Do Your Plants Know the Difference Between Organic and Inorganic Fertilizers?

While perusing my local hydro store last week I picked up a pamphlet from Fox Farm listing their entire lineup of nutrients/soils. While flipping through I came to a page titled "Do your plants know the difference between organic and inorganic fertilizers" and thought I would share it with the community. This is a direct transcription...

Do Your Plants Know The Difference Between Organic and Inorganic Fertilizers?

"Organic fertilizers come directly from nature. For example, our Peace of Mind and Happy Frog fertilizers are made up of ingredients like alfalfa meal, bat guano, and bone meal. Big Bloom, our liquid plant food, contains earthworm castings and Norwegian kelp. And when you dig around in our all natural potting soil, Ocean Forest, you'll find composted forest humus, peat moss, and marine ingredients like crab meal.

When you use organic products in your garden, you are providing the finest ingredients nature has to offer, harvested from all over the globe. These nutrients may be released more slowly, but they'll last longer, too. Because the ingredients are all natural, they provide a rich, well-balanced meal to plants--one that is packed with important, but often overlooked, micronutrients.

Some inorganic fertilizers are simply naturally-occurring minerals that have been treated to make them easier for plants to use. Others may be manufactured in a laboratory. There are a variety of FoxFarm products that contain inorganic ingredients, such as Grow Big, Tiger Bloom, American Pride, Marine Cuisine, Open Sesame, Beastie Bloomz and Cha Ching. When it comes to inorganic fertilizers, quality matters. FoxFarm chooses only the finest ingredients for its family of fertilizers that deliver optimal nutrition for each stage of a plant's growth.

Some people say that the plants cannot tell the difference between an organic and inorganic fertilizer, but the soil can. Remember, soil is alive. It's teeming with microbes, decaying leaves, tiny insects--all the very life that makes plants grow. Organic fertilizers add food to that rich mix. On the other hand, an inorganic mineral fertilizer can give your garden a boost in the same way that concentrated multivitamin can give you the extra nutrition you need. What matters most is that everything you feed your garden must be carefully balanced to deliver the nutrition plants need while avoiding the buildup of salts and other toxins."

What's the Big Deal About Salt?

"Think about the last time you walked through a forest. It was probably cool and damp, no matter what the weather was like when you left your house. That's because trees and other plants are giant water pumps. Water moves through the roots, travels through the stems and leaves, and gets released into the air through a remarkable process known as transpiration. A single maple tree can transpire up to 58 gallons of water per hour. Even an ordinary tomato plant transpires 30 gallons during a growing season.

Water, then, is critical to a plants well-being. Too much salt in the soil can inhibit what we call a plant's "osmotic potential"--it's ability to take up water. just as salty food can make a person thirsty, salty soil can dehydrate a plant. Cheap, poor-quality synthetic fertilizers can create salt build-up in the soil that can cause your garden more harm than good."

Nothing too earth-shattering, but it gives some perspective on the organic/inorganic debate.

Bump...feel free to comment...

uhmmm! yeaaaaaah!

Good read. I learned about osmosis, transpiration and its realtionship with the plant years ago, but still a good read.

i look at it like working out! what do you think feels better , working out naturaly for a long period of time or purchasing some steroids and joining the early heart-attack club? i mean! when you think about it its not realy whats good for the plant its more about whats good for the body & soul

thats a pretty interesting take on it...but I think it is more like taking nutritional supplements--a protein shake, for example--than steroids. If someone is working out and not taking supplements, just eating right, they'll be fit and healthy. But if they drink 2 protein shakes a day and work out, they'll build more muscle mass because they have more of the nutrients required in their system.

Jerry Garcia said:

thats a pretty interesting take on it...but I think it is more like taking nutritional supplements--a protein shake, for example--than steroids. If someone is working out and not taking supplements, just eating right, they'll be fit and healthy. But if they drink 2 protein shakes a day and work out, they'll build more muscle mass because they have more of the nutrients required in their system.

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hmmm,,,, good point! but the point of organics is to make the soil as fertile as possible, but with chemicals , its more of a quick fix thing if your soil is fucked! remember yourself or sombody else is going to be ingesting this shit, and maybe on a large scale this could be very harmfull??? so id rather stick with the big O ( organic ) lol

I know one thing, when I got my plants out in their home july 1st they sure seem like they know the difference as they went on a major grow spurt, couldnt even recognize em. I know the difference too as I will feel great about smoking my organic stuff, when I buy I never know.

