runoffs in heavy rain. Thus, today, the best organic fertilizer is one which contains lower levels of phosphorus, allowing plants to rely on the phosphorus already present in the soil. Organic low phosphorus fertilizers are becoming much more popular.

Of course, while many soils already contain all the phosphorus the plants in your organic farming or organic gardening operation require (an Auburn University soil test study found that roughly 50% of Alabama gardens contain as much or more phosphorus than they need), this is not always the case.

Sometimes organic low phosphorus fertilizers are the right choice for your farm or garden and the local environment, but sometimes choosing a top organic fertilizer that contains a higher percentage is actually the right choice. Contact your state agricultural experts to purchase an accurate soil test before you order our organic low phosphorus fertilizers—too much phosphorus is bad for waterways, but too little is bad for your organic gardening or organic farming.

If you run an organic farming operation, call us to order custom blends of our top organic fertilizer for your soil and crops. We talk to organic farming professionals every day and our experience representatives can answer all your questions. If you practice organic gardening, purchase our best organic fertilizer online or select one of our more phosphorus-rich natural fertilizers if your test results conclude that your soil needs it.

Organic low phosphorus fertilizers are always the right choice if you live near a lake or stream, or if your test results indicate a sufficient level of phosphorus in the soil. If that’s the case, you need to purchase the best organic fertilizer with the lowest phosphorus available.

Determining how much phosphorus a particular natural fertilizer contains is much easier than you might think. When shopping for the best organic fertilizer for your organic gardening needs, choose a natural fertilizer and look closely at the bag it comes in. Every bag of fertilizer comes with a three numbers printed on its packaging, usually following a structure like 4-4-4.

Each of these numbers corresponds to the percentage of the fertilizer that is made up of a particular element. The left number is nitrogen, the middle number is phosphorus, and the number on the right is the percentage of potassium. The middle number is the one you have to pay attention to here. Organic low phosphorus fertilizers will have a proportion of phosphorus equal to or less than 3%, with the best organic fertilizer containing as little as 1 or 0%.

Whether you are organic gardening or organic farming, using our natural fertilizer is the best choice for both your plants and the environment. Among organic low phosphorus fertilizers, ours is consistently ranked a top organic fertilizer, and considered by many even the best organic fertilizer available.

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