Commercial Organic Fertilizer

Organic gardening has become agricultural trend in which a growing number of people are composting manure in their backyards. The problem is, not all organic home gardeners have a farmer’s access to manure or even a backyard where they can do the composting. To satisfy this growing demand, manufacturers have developed commercial organic fertilizers.

Commercial organic fertilizers have made it possible anyone who has little or no access to organic dumps to be able to treat their soils without having to use synthetic or chemical fertilizers. Fortunately, commercial organic fertilizers are now widely available. You can even purchase commercial organic fertilizers by the bucketful from the country since there are many local governments now sponsoring composting projects at landfills.

What you should look for when you purchase commercial organic fertilizers.

The first thing you need to do before buying a commercial organic fertilizer is to check the N-P-K number listings on the label. N-P-K stands for Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium respectively. These three commercial organic fertilizer ingredients are the three major nutrients that help plants grow.

You will know whether or not the fertilizer bag is commercial organic fertilizer or not by checking if any of the numbers of the N-P-K ratio are higher than eight, or when all three when summed up, total more than fifteen. If they do, then you have a synthetic fertilizer and not the commercial fertilizer that you're searching for. Always remember that when you're dealing with commercial organic fertilizers, the N-P-K ratio may not be as high as you're used to using chemical fertilizers.

The second thing to do is to scan the list of ingredients used in the commercial organic fertilizer — ammonium, muriate, urea, nitrate, phosphoric or superphosphate — are words you do not want to see on the label of your bag of commercial organic fertilizer.

Other than those ingredients, you should also be careful with commercial organic fertilizers that contains cottonseed meal and leather tankage. These products are perfectly natural and it should make complete sense to use them in commercial organic fertilizers. The only problem is they may contain some harmful residues that arn't not good for an organic garden.

The instructions on the label of your commercial organic fertilizers are there for a good reason, so follow the steps specified for applying the commercial organic fertilizer.

And before going all out, be sure you've tested your soil first for its organic matter level. Most commercial organic fertilizers don't add to the organic matter in your soil (unless the commercial organic fertilizer you've bought is made from composted manure).

When buying commercial organic fertilizers, it's important that you never take the word “organic” at face value. Driven by the need to making higher sales and profits, too many companies have succumbed to just adding tiny bits of organic materials, like fish meal or seaweed, into their synthetic nutrients and then label them commercial organic fertilizers. It's also equally important that you don't take the word of the sales guy in your local garden center. Look into the bag of commercial organic fertilizer and judge for yourself.