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

 

Concerned About Using “Chemicals” on Plants You Plan on Eating?

Two typical areas of concern about using chemicals in the garden are contamination of food & the ground water.

A natural concern of many people is the use of mineral nutrients from commercial sources in their vegetable gardens.

They want to know if minerals would, or even could
1) contaminate the food they eat or cause other problems, or
2) cause a toxic build-up in the soil and leach into the groundwater, eventually adding to the problems we have in our streams, rivers, and oceans.

We have the answer to those concerns.

1) Plants fed with mineral nutrients constitute 90+% of our food supply in the United States, and higher than that in the Netherlands, which has the healthiest population in the world. Rather than minerals being a potential health problem, using organic materials to feed plants has several drawbacks and potential health hazards.

Most manure and compost has not been sterilized, and therefore can have diseases, bugs, and weed seeds in it, which will flourish in your garden and substantially reduce your yield. In addition, there is some risk of people getting infected from something that’s toxic to humans as well, such as the ultimate killer Mad Cow Disease. Unsterilized manure and compost have been blamed for numerous cases of salmonella and E-coli poisoning recently, and have caused the recall of millions of dollars worth of vegetables. Organic buyer beware!

Unless the organic material HAS been composted very efficiently in an aerobic process, which is very rare and requires sustained temperatures of 140+ for several weeks, you run the risk of the aforementioned problems.

In addition to the foregoing, you may get much lower nutritional value in your vegetables. This is because you do not know what or how much you are feeding your plants, since every batch of manure or compost is different, and because none of them have been analyzed to determine their nutrient content. You can expect the manure to have much LESS nutrition than the original plant contained because of going through the cow, then sitting in a compost pile for months in the rain and snow.

Because we use mineral nutrients in our gardens and wanted to be CERTAIN we were not contributing to any toxicity problems, in 1998 Dr. Mittleider and I hired two highly respected soil labs to perform extensive tests for us regarding this very question. The two labs were Stukenholtz Labs, in Twin Falls, Idaho, and the Brigham Young University Soil Testing Lab, in Provo, Utah.

Under supervision, and according to specific instructions from the labs, we drilled holes for 45 tests. Three gardens were tested for build-up of fertilizer salts. Test cores were used at 1′, 2′, and 3′ depths in each hole.

One garden was Dr. Mittleider’s own backyard garden, which had been used for 21 years at that time; the second location was my garden at Utah’s Hogle Zoo, which had been used for 10 years; and the third garden was a very visible large garden 20 miles South of Salt Lake City at a place called Thanksgiving Point, which had been in use for 4 years.

The test results came back showing there was NO toxic build-up of salts in ANY of the test sites. There was NO indication of ANY fertilizer being flushed into waste-water systems. And some of the test holes even had LOWER salt levels than the controls, which were taken from non-fertilized aisles and garden periphery.

This did not surprise us (although it surely did surprise a couple of people who had suggested we were polluting the ground water), because we use very little mineral salts, and we spread their application over the growing season, instead of applying them all at once, as those who apply manure and compost most often do.

We only apply 7 ounces of fertilizer salts to about 3,300# of soil, and do it every 7 days only 4 to 8 times for most crops. Ever-bearing crops will usually receive 10 to 12 applications, spread over several months.

Compare this to the many POUNDS of fertilizer salts organic growers apply to their gardens ALL AT ONCE before planting. That concentrated one-time application is much more likely to cause run-off or seepage into the groundwater than the small amounts the Mittleider gardener applies. And quite often emerging seedlings are stunted or killed by the heavy concentration of fertilizer salts from the manure as well.

Our vegetables are healthier, because they receive their nutrition throughout the season, as they need it. And BECAUSE they are very healthy, they are less susceptible to problems from diseases and pests. They also have fewer problems with pests and diseases because they spend less time in the garden before being harvested. As an example I’ve grown 82-day corn to maturity in 61 days.

“Chemical” Fertilizer or “Organic” – Which is “Bad”?

