Top 6 Worst and 6 Best Garden Fertilizers

Alright, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, today we have another exciting episode for you and this is going to be a quick style episode because I know a lot of you guys like things quick, even in the bedroom. So anyways, got a quick video here for you. So we're going to really quickly get into the top six worst fertilizers that you shouldn't use in your garden and we're going to get into the top six fertilizers that in my opinion you should use in your garden. So without further ado, let's just go ahead and get into the list. Number one fertilizer that you should not use in your garden are synthetic fertilizers. You know, if you go to the local store and you see something like, you know, Miracle Crapper, it says something else, Miracle something. Or like you go down to a feed store and they have 10-10-10, 15-15-15, you know, and it has all these ingredients that look like chemical names, right. We don't want to be using those synthetic fertilizers. I mean, there's many reasons for this. I'll just get into a few of my top reasons. Number one, they reduce the water holding capacity of the soil. So literally it makes the soil poor and, and not good, right. It's not good. You know, another thing is that when you're buying this big bag of fertilizer, you're paying some money and what you don't realize is that it is water soluble. So while some of the fertilizer, maybe like 10 percent will reach the root zone and reach the plant and go in to the plants and allow them to grow, you know, up to 90 percent could just be washed away into the ground water, you know, run down rivers, go to create, you know, dead zones in the, in the gulf, all this kind of stuff, you know. So most of it runs away. So it's not a good deal, in my opinion. Another reason why you don't want to buy synthetic fertilizer is because in 2002, the EPA started allowing companies to basically put in toxic heavy metals into fertilizers without telling you guys and without any kind of labeling, you know. So we don't want excess heavy metals and, you know, in fertilizers, you know, in amounts that would not be normally found in nature. So when they add heavy metals and things into fertilizers, it's because they have a waste stream that companies need to get rid of. So one of the ways they could do this is by distributing it over large areas of land in small quantities. But I don't know about you, but I don't want any kind of heavy metals from industry in my fertilizers. That's just yet another reason why you shouldn't buy synthetic fertilizers. So last two reasons to not get synthetic fertilizers are because it lowers your plant's immunity. So it actually makes your plants, you know, weak and sick and diseased. It's like if you eat a really poor diet and you're like a flabby weakling and you're not nice and strong, right. That's what you're doing to your plants when you're feeding them the inappropriate food. And that's what many Americans do on a daily basis by not eating the proper foods either. So don't do that to your plants and don't do that to yourselves. The final reason why I don't believe anybody should use synthetic fertilizers is because you can burn your plants with synthetic fertilizers. If you put too much synthetic fertilizers on your plants, it will kill your plants. That's definitely not a good thing. So I don't want you guys to, you know, do things that will burn your plants because that means you're not going to be gardening and you're not going to be growing your food. So it's harder to mess up with compost. I mean there's virtually no amount of compost you could put on that would be too much that would negatively affect your plants in any major way. The second fertilizer that I believe you guys should not be using in your garden are animal manures. Now if you get a trusted source of animal manure that's different, you know, but the majority of the animal manures that are being sold in bags at your feed shops and you go and get animal manure at a local place, right, it's from the animal agriculture industry. And you know, the manures in this day and age can have several problems. And this is why I don't like manures. Number one, contamination. So they can be contaminated with heavy metals because the food that's being grown for them are using what I talked about in the first part, synthetic fertilizers, which has heavy metals. So now the animals are eating heavy metal, you know, derived foods that have heavy metals in there because they're growing with the fertilizers. And then the animals get that with them and guess what? The animals bioaccumulate. That means, you know, whatever the animal eats, it starts storing up in its body, right, in its tissues. So now when you eat the animals or when you use its poo, it's going to also have contamination in there, which is really not good, you know. And I don't want the heavy metals or other contaminants such as, you know, drugs and antibiotics and all this stuff, you know, going into your guys' gardens. So the second reason why I don't like the animal manures is because you're really not getting what you pay for, right. Once you get fresh animal manure that's steaming right out of a cow's ass, right, it has good nutrition in there. Absolutely. I'm not going to debate that. But the problem is, as it's sitting there, as it's put in a bag, as it's transported, as it's, you know, set in open air, you know, the nutrients volatilize. So you could lose 50% of the 75% of nitrogen from the original manure or what was in there based on how long it's been sitting around. You could also lose some of the other major elements in there, you know, up to 50% or more of certain nutrients as it volatilizes. So it's really not a good way to feed your garden. So the major reason why I don't like the animal manures is because of the possible E. coli and other negative bacteria contamination that could be deadly for us, right. You know, and some of the outbreaks in industry when there's like E. coli on the spinach or on the cantaloupes and all this stuff, it's not because the cantaloupes have the