When you just start gardening, your knowledge of how to do it may be deceptively simple. Take a seed, put it in some soil, add water, and voila! Couldn’t be easier, right? And while this approach is a wonderful way to start, the beginner may notice that some sprouts do better than others. Surely there’s more to gardens than that initial formula.
And of course, there is. Once you decide to make a plot and get some food grown, the world of gardening expands exponentially. The list of factors that an experienced gardener takes into consideration includes soil pH, soil temperature, crop rotation, heirloom seed saving, weed suppression, and fertilizer needs — to name a few. That simple act of putting a seed in the soil can become a delightfully complex endeavor.
对于新园丁来说,最重要的一件事可能是要学会如何使土壤肥沃,这样植物就有足够的东西来茁壮成长。强壮的植物更能抵御干旱、虫害和疾病,而且产量也更高。
Enter nitrogen.
Why Nitrogen Is Important
If you ever browse the weird-smelling fertilizer aisle at a hardware store, the importance of this soil nutrient becomes readily apparent. Though there are dozens of necessary micronutrients, and things not completely understood about the amazing biome in the soil layer of your garden, three nutrients have been identified as particularly crucial, and they’re the ones used to formulate fertilizers.
That core trio of ingredients is comprised of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium rendered in the familiar N-P-K shorthand, or in three hyphenated numbers. The first number in those lineups tells you the ratio of nitrogen for the mix.
So why does nitrogen get top billing? I suppose it’s because nitrogen’s importance to plant growth can’t be overstated. You may remember from elementary science that plants convert sunlight into energy through photosynthesis. You might also remember that chlorophyll is the all-important green pigment that captures sunlight and gets the whole process started.Nitrogen is actually a part of the chlorophyll molecule.It’s also a huge element of theplant’s protoplasm— the stuff that makes up their growing cells.
所以,即使植物学不是你的强项,我希望你能看到氮对任何进行光合作用的绿色植物的绝对重要性。没有氮,植物就无法制造能量、生长或生存——这就是为什么知道植物需要什么,以及如何向土壤中添加氮是很重要的。
Plants That Need Nitrogen
Now, obviously the basic answer to that question is “every plant.” Without adequate nitrogen, plants turn yellow, wither, and die. But not every plant needs the same amount, and as your learning how to add nitrogen to soil, you’ll come to realize that too much nitrogen can hurt just as much as too little.
Not every plant needs a ton of nitrogen to flourish. In fact, an indiscriminate, thick layer of nitrogen maytake away the yields of much of your produce.氮能促进旺盛的叶片生长,所以对于长得又大又多叶的植物来说,氮的增加可能是个好消息。但对于种植水果、花朵和块茎时,过量的氮可能会抑制花朵的形成。没有花就没有果。而没有果实则意味着郁郁葱葱的果园收成不尽人意。
I’ll tell this cautionary tale from my very first year gardening. Before I knew anything beyond soil+seed+water = food (hopefully), I had a vague notion that manure was good for a garden. Not knowing that there could be too much of a good thing, I filled the raised beds of my new garden with straight-up horse manure. That year I grew a lot of squash — and pretty much nothing else. I had no idea the reason my other plants were failing was too much nitrogen!
所以,虽然这不是一个硬性的规则,但那些生长旺盛、长出大叶子的植物通常受益于额外的氮提高生育力。玉米、南瓜、抱子甘蓝和大黄只是菜园里的几个好菜,如果给予足够的土壤营养,它们会更棒。
You can overdo it with some fruiting plants, though. While tomatoes, for example, are classified as “heavy feeders” in some gardening books, it doesn’t mean they simply need a diet of nitrogen fertilizer. Too much will result in lots of leaves and few fruits.
如果给予过多的氮,一些植物实际上会无法生长。The flowers ofEchinaceaorCosmosmay even refuse to produce blooms if the soil is too rich and they thrive on neglect, instead. The large legume family — peas, beans, cowpeas, and their many cousins — don’t need nitrogen added to the soilas they actually put nitrogen into the soil for you.
Now, while that array of information may make a new gardener’s head spin, I promise you don’t need a chemistry degree to have a successful garden. In fact, I would argue that you don’t need to buy a single bag of nitrogen fertilizer in order to provide nitrogen for your plants. Let’s talk about why as we delve into the next section and explore some sources of nitrogen and how to add it to soil.
Sources of Nitrogen and How to Add Nitrogen to Soil
There are three main sources of nitrogen that I’ll discuss in this article: artificial, plant-derived, and manure-derived. Let’s go through the options and see what fits best with your philosophy and gardening style.
Plant-Based Sources of Nitrogen
Since plants need nitrogen to grow, it stands to reason the plants themselves could be a good source of nitrogen. And indeed, decomposed plant material tilled into the soil, can provide a valuable and renewable source of this vital nutrient. If you have access to plant material, a place to compost it, and the will to do things for yourself, you can harvest your own nitrogen (as well as lots of other soil nutrients).
