the "food" provided for our food~~

Everyday, we take in different kind of food as our energy source. But, what is the energy source for our food?? Well, some may say that its sunlight... But other than that? what else?? The answer is fertilizers!

Fertilizer adds nutrients and texture to soil that needs to support trees, vegetables, herbs, shrubs, and flowers. The different types of fertilizer depend on whether your soil is acidic, alkaline, sandy, clay, rocky, weak, or rich. Basically, fertilizers may divide into two major types of chemical and organic fertilizers, those that help fruit versus leaves, and those that feed specific plants or improve the overall quality of soil. Here, i will only introduce chemical fertilizers to all of you.

For chemical fertilizers, as what its name tells, are all made up of chemicals. They are specially designed and are mainly made of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The amount of nitrogen will encourage growth of stems and leaves by promoting protein and chlorophyll. Flowers, larger fruits, and healthier roots and tubers will result from the adding of phosphorus. Phosphorus also helps the plants to resist certain diseases. For potassium, it will helps by thickens stems and leaves by fostering protein development. This means that to meet variable demand of the plants, different NPK ratio would be needed more by plants such as vegetables than roses or an orange tree would. NPK ratio is the ratio of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in different concentration.

Different plants will require different pH levels. If you need to nudge your soil's pH toward the acidic side, you could use inorganic or chemical fertilizer such as aluminium sulfate or ammonium sulfate. Lime changes soil chemistry to make it more alkaline. Sometimes blood meal or other organic matter can also affect acid levels in the soil.

On the other hand, do chemical fertilizers effect our health? Or do they bring any side effects to us?? According to what i've got from the internet, there are variety of answers available to this.

Usually, the risks of taking chemical fertilizer is that the chemicals might be absorbed by the plants and being taken by us indirectly. Other than that, the plants might also absorbed the chemicals through the polluted underground water which will cause side effects of blue-baby syndrome. Pregnant women might have higher chances to miscarriage. Beside that, some fertilizers even contains heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium which may cause lung and kidney damage if consume in large amount.

Thus, its always better to choose organic fertilizers for our plants or for the food that we are going to consume. People! Support organic!! =)


Reference:
1) http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-the-different-types-of-fertilizer.htm
2) http://www.landscape-and-garden.com/garden-soil/fertilizer-types.aspx
3) http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_effects_of_chemical_fertilizers_on_human_health