Yes.... Feed the soil and let it feed your plants........ Organics are best...... more well rounded and complete.
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Chem ferts are just junk food for plants..... Chem ferts can make them fat quickly, but have you ever known a really healthy fat kid ??? Plants fed only chem ferts come under attack from bugs & mold more often....(bad).... since they attack the plants with the weakest immue systems first - aka - chem fert fed plants....
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Plus chem ferts kill micro-life in the soil (bad), nute burn plants more easily (bad), have dyes in them (bad) and wash out of soil quickly and into ground water, streams, lakes...etc.. (bad).
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Stick with nature.... aka - Organics..... oR you'll be smoking some chemically rendered, petroleum waste byproducts & dye.....Yuck....
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Surely no one thinks Miracle Grow is good for them right ? Let's hope not......
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Your teacher was right.... You are what you eat & smoke.........
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Keep it Real....Organic...... cause chemicals are for cleaning your toilet......
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Great stuff...looks like we've got lots of proponents of Organic growing around here...and rightly so.

Is anyone going to defend chemical fertilizers? I know my hydro shop has a wall full of fertilizers, and I'm pretty sure most of them aren't organic...surely someone has grown with both...

Ohsogreen said:

Yes.... Feed the soil and let it feed your plants........ Organics are best...... more well rounded and complete.
.
Chem ferts are just junk food for plants..... Chem ferts can make them fat quickly, but have you ever known a really healthy fat kid ??? Plants fed only chem ferts come under attack from bugs & mold more often....(bad).... since they attack the plants with the weakest immue systems first - aka - chem fert fed plants....
.
Plus chem ferts kill micro-life in the soil (bad), nute burn plants more easily (bad), have dyes in them (bad) and wash out of soil quickly and into ground water, streams, lakes...etc.. (bad).
.
Stick with nature.... aka - Organics..... oR you'll be smoking some chemically rendered, petroleum waste byproducts & dye.....Yuck....
.
Surely no one thinks Miracle Grow is good for them right ? Let's hope not......
.
Your teacher was right.... You are what you eat & smoke.........
.
Keep it Real....Organic...... cause chemicals are for cleaning your toilet......
.
.

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As usual, I agree with what most/all of what OhSo said. This pretty much backs up what he says but in a slightly different light.

First, I'm goin' to preface by saying that in college we (the bio dept, and the plant ppl in particular) grew a lot of nice plants of many different species using the chemical ferts.

That being said, all of us had to learn that it's 1. easy to over-fert with the chem ferts. Many plants got wrecked when this happened. Kids shoulda went by the procedure more carefully, or started with a lesser dose. 2. When it comes to something you're eating (smoking), there's a different level of over-fert that affects taste. It was a shame when one kid grew a banana tree w/ too high of a metal content.

IMO, I hated the pain in the ass pH issues that I always ran into with chemical soup growing.

It's way easier to wreck a plant using chemical soup as its food. Even if one is skilled in the ways of chemical soup growing, its really easy to have salt built up in your growing medium. Ever flush a chem plant and still get a nasty taste? Yeah, well when you do you'll be pissed enough to go buy good food for your plants...you know, stuff that isn't some green/blue magic powder or liquid.

I got fuckin' sick of dumping the salty peat, before I got smart and learned how to treat that salty shit. Now I do organic "soil" recycling and not only does it save money, but it saves me aggravation.

Jerry Garcia said:

thats a pretty interesting take on it...but I think it is more like taking nutritional supplements--a protein shake, for example--than steroids. If someone is working out and not taking supplements, just eating right, they'll be fit and healthy. But if they drink 2 protein shakes a day and work out, they'll build more muscle mass because they have more of the nutrients required in their system.

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thats why there is natural strroids in food like seaweed..and gang of protiens

as u know the diffrence between nite and day.....organics work with the plant ,,,,chemicals in my opinion just make the plant work

My plants don't know SHIT !!!!

Plants cannot tell the difference. It's all NPK to them. It may be handled differently by the plant because of concentration, but that's it. Follow the directions for either and you will get about the same result.

CrackerJax said:

Plants cannot tell the difference. It's all NPK to them. It may be handled differently by the plant because of concentration, but that's it. Follow the directions for either and you will get about the same result.

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That is more or less what I figured.

I just wonder how much organic vs. inorganic affects the taste and potency. Maybe I'll try a side by side comparison grow of a couple clones and test it out sometime...

organic you get a more natural earthy taste the way i like my herb /////inorganic it will still be a high grade smoke but just doesnt have that taste like it grew by itself somwhere u know wat i mean but thats why we flush our plants before harvest.....

Just wanted to bump this thread a little...

I've been using Blue Mountain Organics' fertilizers for the past couple months and am VERY pleased thus far.

Considering that most everything you eat comes from chemical fertilizers.... the "taste" issue is a myth.

Organics are weaker and slower. That's why farmers prefer chemical fert's. You will have a good grow with both kinds of fert's if you do it correctly.

Just rememeber you can burn ur plants with organics... it just takes a long time to show up. Most ppl forget about the overload a month later and can't figure out what happened. Chem fert lets you know right away.