Tx_Crinum

Okay, the answer to this question is Plant Succession. Old growth forest represent approx 150 years of different plant life from annual to perennials to shrubs to pines to hardwoods. The nutrition for an old growth forest came from years and years of death of plants. There was no feeding of the soil but rather a plant war was waged and those that could not successfully compete died and were replaced by more adapted plants.

And doing it I might say very slowly and very inefficiently. Without the advent of 'syntheitc' fertilizer we would be a 3rd world country based on subsistence farming. 'Synthetic' fertilizer allowed our country to move from an agrarian to an industrialized society. Take a look at 3rd world countries today. Like it or not, without 'synthetic' fertilizer and the resulting high yield acre production, that would be our normal standard of living. Anyone who tells you differently is wrong and is displaying a lack of education of our nation's agricultural history



I disagree. As a science teacher and an Ag Teacher the last time I checked there were only 20 man made or truly synthetic elements listed on the periodic table. For you benefit here they are: technetium (Tc), promethium (Pm), neptunium (Np), plutonium (Pu), americium (Am), curium (Cm), berkelium (Bk), californium (Cf), einsteinium (Es), fermium (Fm), mendelevium (Md), nobelium (No), lawrencium (Lr), unnilquadium (Unq), unnilpentium (Unp), unnilhexium (Unh), unnilseptium (Uns), unniloctium (Uno), unnilennium (Une), unununium (Uun). Now when my granular 5-10-10 contains one of these elements I will agree that I am feeding inorganic nutrition to my plants. Inorganic or synthetic fertilizer is nothing more than organic fertilizer without filler. Nothing in granular fertilizer is created, it may be recombined into another form but everything in that bag had its origin from the Earth from either a dead plant or animal.

No matter the form of fertilizer provided, plants and fungus can take up only certain types of N-P. Nitrogen must be in the form of nitrate, ammonium or urea and urea only falls loosely into the classification of organic fertilizer and phosphorus must be in of the form of orthophosphate ions.

To each his own. personally I am not willing to purchase over a ton of organic fertilizer every year and lug a whole bag of it to each banana plant. I don't feel bad because I am not buying the roly poly and worms their high priced meals. I would much rather fill my 5 gallon Homer bucket up with 20lbs of granular and be done with it.

IMO, anyone that espouses organics and uses and enjoys the benefits of our industrialized society is nothing more than a hypocrite or someone who just isn't educated.