st0wandgrow
Well-Known Member
People seem to have this notion, not necessarily you St0w, that use of synthetics means death to all microbes. That is simply not the case. Unless you are dumping toxic amounts of fertilizer, microbes are still present in soil mediums and are still reproducing (people smarter than me in this topic and with much more patience have counted these things). Some fertilizers allow easier uptake, bypassing the need (which they aren't needed, see hydro) for them in the first place. I personally love organic methods of gardening, but with the caveat of it being sustainable, local and ethical. Using harvested bat shit from Peru, damaging caves, and using all the oil for transportation and packing isn't helpful (just one example, or land stripping for humic acids). J
Agreed. No poop of any sort for me, and no slaughterhouse bi-products either. Again, you are correct in asserting that synthetics typically do not kill microbes in the soil. What does happen though, is that the repeated use of synthetics will alter the soils ph ...... typically leaving it too acidic for microbes to effectively function. That, and the plant will no longer attract (via exudes) microbes to the rhizosphere because the grower is bi-passing the soil food web and feeding the plant directly.