Nine Reasons To Choose Natural Minerals Over Organic Fertilizers

Reasons to Choose Natural Minerals over Organic Fertilizers

There are SO many reasons for choosing the Mittleider system of growing over Certified Organic!

1  Let’s start with the MACRO “argument”.    There is not enough compost/manure in the world to feed 10% of the population, if even that much.  Before “ground-up rocks” as commercial fertilizers – and especially before man learned to create usable nitrogen the way lightning does it (see Haber/Bosch Method) – there were about 1 billion people on the planet.  Take commercial fertilizers away and 6 out of 7 would die, and the world population would shrink to that size again. 

And during crisis situations, or in the event of a breakdown in the fragile, interconnected and interdependent civilization in which we live (think supply chain disruptions), there will be much LESS organic material available because the animals will die or be eaten. 

The great intelligence that rules the universe would not create a world in which the large majority of people were consigned to ill health and even starvation.  And sure enough, the earth contains inexhaustible supplies of the 13 essential mineral nutrients plants require.  These are mined and then concentrated to remove impurities, heavy metals, etc., and give exact percentages of the nutrients.  This also makes them much less expensive to ship to distant locations.

2  The actual nutritional benefits of organic fertilizers are unknown.

   a. The nutritional composition of the original plants is unknown.

   b. The horse or cow kept some;

   c.  About half of the remaining nutrition is lost in the urine; 

   d. Some was lost to leaching in the compost pile, before it was applied to the garden soil;

   e. Nitrogen is lost into the air due to its volatility, and

   f. Because compost must be applied all at once before planting, much more is lost in the weeks and months before the plant takes it up and uses it.

3  While natural mineral nutrients can be balanced between Macro-nutrients, Secondary nutrients, and Micro-nutrients to give just the right amounts of each, organic fertilizers‘ nutrient composition is unknown, unknowable, and can therefore not be “balanced” and thereby improved.

4  Plants cannot take in and use organic nutrients because of their particle size and structure, and therefore the compost must decompose, break down, and revert to its inorganic water-soluble mineral state before the next generation of plants can use it.  This requires time and soil organisms.

5  Doing this composting is almost never done aerobically (with oxygen), which produces heat of 140 degrees for about 3 weeks, and in the composting process kills the weed seeds, bugs, and diseases. 

Ninety nine percent of the time – at least in the family garden – composting is done anaerobically, or without oxygen, and consequently without heat.  This of course does NOT eliminate the 3 bad elements, and instead encourages bugs, weeds, diseases, bad smells, AND rodents.

6  Harmful diseases such as e-coli, salmonella, and listeria are sometimes carried by organic fertilizers such that people get sick and sometimes even die after ingesting the food grown in them.  This is why Certified organic fertilizers MUST, by the laws administered by the USDA, be applied to the soil 120 days before harvest if the edible part of the plant comes in contact with the soil, and 90 days before harvest if the edible part of the plant does not touch the ground.

7  Because the fertilizer for the entire crop must be applied all at once before planting. large amounts of salts are applied to the soil all at once.  This often causes a condition called salinity – too much salt – and causes reverse osmosis, with the saline moisture in the soil drawing the moisture out of the plants and injuring or even killing the plants.  Also, the excess salts are leached into the ground water, streams and rivers, killing fish, etc., and fouling the water supply.  Meanwhile, by mid-season the nutrition is gone and plants stop producing.

8  Cost of organic fertilizers is often, at least in large population centers, more than that of mineral nutrients.  And storage presents an entirely new set of problems.  Compost takes up a great deal of space, smells, nutrition leaches out if stored outside, and invites problems as described above. Mineral fertilizers are without bad odors, do NOT attract bugs and diseases, take up MUCH less space, and store indefinitely without losing potency.

9  And finally the piece of the equation that has many people calling The Mittleider Method “the best of organic”. The laws established by the USDA, which governs organic growing, specify that a Certified Organic grower must plant using only organic fertilizers. Then, when they observe deficiency symptoms they must get soil tests.  After documenting which nutrients are deficient the organic grower is permitted to use inorganic (mineral) nutrients, including the very same ones we use in the Mittleider Method from the beginning.

The average person never hears about the fact that the big organic growers actually use commercial bagged mineral fertilizers, and the family gardener has neither the time, the money, nor the expertise to go through all those steps that are necessary to grow healthy and productive crops organically, and so they suffer with poor production and much less nutritious garden produce.

