The intention of irrigation with organic fertilizers is for the intent of producing soils with moisture with adequate nutrients, adequate aeration and biological activity, while minimizing losses associated with soil erosion.
Organic fertilizers are generally better for the overall health of your garden and lawn environment and the plants that inhabit that space than their chemically produced counterparts.
Given the possible benefits these fertilizers can provide, is it possible for them to actually kill the science grass or plant type?
Burning from organic fertilizer is far less aggressive than typical and typical applications delivered in comparison to using chemical fertilizers.
Organic fertilizers dissolve and release into plant roots over a longer time period than chemical fertilizers. But excess application organic fertilizers can burn the lawn or garden just as fast as chemical fertilizers, especially with delicate crops.
Excess application of organic fertilizers will reduce a plants ability to process the nutrients received.
Fertilization salts will accumulate from either chemical or organic fertilizers and deplete water available from plant roots and plant tissues, and cause further damage.
This precpetation occurs mainly because the soil cannot absorb the proper amount of water, so the foliage leaves turn yellow or brown, and dies so the plant dies, eventually.
How To Use Organic Fertilizers Properly To Prevent Fertilizer Burn?
Organic fertilizers work well in gardens and landscapes, yet one must monitor fertilizer feeding cycles just like monitoring human feeding cycles, to ensure good eating habits.
Some home gardeners tend to apply organic fertilizers inappropriately, resulting in disastrous effects.
1. Don’t Apply Too Much Fertilizer
Gardening wisdom for all gardeners to remember is that more doesn’t always mean better, especially when feeding any fertilizer or lawn and garden product.
Feeding a plant with organic fertilizers at more than the plant’s needs will make the plant burn quickly and impact the environment.
The main management practice to avoid overfeeding your plant/lawn is developing a nutrient management strategy based on annual soil tests and realistic crop yield goals.
Annual soil tests and crop yield goals tells you how much nutrient content your soil contains.
Then remove anything that’s in the soil the total crop nutrient needs to find out how much is needed.
After knowing how much additional N, P, and K is needed, apply fertilizer to each plant based on needs.
More fertilizer does not equal better results, or you can damage or kill your plant/lawn.
The amount of organic fertilizer you put down will also depend on its strength and you can read the package instructions for recommendations or suggested fertilizer application rates.
If there is no recommended application rate for bed preparation in a garden or lawn, you can try 2.3 kg (5 lb.) per ten square meter application rate.
This application rate would be sufficient for a garden bed one meter wide by just over nine meters long, or forty feet in wide and thirty feet long.
2. Timing Is Everything
Fertilize only when necessary: Many home growers believe that all plants occasionally need feeding. But while we now know feeding can be overdone, you should also check your soil to ensure it actually needs fertilizing in the first place.
Some experts recommend fertilizing every three to four weeks for plants growing in organic soil that is rich in organic matter.
As we think about frequency:
- Fertilizing a little bit at a time and at regular intervals is better than fertilizing in one large dose all at once.
- Use only half to one-quarter of the amount recommended on the fertilizer’s label. Always better to use too little, not too much.
Before fertilizing, do your due diligence on the plants you are fertilizing.
Different plants require different formulations and can be sensitive to certain formulations.
3. Follow Instructions
Are you following the directions?
Clearly, this is primarily for commercial organic fertilizers.
In most cases, fertilizer burn can be avoided with nothing more than reading the label on your fertilizer products and using the exact recommendations on the label.
Labels on reputable products should provide the recommended application rates, as well as recommendations for methods of application, and conditions that might cause damage to your lawn, landscape plants, etc.
Even more important: in almost all cases, you’ll likely have to dilute your product prior to application, and the label will most probably state that you need to water your plants again after application of the fertilizer. If you ignore these details, you are probably going to have problems.
4. Don’t Use Fresh Homemade Organic Fertilizer
Do not apply fresh manure to your plants.
There is too much nitrogen in fresh manure, which is a major contributor to fertilizer burn.
Nitrogen breaks down over a period of time; therefore, manure should be aged a minimum of three months prior to application.
5. Do Not Use Organic Fertilizer That Contains Too Much Nitrogen
The best strategy to manage fertilizer burn is knowing how much nitrogen is in the products you use.
