How Much Do You Know about Fertilizer?
How much do you know about fertilizer? Fertilizer is a substance or compound that is added to soil to improve growth and yield of plants. They can be organic and inorganic.
At first, they are used by ancient farmers. Its technology is developed rapidly since the chemical needs of growing plants have been discovered. Modern synthetic fertilizers or chemical fertilizers are composed mainly ofnitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium compounds with secondary nutrients. The use of chemical fertilizers has significantly improved the quality and quantity of the food available in this contemporary of era, even though their use for long-term is debated heatedly by environmentalists.
So, how much do you know about fertilizer? The analysis below will tell you further about the most important elements:
- Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen – They are available from air and water in plentiful supply.
- Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium (a.k.a. potash) – These are the three macronutrients or elements that you find in most packaged fertilizers.
- Sulphur, calcium, and magnesium – They are secondary nutrients.
- Boron, cobalt, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum and zinc – They are micronutrients.However, the most important elements, which are needed a lot in the largest quantity by a plant, are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are considered as crucial as they are essential for these basic building blocks. For instance:
- Each amino acid contains nitrogen.
- Each molecule makes up every cell membrane that contains phosphorous (the membrane molecules are called phospholipids), and so does every molecule of ATP (the main energy source of all cells).
- Potassium consists of 1 percent to 2 percent of the weight of any plant. As one of the ions in cells, it is vital to metabolism.
Therefore, without nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, the growth of plant is simply stagnant because it fails to make the pieces that it needs. If any mentioned macronutrients are missing or difficult to obtain from the soil, growth rate for the plant will be limited. In nature, the nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium are often found from the decayed plants that are died. For nitrogen, the nitrogen cycle from dead to living plants is often the only source of nitrogen in the soil.
To make plants grow faster, what you need to do is to supply the elements that the plants need in readily available forms. How much do you know about fertilizer? The numbers on a bag of chemical fertilizer will tell you about the percentages of available nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium that are found in the bag. Hence, it is suggested that 12-8-10 fertilizer has 12-percent nitrogen, 8-percent phosphorous and 10-percent potassium.
In short, as living organisms, plants are made up of cells. Within these cells, numerous metabolic chemical reactions are occurred that have the responsibility for growth and reproduction. Since plants do not consume food like animals, they rely heavily on nutrients in the soil with the basic chemicals for these metabolic reactions. Their supply in soil is limited, however, when plants are harvested, they will dwindle, causing a reduction in the quality and yield of plants.