Dr. Mittleider chose to feed his crops very small amounts of all of the natural mineral nutrients plants require for fast healthy growth, in the right amounts and as and when they need them, avoiding all of the problems associated with organic fertilizers, including weed seeds, bugs and diseases, salinity, higher cost and availability issues, and time and dependence on soil organisms to change the organic materials into water-soluble minerals that plants can use.

©  Jim Kennard – 9/26/2024

No Equipment to Nano-Size Your Fertilizer? DISSOLVE It and It’s Molecule Size!

In my travels, the subject of fertilizers comes up often. In these discussions, we sometimes center on the topic of fertilizer particle size—specifically when someone asks me about “nanoparticle” fertilizer. When it comes to liquid fertilizers, the difference between whether something is a solution, a colloidal dispersion, or a suspension depends on the particle size. I thought a brief discussion on the matter might shed some light on this exciting topic and make us better-informed consumers.

First, I think it’s important to define the size of a nanometer. A nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter. Typically speaking, a nanoparticle is generally anything from 1 to 100 nanometers. The easiest distinction to make is whether something is actually in solution. For there to be a solution, there needs to be a solvent (water, for example), and a solute (often a fertilizer salt). If the solute is soluble enough in the solvent, the solute goes into solution completely, meaning that the size of the molecule is now simply just its molecular size. Here’s an example to help clear this up:

Ferrous sulfate heptahydrate is a fairly common iron supplement. It comes as a water-soluble powder that’s typically around 70,000 nanometers in size (which is approximately the size of a salt granule). Once this ferrous sulfate goes into solution though, its particle size is now its molecular size, which is a diameter of approximately 0.122 nanometers.

With this example in mind, one could theoretically claim that any molecule in solution is literally a “nanoparticle.”

Molecules that aren’t in solution graduate to making either a colloid or a suspension. Again, the distinction here is the average particle size. Colloidal particles are typically in the range of 10-1000 nanometers. Suspended particles are larger. Using this measuring stick, some colloidal particles can be defined as nanoparticles, while others are probably a bit too large. So how can you tell the difference just by looking at it? You can’t (at least not without a piece of equipment that can characterize particle size). While this all may seem pretty abstract, did you know that milk is a colloid? According to the experts, milk is approximately 87.5% water, 3.5% protein, 3.7% fat, 4.9% lactose, and 0.7% salts. The white color comes from casein particles, which are proteins that have combined with calcium and phosphate; the average particle size of these casein particles is around 100 nanometers.

So why does particle size really matter?

Some folks claim that nanoparticles can move more efficiently into the plant. For colloidal or suspended particles (particles not in solution), I think it’s safe to say that the smaller the particle, the faster it can break down and go into solution (which is typically how molecules move into plants). This is known as the dissolution rate—how quickly a particle moves into the solution. In addition, particle size dictates how reactive a material is. The smaller the particle, the greater the surface area per unit volume ratio; this leads to a greater portion of the particles on the surface of the material (as opposed to the interior).

So, what’s this really mean to you?

Theoretically, the entire argument about particle size centers around an increased availability of the nutrient to the plant. If you’re paying good money for your fertility product though, you’d want it already reacted and enhanced in some way aside from just being a smaller particle. With this in mind, an even more efficient method of application would be to simply apply nutrients that are already reacted and soluble (as particle size no longer matters at that point in time). Of course, the pitfall here is to make sure it stays soluble—meaning that complexed or chelated nutrients are often more effective as they sidestep the theoretical issue of the molecule precipitating, and then being in the same boat as a colloidal or suspended particle.

All of this information brings us to an important point though: whether the molecule is in solution, a colloid, or a suspension, the plant still needs a certain amount of the nutrient that is a part of that molecule. I usually explain it like this: Iron has a molar mass of 55.845 g/mol or a diameter of approximately 0.024 nanometers. It doesn’t matter how small the particle size is of the iron molecule, or whether it’s in a solution, a colloid, or a suspension. The plant still needs to acquire a certain amount of that 55.845 g/mol iron. While the most efficient means to deliver a nutrient to plants is certainly up for debate (we’re still partial to amino acids and amino-acid polymers), plants will always need a certain amount of that nutrient for optimal growth. Not all nutritional formulations are equal, and some will allow the plant to acquire a larger percentage of nutrients than others (allowing for lower use rate, etc.). Still, there’s a limit to the efficiency of any nutritional formulation, and short of genetic engineering or breeding, plants will always require a certain amount of each nutritional element regardless of the particle size of the nutrient that’s applied.