Recently two questions were posed to me by a Mittleider Method gardener who came from a background of using only manure and compost. This person asked:
1. What is the difference between the Mittleider fertilizers and “organic fertilizer”? And why do some “organic-only” users say ours are bad?
2. Do you not recommend building our own compost piles?

Following is my response: The fertilizers we use and recommend are natural mineral nutrients – ground-up rocks, some of which have gone through a simple cleaning and concentration process to assure we get exactly what we bargained for, which is “the most for our money”.

On this website, and in the Mittleider gardening books, CDs and videos we give the formulas in exact detail, so that everyone can purchase wherever they want and mix their own. We are NOT trying to “sell something” with an exclusive, secret fertilizer mix.

Furthermore, every one of the fertilizers used in mixing Mittleider Magic Weekly Feed and Pre-Plant mixes have been approved by the USDA for use in an organic gardening operation. Therefore, we believe that a Mittleider garden DOES qualify as an organic garden.

However, some folks have gone so far with the “organic fertilizer” thing that they won’t use anything but manures, compost, egg shells, blood & bone meal, etc. They believe that anything other than those constitutes a “chemical” and is somehow harmful.

The truth is that – as Organic Gardening Magazine’s J. I. Rodale said – “We’ve gone too far. . . a plant can’t tell the difference between nitrogen from a leaf and that from a fertilizer bag.”

Furthermore, everything in this world is a chemical. All the elements in manure, compost, blood & bone meal, and all the others are chemicals.

So how did we get into this mess?

Years ago people began hearing that things like DDT were dangerous to fish, birds, animals, etc. (which undoubtedly had some truth) and the movement to ban those substances gained momentum until many useful chemicals were totally banned worldwide.

And the final result is that each year millions of African children die of malaria when they could be saved simply by using DDT to eradicate the mosquitoes.

We humans often allow the pendulum to swing too far, and I believe it has swung too far in the organic gardening movement, when people refuse to use ground-up rocks that contain exactly what their plants need to thrive, and instead limit themselves to the use of materials the exclusive use of which kept 20-25% of our ancestors on the farm in order to feed the rest of us (today it’s less than 1%).

I’ve also seen the substantial pictorial evidence Dr. Mittleider accumulated worldwide of the problems unsterilized manure and compost cause in gardens, with crop-destroying diseases, bugs, and weed seeds.

In addition, we are now having major re-calls of vegetables grown with manure because of contamination with salmonella, e-coli (and maybe other harmful bacteria) that are sickening thousands.

So, if organic materials are CLEAN I say it’s okay to till them into the garden. But how many of us KNOW our compost and manure ARE clean?

Unless they’ve been composted aerobically at sustained (as in 3 weeks!) temperatures over 140 degrees Fahrenheit, whatever was in them – and whatever else may invite itself into the pile in the composting process – will end up alive and well in your garden.

So, to answer the second question, If you will compost your materials at a constant temperature of 140+ for at least 3 weeks – the way the “Zoo-Doo Man” did (see Zoo-Doo Man article that follows) – you can probably use them in the garden without worry of introducing the aforementioned problems into your garden.

But that still doesn’t answer the question about WHAT GOOD your compost is doing!

Does ANYONE know which nutrients, or how much of each, is contained in the compost or manure they are putting on their gardens? I believe there’s not one in 100 organic gardeners who submit their compost or manure to an accurate soil test before applying it to their garden. And so they are all guessing as to what nutrition they’re giving their plants.

In order to try and make sure they have enough nutrition, and to avoid the trouble of multiple applications, manure and compost gardeners apply the amount they hope will feed the whole crop ALL AT ONCE at the beginning.

This creates three problems:
1) Germinating seeds and small seedlings are often burned and killed by too much salinity;
2) excess fertilizer salts are sometimes leached into the ground water;
3) the nutrition from the manure gives out after a few weeks, and the crop stops producing just when it should be at its strongest.

I believe the points I’ve covered above explain to some degree why the Mittleider Method is referred to by many of its adherents as “the best of organic”.

You will understand why even more fully when you grow and/or SEE the results obtained in a good Mittleider garden.