Any nutrient will cause fertilizer burn, but nitrogen is the nutrient most commonly associated with fertilizer burn.
This is especially true if you are mixing your natural fertilizers yourself, which you often will do for one meal or another, and not knowing the detailed ingredient list or ratios on the label.
It will help to know what fertilizers contain nitrogen in the first place so that you will not over-apply. It is easy to apply two or three natural products every time.
After all they each contain something that they give to the soil (potassium or calcium for example) without realizing they also provide one whopper of a dose of nitrogen all at the same time.
Examples of natural products are CottonSeed meal; Alfalfa meal; manure of any kind; Blood meal; Seaweed emulsions.
This means you might over-do, the nitrogen and not realize it if you apply two or more of these to your soils in habit of your fertilizing.
What you buy will depend on what the local gardening stores sell.
NPK
N-P-K ratings can vary widely from region to region, but in general you always want to make sure the N-P-K ratio is in a somewhat balanced ratio (N = P = K); the all-purpose organic fertilizer I use is an example of 4-6-4.
If you see fertilizer with numbers that may even equal to over fifteen, or if any of the N-P-K number is even over eight, it seems to probably not be organic fertilizer even if the label states it is.
Use a fertilizer with too much nitrogen and it will affect a plants’ cellular respiration and create fertilizer burn.
From experience: To get the nitrogen that is actually in the fertilizer bag, you can take the weight of the fertilizer and /multiply by the nitrogen percentage (found in the front of the bag, typically the first number in the N-P-K designation). This will give you the number of pounds of nitrogen in the bag.
6. Use Slow-Release Fertilizer
Organic fertilizers typically denote that the fertilizer was inherently derived from natural resources, such as animals, plants, and minerals, rather than was synthesized or produced in a laboratory.
The national standards for producing and selling organic fertilizers are complicated, providing companies the opportunity to sell organic fertilizers that do not truly incorporate only benign, natural materials you would want to apply to your garden.
As noted in Organic Gardening, unless you trust where you buy the organic fertilizer or you make your own bone meal, compost, or manure from animals that were organically raised, you cannot be sure that commercial fertilizers and other inputs purported to be organic are truly organic.
When buying commercially made organic fertilizers, look for ones with words like natural organic, low analysis, or slow-release.
If you can’t find any organic products specified that way, go with a product that has an NPK analysis that is less than 15.
The slow-release fertilizer will help limit the chance of fertilizer burn with its slow release of the salts into the soil system, rather than all at once.
7. Uneven Fertilizer Application
To have your lawn or garden grow well, ensure that you evenly and carefully spread the fertilizers regularly on the surface of the soil.
Bat guano, a natural popular fertilizer, is extremely hot and can quickly burn the plants if not applied correctly.
If the product is not even, you can expect to see brown patches on your plants or areas of dry grass in your lawn.
Good application techniques will help you maintain and keep the health of your lawn.
Organic fertilizers can be applied in different ways to stop burn:
Broadcast Before Planting
When preparing soil for planting, spread fertilizer on top of the bed before tilling into the soil. When making rows, the correct amount of fertilizer is evenly spread over the garden and mixed through the soil to a depth of approximately 3 to 4 inches.
This method is the least likely to cause plant burn and is generally recommended for home gardeners.
Band or Row Applications: A band of fertilizer is placed beside the row before planting. You must be careful not to allow the roots to touch the fertilizer band as the fertilizer can kill the plants.
Final Thoughts
Fertilizer burn can occur in both organic and synthetic fertilizers; however, organic fertilizers do not tend to burn as much as synthetic fertilizers.
When applied appropriately, organic fertilizers can be used without posing any harm to the plants, any harm to the grass, and/or harm to the environment.
Since the nutrients are absorbed the same whether they come from organic or inorganic fertilizer, this may lead a gardener to question if it really matters if it is organic or not.
After all, what is important is that it works now and makes the garden look good, right?
The answer is yes and no.
Organic gardening looks at the entire health of the plants/grass and the soil, so while a synthetic fertilizer may work well today, organic fertilizers will always be more beneficial for the garden’s health tomorrow.