Making Mittleider Weekly Feed Into NANO+ Liquid Fertilizer

Turn Mittleider Weekly Feed Into Mittleider Super-Natural Nano Nutrients ™

1. Before planting your garden apply and mix into the soil both the Mittleider Pre-plant mix (1 oz/ft) and the Mittleider Weekly Feed mix (1/2 oz/ft).
2. Begin applying foliar spray as soon as leaves appear. Do not wait until plants have true leaves.
3. Place 8 ounces of Weekly Feed Mix into a good, strong blender, such as a Blendtec or Vitamix.
4. Blend Weekly Feed at high speed until it is as fine as cake flour (“micronized” powder – no granules).
5. Add 1/2 Tablespoon of granular Humic Acid (com/shop) and 1 pint of boiling distilled or reverse osmosis (RO) water to blender (pure water dissolves maximum amount of Weekly Feed and does not introduce other minerals).
6. Blend at high speed for up to 2 minutes, adding water as possible without causing spillage.
7. Add liquid to 3 ½ quarts of distilled water in a gallon-size plastic jug. Yields 1 gallon of Weekly Feed “NANO+” or Mittleider Super-Natural Nano Nutrients ™ concentrate.
8. Cap and store in a safe place until needed.
9. Shake thoroughly before each use.
10. Add 8 ounces of this Weekly Feed NANO+ concentrate and 1/2 teaspoon High Yield Sticker Spreader (Walmart, etc.) or other Non-Ionic Surfactant to 1 gallon of water in spray equipment.
11. Alternatively, you can use an electrostatic sprayer, which produces much smaller droplets and adds a tiny positive electrical charge, making the material cling to the leaf surface. Spraying is quicker, you do not have to continually pump to keep air pressure, less material is used, and better coverage is achieved, especially on the under-side of the leaves, where the stomata are located. I am using the Victory Innovations Backpack Sprayer with good success.
12. Preferred spraying time is morning, before the temperatures rise (below 80 degrees), or late afternoon after extreme temperatures are reduced, but at least an hour before sundown, because the stomata close around sundown.
13. Water plants before applying foliar feed, and wait to spray nutrients until leaves are dry.
14. Spray upper and lower leaves. Nutrients enter plants primarily through the stomata on the underside of the leaf.
15. Observe plants carefully for scorch or wilting (will not happen unless much higher dosage is used). If either of these occur flush the plant leaves and soil with plain water and reduce concentration of the foliar feed by half.
16. Nutrition enters plant leaves in as little as 1 hour, and is generally completed within 24 hours. Effects are often observed within a day or two.
17. Repeat every 3-7 days, depending on growing conditions and observed results, throughout crop growing cycle. Spraying twice each week is a good place to start.
18. Adjust frequency of foliar spraying as needed to maintain rapid growth of your plants.
19. Not seeing desired growth and vigor? Increase the amount of Weekly Feed concentrate you are using per gallon of spray solution. Also, consider supplementing with an application of Mittleider Weekly Feed in the soil, and document your progress and findings.
20. For lawns, feeding just 3 times at 3 to 4 week intervals is usually sufficient for a temperate climate growing season..

Since you are not watering the plants, but rather just wetting the leaves (continue watering the soil as normal – see Watering Lessons in The Mittleider Gardening Course book), a great deal less fertilizer is applied, thus saving greatly on fertilizer costs. 

As an example, during the warm months my garden of 524’ of soil-beds & Grow-Boxes requires 3  gallons of foliar spray per feeding.  So, even if you have to feed twice per week to grow healthy plants, that’s 6 gallons of spray, or just 2.2 ounces of Weekly Feed per week on a very big garden.  Traditional feeding by applying ½ ounce per foot of Weekly Feed to the soil per week requires 262 ounces or 16.5 pounds per week.  So, you will be using 1/89th as much Mittleider Weekly Feed with foliar spraying the NANO+!

 Worth doing?  I KNOW it is!

