Fertilizers are a plant's vitamins

To put things in perspective, using fertilizers properly is an important part of gardening, but it is almost never a matter of life and death.

First, despite the common use of the terms "plant food" and "feeding," fertilizers are not food. Plants make their own food through a remarkable process called photosynthesis, which uses the energy of the sun to create sugar from carbon dioxide and water.

If you need to think in terms of plants eating something, their energy source is light and they build their bodies from air and water.

In addition to the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen that plants get from air and water, they also require 13 elements that are essential to their ability to carry on their life processes and be healthy.

Rather than thinking of them as food, a better analogy would be to think of them as vitamins. These 13 essential elements are the same for all plants, and they are almost always absorbed by plants from the soil through their roots.

All 13 nutrients are present to some degree in average soil.

Nutrient deficiencies

Sometimes, however, one or more may not be present in sufficient quantities for a plant to grow and function at its full potential.

On occasion, a plant may be so deprived of an essential element that it actually gets sick (as when azaleas or gardenias get iron chlorosis).

That's where fertilizers come in. A fertilizer is a substance added to the plant's environment that provides one or more of the essential elements.

The essential elements obtained from the soil are divided into three groups, based on the relative amounts of the elements used by plants -- but it's important to remember that all the essential elements are equally important.

The micronutrients (or trace elements) include boron, chlorine, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum and zinc. They are used in very tiny amounts and are rarely deficient. However, in the alkaline soils south of Lake Pontchartrain, acid-loving plants have difficulty absorbing iron, and iron deficiencies are fairly common in plants like gardenias and blueberries.

The secondary elements -- calcium, magnesium and sulfur -- are used in larger amounts. The soils of the south shore are generally rich in these elements, although sulfur may be added to make the soil more acid. The native soils north of the lake, though, are often low in calcium and magnesium and quite acid. Gardeners on the north shore may need to add dolomitic lime to their gardens to provide calcium and magnesium and make the soil less acid.

Liberals Want To Stop Coal And Nuclear Energy But What Are They ...

Windmills will never pay for themselves because for 1 windmill to generate enough energy to pay itself off it needs to operate for 20 years. BUT unfortunately windmills only operate for about 10 years before they start to have mechanical problems and you have to replace parts on it so therefore it will take longer than 20 years to pay for them so wind is a liability. Well, as of now it is. Then there is Natural Gas which is Good Clean energy but we can’t afford to switch everything to natural gas because economically that will hurt horrendously as of now and I don’t think it will work well for the future either. Anyways we do have A LOT of natural gas all over in Russia mostly and that might be a good idea to tap into it a little more. But it won’t fix are problems.http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa… My solution to what we can do to fix the problem is to try and separate the Hydrogen from the ocean water. Sounds crazy maybe but it is the hydrogen in Coal, oil, and Natural gases that ignites in the fire to produce all that energy we have in our homes, work, Cars, etc most everything. The thing with water is that it has A LOT more hydrogen in it than anything else and it is an incredibly abundant resource. If we are able to separate the oxygen from the hydrogen we will not only create much more energy it will be clean and I know some Liberals will choose clean over a functioning economy. It is probably obvious that I am a Conservative but I do like the idea of clean air, improving the technology to windmills so they won’t be a waste, explore more into renewable energies, use natural gas more but not much more, MORE NUCLEAR PLANTS, and fund research in how we separate the 2 parts hydrogen from the oxygen and use it as energy in our daily lives. The thing with Nuclear power is that people keep putting it in really odd places. Why do we put them in Hurricane territory or Tornado territory or next to the sea where Tsunamis hit them? Nuclear energy is not quite the same as nuclear bombs and it will not go BOOM but can fart out radiation but that is why you put them in the safest best secure spot. If it does leak radiation it can’t be good but the Japanese are doing fine since their Earthquake, just saying. The US won’t be destroyed and turn into Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of Nuclear Energy. Nuclear power can power a city and then some so the pollution coming is nothing compared to other power plants when they produce energy. The only problem with Nuclear energy is to find a place to dump the waste. If we can put a guy on the moon we can figure out how we can dispose of nuclear waste properly. Anyways it seems like Liberals want to take away some 68.4% of our power before we have something to switch it out with. The smartest people who understand this stuff the best, so I am not talking about Washington, says it will take at least 30 years to switch over to the next big energy we use without repercussions on the economy. Like it or not Petroleum base products are staying for a decade maybe 2 before the switch starts at its earliest.

American chemical journal

Inorganic reactions and methods, The formation of the bond to hydrogen (part 2)

The Chemical news and journal of industrial science

Inquiry Into Physics

Elements of chemistry: theoretical and practical