Does Synthetic Fertilizer Kill Soil Microbes? The answer will surprise you.

does fertilizer kill microbes I hear this all the time and I read it all over the Internet it's not true now let's clarify what we're talking about here when to ask the question does fertilizer kill microbes what we're really talking about is synthetic fertilizer or chemical fertilizer there is also such a thing as organic fertilizer organic fertilizer includes things like manure and compulse the problem here is that people have a big fear of chemicals when they're told that chemicals kill microbes it's very easy for them to believe it but it's not true and I'll prove it in this video to understand this we have to understand what happens to fertilizer both synthetic and organic so let's take synthetic first when I put that on the ground and I water it in or it rains that solid chemical dissolves in the water and turns into ions now ions is just a fancy name for molecule so it turns into molecules of magnesium calcium phosphate nitrogen all those nutrients that you hear about that plants need those nutrients are available immediately as soon as it rains as soon as that material gets wet and plants are able to absorb them well microbes are just like plants they also need those nutrients in fact animals you and me we all need the same nutrients it's just that we'd rather bite down on a big steak or a lasagna dish plants and microbes have trouble eating that big stuff so they prefer the nutrients as single atom all right well what happens when I put organic fertilizer on the soil so compost manure fish heads kelp extract all those things well most of that material is tied up in big molecules so plants actually can't use it like if I take a banana peel and I drop it on the ground right beside a plant the plant starves to death it can't use organic fertilizers until they're converted and what happens is a microbes come along and they start breaking up these large banana peels into smaller and smaller pieces until it releases the ion nitrate phosphate calcium Etc only then can plants use the nutrients so what's the difference between the ions from organic fertilizer and those from synthetic absolutely nothing they're identical a nitrate molecule from a bag of synthetic fertilizer is identical to the nitrate that comes out of that banana peel plants can't tell a difference microbes can't tell a difference and Labs can't tell the difference because they're absolutely the same now scientists have known this for hundreds of years this isn't new stuff here now let me ask you a question if both types of fertilizer releas identical molecules of nitrate how is it that one is toxic to microbes and the other is not it's simply can't be both of them are food for micro and plants now if we apply it in huge amounts it harms both microbes and plants right when you fertilize your lawn you put too much on you can kill your grass but that's only the case where you add too much it's too much food too fast for these organisms to absorb if you put synthetic fertilizer on soil in a reasonable amount you do not harm microbes in fact the opposite happen they actually grow I'll get to that in a second but before I do let's have a look at the science what do scientific studies show us here's a study out of the journal plants and dated 2021 so it's recent work they looked at several other studies and they concluded that they all pretty much agree on this and this is what they said that mineral fertilizers that's synthetic fertilizer stimulates the growth of ammonifying and nitrifying microorganism as well as the proliferation of for forming bacteria and stimulates the mineralization of crop residues what they said there was that the population of microbes actually goes up at least in these specific category here's another study this is from the Journal of agronomy data 2010 P this study applied organic fertilizer and synthetic fertilizer to some fields and they took soil samples every month for 2 years and analyzed them to see how the microbes were affected in this first chart they're looking at funi the first bar is control the second one is organic fertilizer and the third is synthetic fertilizer you can see that both types of fertilizer increase the number of fungi in the soil they also looked at the bacteria in the soil and this is the chart for bacteria the control on the left organic in the middle and synthetic on the right organic increased the amount of bacteria it also shows a possible slight increase in bacteria but those letters above the bars indicate whether this is statistically significant and for bacteria it wasn't what is important here is that the study showed no decrease in microbes and if any thing some of them increased in number and that's precisely what we find when you go out and fertilize a farmer's field you see a sudden boost in micr population and this chart shows you what it looks like we're going along with a fairly steady amount of microbes and then we add some fertilizer fertilizer is food for microbes particularly the nitrogen what happens well they Prosper they start dividing you get more of them and you see a sudden spike in the number microbes in the soil and then they reach a point where most of the food is gone so they start dying off now initially some of those dead microbes become food for the living microbes but eventually all that food gets used up and then the population comes back down and after this cycle of added food the population is the same as it was before the science on this is very clear in moderate amounts synthetic fertilizer does not harm micr now organic fertilizer is better and I actually promote organic fertilizer in most of my videos I'd much rather use manure and compost but there are places when synthetic is better it's important to understand these meths of fertilizer what about long-term effects well the science has shown that over a long period of time if we use a lot of synthetic fertilizer we actually do see a change in the population of microbes some micro cres do better and they increase in number While others they don't do quite so well and they decrease in number part of this effect is due to changes in PH so when we're using synthetic fertilizer it does tend to change the pH of the soil both ammonium and Ura will lower the ph and so that pH affects microbes indirectly so over time there's a shift in the population but you don't see a dramatic drop in the number of microbes if you'd like to learn more about fertilizer myths have a look at this video right here and if you're using a balanced fertilizer something like a 101010 you shouldn't be and this video over here will explain why a 10110 is always the wrong fertilizer happy gardening

Channel: Garden Fundamentals

Views: 6,142

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Id: NzQ69Pb7uMI

Length: 7min 46sec (466 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 27 2024