Jim Kennard – 12/9/23

Prepare Now For Next Spring’s Garden

Winter’s the time to get ready to grow your own seedlings!  It’s not really difficult, and can extend your growing season by many weeks.  For example, by planting cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower in February in your basement under grow-lights, you can put large, sturdy transplants into your garden by the end of March or early April, and be eating them when others are just seeing them come up!  

Remember that photosynthesis, using light, heat and moisture causes plant growth.  Therefore you must follow a few key natural principles very carefully, or you will be disappointed.

First, seeds must have moisture to germinate and grow.  And the soil mix must be moist, but not soggy, or you’ll drown the new plant, since it must also have oxygen!

Second, while heat is essential, temperatures must be maintained in a narrow range for ideal germination to occur.  Most vegetable seeds germinate quickly between 75 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.  After plants are up, many of them will grow in cooler temperatures, but most all will become dormant (stop growing) at temperatures below 50 degrees.

Third, light is not necessary for seed germination, but as soon as your seedlings begin to emerge from the soil, maximum light is required immediately for proper development. Therefore, to grow in your house, make sure your plants have a strong (but not hot!) light source directly on the plants, for up to 16 hours per day.  Note the pictures of two grow-light shelves in the Gallery Section.  The metal one is 6-shelf Commercial Chrome Shelving, from Sam’s Club costing only $70, and will hold 20 flats of plants.  Suspend shop lights with 2 cool and 2 warm 40-watt tubes 4 to 6″ above the plants, or use more efficient LED grow-lights .

The fourth principle relates to feeding.  A balanced nutrient mix of 13 minerals is essential to plants immediately after germination.  Those nutrients are mineral salts and must be very dilute in the soil moisture, otherwise osmosis will cause the salt to draw the life-giving moisture out of the plants, and they will die.  To ensure you never burn your plants, water seedlings daily using the “Constant Feed Solution” of one scant ounce (2 almost level tablespoons) of Weekly Feed dissolved in 3 gallons of water.  To make the Weekly Feed Mix simply add one small packet of the Micro-Mix, which is available on the Foundation’s website listed below, with 4# of Epsom Salt and 25# of 16-16-16.

Next, it is important to separate your small plants before their leaves begin to overlap with others’, or the tiny stems will become very weak and spindly as the plants all stretch – looking for more light.  By the time the plants have their first or second true leaf this step should be completed.  Failure to act for even a few hours can result in spindly, weak plants, which sometimes never recover.  Transplanting seedlings into 2″ 6-paks or pots will provide adequate space for them to grow an additional 2-3 weeks, depending on variety.  If it’s still too early to put them out into the garden by the time plant leaves are again beginning to overlap, prune the leaves, transplant again into larger pots, or separate pots, so the plant leaves always have maximum light.

Before transplanting into the garden, “harden-off” your plants outside, off the ground for 2 to3 days, to acclimate them to direct sunlight, temperature, wind, etc.  This is important so the plant doesn’t have the shock of a new environment added to the shock to its root system caused by transplanting.  If the weather turns cold at night, bring the plants back in the house.  The temperature adjustment needs to be gradual.

For many of your plants, the pruning process does double duty.  In addition to assuring maximum light, it shocks the plant mildly, causing it to pause in its growth and produce a thicker, sturdier stem. This process makes the plant much better able to endure the vicissitudes of the outside environment, such as cutworms, ants, etc. that often quickly decimate plants with weak, spindly stems.

For tall-growing plants, like tomatoes, be sure to provide small stakes tied to the plant stem, to prevent them from falling over.  And with tomatoes, begin immediately to remove all sucker stems as soon as possible, to assure a single, strong stem and maximum production from your plant.

Great growing instructions can be found in the book Let’s Grow Tomatoes, available as a digital download and as a part of the Mittleider Gardening Library CD.  It’s  available at www.growfood.com/shop.

Prepared – Got Your Wheat, Beans & Rice? So What Are You Going To Eat?!

As we try and stay warm during this cominf cold winter season probably very few of us are thinking of gardens or growing our own food – but maybe we should be!  When God cursed the ground it was for our sake, so when He said we were to eat our bread by the sweat of our brow perhaps He was pronouncing a blessing on us.  At the very least it was instruction on how we were to live, but today too many of us , if we exercise at all, pay to “work out” in the gym instead of working out in the garden. 