E. coli, it's because there's raw manure either used on the crops or raw manure that got water leached over it and the water got washed off onto the crops and it basically contaminated the crops. So I don't want anybody in your family to lose their life due to E. coli. So that's why I do not advocate using any kind of manure, you know, product. So the third product that shouldn't be used as a fertilizer is bone meal. Now this is something that's very common in organic gardening. You go to the local garden shop, you pick up a bag of organic fertilizer and most likely it has a few things in there, bone meal, blood meal, and manure predominantly. Why? Because these things are super cheap. There's industries that basically create these things and they want to, it's a waste product and they want to get rid of them so they sell them super cheap and now other companies take it for really cheap, put it in a bag, put a nice fancy label on it, label it organic and then charge a ton of money for it and it's a waste product. So the bone meal, you know, there can be many problems with it. Number one, it can be toxic to your pets. So I have a cat and a dog and I don't want them getting hurt by eating too much bone meal and losing their life or something happening to them. Number two, just like with the manures, there can be problems with it, like there could be contamination of heavy metals or other diseases in there. You know, also if you do choose to use the bone meal, please use a dust mask, minimally any kind of fine particulate is not good to breathe, especially bone meal that may have certain diseases inside of it. The last two reasons why I don't like the bone meal is that it's not water-soluble and immediately available to your plants. So I mean, if you put it down and expect immediate results, that's not going to happen. It needs to break down over time, so be aware of that. And the final reason is because if used in excess, it can inhibit mycorrhizal fungi in your soil. Now to me, mycorrhizal fungi are very important. They colonize on the root zone and they help bring in nutrients into your plants and by using too much bone meal, this will inhibit their growth and inhibit them from taking up nutrients and getting them into your plants so you could have a luscious growth. So the fourth fertilizer that I would not use in my garden is blood meal. Much like the animal manure and the bone meal, predominantly that is sourced from the animal agriculture industry and it's a waste product of that industry, so it's a very cheap product to secure, produce, and then resell. And much like anything from the conventional animal agriculture industry in this day and age, things can be contaminated. So the blood can be contaminated. I mean, we know as humans that we don't want to get blood transfusion from a person with a disease because that could spread the disease to us. And much like when you're using blood meal, that can have disease contamination in there and that may make people sick. So I'm not a big fan of that. It is known as a high nitrogen fertilizer, which is a good thing, but we want to remember we don't really need that much nitrogen. Everybody always shoves down your face, we need nitrogen, nitrogen, nitrogen, and it's not about nitrogen, nitrogen, nitrogen. While nitrogen is an important nutrient, it's not everything and you don't want to have too much nitrogen because whether that's a synthetic nitrogen that could burn your plants, even blood meal can also burn your plants. So I want you guys to be safe when gardening. You could also have other contaminants of heavy metals and the disease as I mentioned. So the final reason why I'm not a big fan of the blood meal is because it can attract unwanted animals into your garden. Now you guys know that if you're swimming in the ocean and there's sharks, I guess there was a shark attack in Hawaii recently, if you go into the ocean and you have a cut and you're bleeding, the blood in the ocean will attract sharks and you might get eaten. And just like that, the blood meal in your garden may attract unwanted animals and bring them into your garden and usually those are the ones that are carnivorous and those are probably not ones you want in your garden, so I'm not a big fan of the blood meal. Now the next fertilizer that you guys shouldn't be using in my opinion is the biosolids, also known as sewer sludge. Now this is not the same as using humanure, say like I use my poop and compost that and compost and make my own human manure out of my poop or a trusted source. That's one thing, but the biosolids is different because it's basically the biosolids are what everybody flushes down their toilet, whatever goes down a drain in cities, and this could be really bad. People could be flushing drugs down the drain, they could be flushing paints and thinners and all these automotive wastes and all kinds of chemicals and all this stuff goes down the drain and then they create fertilizer out of that. So I'm not a big fan of that stuff and stay tuned for an upcoming episode where I'm going to film with JD specifically going into why biosolids are really probably not the best thing you can be putting in your garden. So they could be contaminated with bad bacteria and once again, the problem with the heavy metals. So the last fertilizer that I'm not a big fan of and I don't believe you guys should be using are basically GMO derived fertilizers. So what do I mean by that? Well you know, corn meal, alfalfa meal, soy meal are very common, even organic inputs that you could use to add to your soil to create more fertility. But the problem in this day and age is that now they are genetically modified. So now you have the remnants of genetically modified meals going into your soil or another one is canola meal. They also put this in animal foods, dog foods and even human foods. So I want to encourage you guys to get away from the GMO foods. I believe they're not healthy for us and the meals are not good for our gardens because I don't want to have anything to do with supporting an industry that is doing that kind of stuff. And by buying