General Information About Fertilizers

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

The golden rules of fertility

Gardeners often wonder: what fertilizers to buy? How to choose the right food for plants to get a good harvest? Without certain knowledge, it is impossible to randomly guess what the soil and plants need. We will tell you how to choose and correctly apply organic and mineral fertilizers.

Farmers turned their attention to fertilizers that increase the yield about 2 thousand years ago. They noticed that it was impossible to grow a good harvest on old arable lands without them. But they did not yet know what the plants eat?

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It took a long time, and the German chemist Justus Liebig in 1840 proved that the source of plant nutrition is the mineral salts contained in the soil.

It is now known for sure that organic and mineral fertilizers can significantly increase plant productivity, improve the quality of agricultural products, cope with drought and unfavorable wintering conditions.

The choice of fertilizers on the Russian market is now very extensive, and in order to help you make this choice, we will tell you about the basic rules for using fertilizers.

According to the teachings of V. I. Vernadsky, in the ecosystem between soil, plants and fertilizers, there is a constant exchange of nutrients. Plants from this cycle strive to extract the required amount of elements, while reducing the reserves of these elements in the soil, lowering its fertility. To prevent this from happening, regular application of nutrients to the soil in the form of fertilizers is required.

We have already talked in detail about how to increase soil fertility (see the article "Caring for the soil: ten most common mistakes made by gardeners and gardeners. Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.").

In the same article, we will talk about how to properly apply fertilizers.

It is now known that more than 77 elements included in the periodic table are involved in the formation of soil fertility and plant yield, of which 18 are absolutely necessary for plants - plants cannot live without them. These are carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, sulfur, chlorine, calcium, boron, iron, manganese, copper, zinc, molybdenum, cobalt and iodine.

To follow any rule means to answer exactly four questions:

- What fertilizers should be applied and how much?

- When to deposit?

- How to deposit?

The first two questions are: What and when to fertilize? - are solved based on the specifics of each fertilizer, the requirements and characteristics of the cultivated crop, and the questions: Where and how? - based on soil and climatic conditions and plant agrotechnology.

It must be remembered that plants do not feed directly on fertilizers. Fertilizers are prepared to fertilize the soil. After being introduced into the soil, they undergo a complex “culinary treatment”, as a result of which the soil is enriched with nutrients and becomes fertile. Only after this do the plants begin to feed on nutrients from the soil. Therefore, fertilizers are made in such a way that, once in the soil, they become a source of plant nutrition in the shortest possible time.

Soil, as you know, emerged from rocks as a result of a constantly occurring centuries-old process. Crystalline rocks in nature under the influence of precipitation, temperature fluctuations, wind and sun were destroyed, water-soluble compounds appeared - nutrients that made it possible for plants and microorganisms to settle, grow, and develop.

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Plants, as pioneers, having received mineral food and energy from the sun, began to convert non-living mineral salts into living organic matter. This is how life and soil appeared. Dying plants and microorganisms began to enrich the upper layer of the earth with organic matter, during the decomposition of which fulvic acids and dark-colored humic compounds appeared, which formed negatively charged particles - colloids with clay minerals.

They were able to keep mineral salts from washing out and accumulate them in the upper horizon of the earth, thus transforming this layer into fertile soil. As a result, nutrients began to accumulate in the soil, and the soil became more and more fertile. This process lasted hundreds of thousands of years.

And what we call soil fertility in everyday life is its ability to provide plants with nutrients, optimal physicochemical and acid-base parameters, beneficial microorganisms, carbon dioxide, water and oxygen.

Read the next part. The specificity of various fertilizers →

Gennady Vasyaev, Associate Professor, Chief Specialist of the

North -West Regional Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, [email protected]

Olga Vasyaeva, amateur gardener

Photo by E. Valentinova