It is time to change that!

Great and wise men have said every family should have a garden, and that we should “Grow all the food that you possibly can on your own property…grow vegetables and eat those grown in your own yard.  Even those residing in apartments or condominiums can generally grow a little food in pots and planters.”    Spencer W. Kimball

Evidence all around us points to the wisdom of those words.  Today much of what we eat comes from places we know not and contains things that sometimes harm us.  And a diet of fresh vegetables and fruits would eliminate many of the chronic health problems plaguing our society

I suggest now is a good time to begin preparing for your own garden next spring.   Why?  Because it makes sense to follow wise counsel at any time, but also because like someone recently said, when times get tough you’re not going to want to live just on rice and beans and wheat.

In talking with a motivated Mittleider gardener I asked how he became interested in gardening as an important component of his family’s preparedness regimen, and his answer was both humorous and instructive:

“Years ago my wife and I were going over our Preparedness list, basically taking an inventory of where we were in the process, and I asked her “what are we going to eat”, to which she replied “well, we’ve got wheat, beans, and rice . . . “.  I thought about that for a few seconds and then said “so what are we going to eat”?  She repeated “we’ve got wheat, beans, and rice”, and I responded again “so, what are we going to eat!”

“As we talked about this we decided that we really needed to have an on-going, fresh and sustainable source of nutritious food if we hoped to maintain any degree of long-term health and activity, and so we determined that we had to get serious about growing a garden.”

And here’s “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey would say.  His wife became a Certified Master Gardener, and for 30 years she worked diligently at trying to grow food for their family.  However, until recently their success was very limited, even though they tried every method they could find.   Their amazing success sfter finding the Mittleider Method of gardening is truly inspiring, and it is documented in some excellent short instructional videos at http://www.ldsprepper.com.  I recommend you go there and see for yourself what they’ve done (and what you can do) in the back yard of a small lot in a gated community, with homeowners’ association rules dictating what your yard can look like.

So, what CAN we do in the winter in order to be prepared when it comes time to plant our gardens?  Let me describe several important things you can begin doing immediately:

Certainly, planning next spring’s garden is important.  And the Garden Planting Details Schedule lists most all of the common garden vegetables and then gives you valuable information in 14 categories including when to plant, where to plant, how far apart to plant, whether to plant seeds or seedlings, how long you can harvest, how much yield to expect, and 8 other important categories of information to guide your decisions.  This is available free in the Files section of the gardening groups listed below, as well as in appendix B of The Mittleider Gardening Course book.

Other important areas of planning you should be covering this winter include ways to lengthen your harvest time, and this can be accomplished by growing your own seedlings, and by protecting your plants in the garden. 

Seedling production is surprisingly simple, but requires following closely the basic laws of plant growth.  Soil temperatures must be in the 70-85 degree range for optimum germination and growth; maximum light must be applied immediately upon emergence; soil must be damp but not soaking wet; and plants must be fed a balanced nutrient mix on a regular schedule – preferably with every watering.

Protecting your plants from the cold (and heat in mid-summer) can be done simply with hoops and clear greenhouse plastic immediately over the plants (low tunnel), or using something larger, again with hoops and plastic sometimes called high tunnels.  A third way, costing more but allowing you to grow crops vertically and increasing yields by 4-6 times in a given space, is what I call the in-the-garden greenhouse.  These are built using a set of T-Frames tied together by 2 X 4’s and again covered by clear greenhouse plastic, and they can be used to grow seedlings in late winter/early spring and then to grow ever-bearing crops clear into the next winter.  Gardeners in southern-tier states even use them to grow successfully year-round.

A family of 4 can live out of a garden of less than 1/20^th of an acre!  So start planning and preparing now, and expect to have your highly productive sustainable garden in place and growing by the time your neighbors begin even thinking about their gardens.

Short videos demonstrating many steps in the gardening process are available free at. Start there, and if you feel you want to join one of the Food For Everyone Foundation’s free gardening groups to learn more and share with others, simply go to either https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/MittleiderMethodGardening/info or https://www.facebook.com/groups/2304852529528161/

So, what are YOU going to eat when the stores are all closed?  If you’re serious I will give you some very exciting and important details next time.

what's new?

Genuine Weekly Feed
Ready to Go!

eBooks available for immediate download!

about donating