a genetically modified meal to put in your organic garden, you're supporting once again their waste stream, the waste product that comes from that industry that somebody's getting paid for that can encourage them to continue to make those products and get them out to people. So if you do want to use one of those meals, which I think are fine meals if they're organic but not the GMO version, go for it and do it. So while I did mention the top six fertilizers that I believe are the worst, I want to always encourage you guys to do your best. I try to not use any of these things to the best of my ability. Sometimes they sneak in in small amounts. But the majority of what I use are what I'm going to cover next in the top six fertilizers that you should be using in my opinion. And if I do use some of the other ones by mistake, by accident, or they're just in very small amounts, I'm not going to shoot myself for it. It's not about, things aren't about right and wrong, good and bad. We want to do the best we can. It's like a gradient. It's like a rainbow, like the colors of the rainbow. Try to get to the end of the rainbow and find that pot of gold. But even if you're not all the way there, that's better than being at the beginning of the rainbow. So I want you to move your way along. Like John, the only fertilizer I could get at my local store is that bone and blood meal stuff that's organic. Well, I would much rather have you guys use an organic product such as the bone or blood meal than the synthetic fertilizer, but I would also rather encourage you guys to make your own compost, which is even better than either of the other aforementioned materials. So anyways, without further ado, let's go ahead and get into my top six fertilizers that you guys should use. All right, number one, of course, I can't neglect the compost. So now I'm talking about the biologically active compost that's made thermally with heat. That's the kind of compost that you normally find in bags, in stores, and it's really widely available. You can make it at home yourself. So that's the top one because, you know, this is truly how plants feed other plants. You know, the leaves fall off my plants, off my trees. They go on the ground, they break down, they turn back into soil, and basically the plants feed themselves. I mean, in nature's system, and we've gotten so far removed from that. So take all your scraps from your garden and compost it to make further nutrition for your garden that came from the soil, right? Okay? So number two fertilizer you should use, very important, and most gardeners miss this, is the fungal-dominated compost. You know, while I did talk about the bacterial compost made with heat, the fungal-dominated compost is basically a pile of wood chips that just sits out for a couple of years, you know, one and a half to three years. You inoculate it with some mushrooms, king stropharia mushrooms are the mushroom that you should inoculate it with, and the mushrooms will slowly basically break down the wood chips and turn it into this really rich black gold that's rich in fungal activity. Most compost are rich in bacterial activity, and I want to encourage you guys to get some fungal activity from this black compost in there. One brand is California Humus, we'll throw a picture right there for you guys. And this is super important, you know, most, while there should be a balance of bacterial and fungal in your garden, I find too many gardens have too much bacterial activity and not enough fungal, and when you add the fungal, your plants will respond. So I made a video, I'll put a link down below, you know, where it says supersize your vegetables with wood chips and rock dust, and my friends there are just using basically fungal-dominated compost to grow huge vegetables, and I've never even grown dinosaur kale that big, so I'm still striving to get more fungal activity into my garden. Of course, the third thing, fertilizer that you should be using, in my opinion, is something like the rock dust. Now this is just not a rock powder or rock phosphate and all this stuff, what I mean by when I say rock dust is I mean a broad spectrum ground-up rock that has, you know, a wide variety of trace minerals, you know, something like green sand might have a couple dozen minerals in there or something like that, and then there's soil humage which might contain, you know, even more minerals, but what I really like is a wide spectrum rock dust, you know, such as something called the azomite, the guyagreen, glacial rock dust, you know, there's CBD mineral rock dust, there's accelerite, you know, there's all these different brands of horticultural grade rock dust that you can use to put trace minerals into your garden, you know, super important, up to 70 different trace minerals in your garden in nature's amount, so we're not trying to play God like synthetic fertilizers and just giving your plants maybe three main minerals with a handful of other ones, we're going to give the plant basically ground-up rocks which is what would have, you know, gave them nutrition a long time ago before we've destroyed the earth, right, so that's really another very important nutrient to add, and be sure to check my other videos on the rock dust. The fourth fertilizer that you guys should be using are worm castings, so think about it, if nature was healthy and you had a raised bed and you had a garden, you'd have tons of worms in there, worms go in there and they aerate the soil which is really good, but more importantly they take organic matter, they run it through their little bodies, if they have bodies, and they poop out worm castings which are basically supercharged plant foods. Now, not all worm castings are created equal because much like us, you are what you eat, the worm castings are no better than what the worm is eating and they're feeding worms a lot of things that make castings that are maybe not so good, so we want to feed the worms a varied diet and make sure to feed them things, you know, like crab shells and shrimp shells, the chitin-rich materials, things like insect frass, and things like cardboard along with other organic matter, fruit and vegetable scraps, and you can even feed them, you know, bacterial-dominated compost and run that through the worms to get even a richer product, so, you know, worm castings are really rich in not just nutrients, you know, which they have some nutrients, but they're really rich in the biology and we really want to get that biology back into the soil and, you know, compost and fungal-dominated compost have this biology as do the worm castings and it's super important. So the fifth fertilizer you guys should be using in your garden, in my opinion, is the compost tea. The compost tea is a really good way to supercharge your garden and get more biology in there because it's this biology that is missing, you know, when a soil is not alive, it's missing the biology, you know. In living soil like the raised bed soil here and a little teaspoon of this soil, this black rich soil that I got, right, there's more creatures in it than people on earth, right. So that's very important and most soils, if they're using synthetic fertilizers, right, they're killing off all this biology because the biology cannot thrive in that condition using those mineral salts, basically. So we want to really encourage the diversity and amount of microbes in there, in my opinion, the compost tea is an excellent way to do that. So I like to use the Boogie Brew compost tea, my favorite compost tea to feed the soil and also the leaves of my plants to give them the biology that are the workhorses that break down the organic matter in the soil to make it bioavailable for my plants so they could thrive. So the final fertilizer that I believe is one of the best fertilizers out there, in my opinion, are the seaweed based fertilizers. So whether that's a kelp meal or a soluble kelp, you know, there's many other different seaweed based fertilizers on the market as well. And they're amazing. I mean, not only for the trace minerals contained within them, because once again, you know, the rocks were on the land and they got ground down into dust and then the rains came and washed all this dust into the ocean and washed all the minerals in the ocean, so the ocean has a lot of minerals. And so the plants, the seaweeds that live in the ocean absorb these minerals, but not only do they have the minerals in there. They also have different kinds of plant hormones that can do amazing things in your garden to, you know, increase your plant growth and all this kind of stuff. So that'd probably be my final recommendation for you guys on one of the best fertilizers you could use in your garden are the seaweeds, including the kelp and other kind of seaweeds that are available. That's pretty much it. Those are the worst fertilizers, in my opinion, as well as the best fertilizers. Of course, there's a lot of other fertilizers that I could not use in this top six and worst six thing. You know, I like things like the biochar and I like soil zeolites and I like really organic things that you can just add to your soil to build fertility so that you guys could have the best plant growth. You know, we want to try to get away from things that are going to hurt our plants and they're going to hurt us, that are going to hurt the earth, and that's basically what my, what my worst ones do. That's my criteria. You know, if they're not good for us, they're not good for the planet, they're not good for animals on the planet, you know, they're probably not a good thing to use. So, if you do choose to use those, you know, I'm not the garden police and going to say, oh, you use that, you're a bad person. I don't really care what you guys use. I'm just sharing with you guys my opinions and if you guys want to model what I do, model the growth that I'm getting on these amazing, you know, Malabar spinach that's like vining up and it's just taken over and I have more Malabar spinach than I could eat in a lifetime. You know, you might want to follow what I do because I do things for certain reasons and the other thing I want you guys to realize is that in nature, you know, there's no such thing as like concentrated bone meal or blood meal going into gardens, right? You know, I really want to get back to kind of thinking how nature would think and all these man-made products that are either waste stream or, you know, synthetic fertilizers is not how nature would work. Of course, yes, a cow or animal would lose its life in the savanna or in the forest and it would bleed out and the animals that killed it would eat that stuff and there'd be some blood but it wouldn't be like a whole like forest full of dead animals with blood everywhere and that's basically what you're doing when you're putting concentrated blood or bone meals or using concentrated manures because forests don't grow in piles of ----. They might have some ---- scattered around but what they would grow in are the plant materials and some of their fertilizers that I recommended. So I always encourage you guys to go towards these things and move away from the things that I'm not a big fan of and do the best you can because that's what it's all about and, you know, once again I make these videos so that you guys could grow the healthiest food possible because I've done a lot of research on these topics and been growing food for a long time and visited a lot of places where I see their results based on what they're using and in my opinion what I'm doing works the best for me and is the best for the planet and that's just simply the way I recommend to you guys. So if you guys enjoyed this video, hey, please give me a thumbs up to let me know. Also be sure to check my past episodes, I have over 1100 episodes now teaching guys all aspects of gardening and also be sure to click that subscribe button down below. I'll have new episodes coming out all the time sharing my top tips, garden tours and all kinds of other stuff that you're probably not going to see on any other gardening channel online. So once again my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we'll see you next time and until then remember, keep on growing.