堆肥不是给土壤提供单一成分的化学添加剂,而是为土壤生物群系提供复杂的膳食,既建立土壤的有机物,又为生物、真菌、细菌和植物的生活网络提供营养。当然,你可以买袋装堆肥,但你不必这么做。当地有很多可以获取的土壤肥力来源,它们既不需要塑料包装,也不需要去商店,而且它们可能是免费的。
Here’s some potential options for how to add nitrogen to soil.
Legumes and Green Manures
As previously mentioned, legume family plants have the ability to capture nitrogen from the air and make it accessible in the soil for other plants to use. How nice of them! You can try planting legumes in a garden bed as a preparation for a nitrogen-needing crop the following season, or you can put the garden to sleep for the winter under a nitrogen-fixing cover crop.
Kitchen Compost
All your unprocessed vegetable and fruit scraps from the kitchen are a great source of goodness for the garden (if you’re not already feeding them to the worm bin or chickens, that is).
Related Post:How to Make Compost Tea
If you’re unsure where to start, Insteading has lots of articles onhow to compost and build your soil’s organic matter.Though the specific amount of nitrogen in kitchen compost is impossible to guess, it’s safe to say there is some, and it’s good enough.
Fresh Grass Clippings
As long as they’re not sprayed with pesticides,grass clippings are an excellent, high-nitrogen additionto both the garden and compost pile. Either let them decompose for next year’s planting, or use them as a mulch directly in the garden to both suppress weeds and slowly break down into the soil.
Used Coffee Grounds
Our coffee-loving culture produces literally tons of the stuff every day. Compost your coffee grounds or add them directly around your plants for a slow-release dose of nitrogen and soil-conditioning goodness. And don’t worry aboutmaking your soil acidic, most or all the water-soluble acid in coffee comes out when the coffee is brewed.
Of course, one way to utilize all these plant-based nitrogen sources is to make a big compost pile for all the above. Grass clippings, coffee grounds, kitchen scraps, and pretty much any disease-free plant material can be combined and composted to create a balanced fertilizer that invigorates your soil, feeds your plants, and supports the activities of the bazillions of beneficial micro flora and fauna to make your garden grow and thrive.
As long as there are lots of different materials included in the compost pile, you really don’t need to worry about whether or not there’s enough nitrogen. It’s there. In the thousands of years before artificial fertilizers, this is the way that plants got their nutrition. Whether they were trees nourished by rotting material on the forest floor, or ancient farm fields nourished by compost asfar back as 2334 BC(也许更远)。它工作。现在工作。
A compost pile really shouldn’t be an option when it comes to the gardener’s domain. It should be seen as necessary as the soil itself.
Manure-Based Sources of Nitrogen
Most popular garden books and websites discuss sourcing nitrogen with long lists of potential sources: coffee grounds, alfalfa meal, cottonseed or soybean meal, blood meal, etc.
While these are certainly useful sources of nitrogen, in my experience-based and strong opinion, these resources are tiptoeing around an elephant in the garden. The truth is (and it’s a truth that ancient and modern homesteaders and small farmershave known for centuries) the absolute best source of renewable, accessible, and constant nitrogen is manure of all sorts.
Related Post:Why Manure Is The Unsung Hero of the Homestead
教园丁们依靠远运来的原料,如鱼乳剂或海带粉,或像血粉这样的工业副产品,是一种有点残酷的教育转变;它描绘了一幅不准确的画面,即真正的土壤肥力只有在你买得起袋子和瓶子的材料时才能实现,而这些材料大多数你自己都不可能自己制作。事实远非如此。因为每一种吃东西的生物也会产生废物,任何能得到粪便的人都能获得丰富的土壤营养来源。
你们的牲畜,包括哺乳动物和家禽,每天都在制造氮肥。现在,就像任何强力肥料一样,动物粪便需要妥善处理。大多数动物粪便在施用前至少需要堆肥一年。如果你为牲畜使用天然的垫料,堆肥其实很简单,就是把脏的垫料堆放在一个方便的地方,让它发挥作用,然后在下一个生长季节到来时把它撒到花园里。
管理粪便将需要一些基础设施,比如建立一个专门的区域让它老化。2022世界杯四强亚盘赔率我建议把它放在谷仓或鸡舍和花园之间的某个地方,这样你就可以很容易地填满和清空。一旦你为你的特定空间做好了准备,你就会拥有不断更新的肥沃土壤。
I know that many of my gentle readers may skip over this next section, as our modern society has made it anything but palatable, but for you intrepid few who are looking for the most renewable and most accessible source of nitrogen (and are willing to think outside the fertilizer bag) there is an additional option. You don’t need to look any further than yourself.
Even if you don’t own livestock, every living human still has a super-rich, useful source of nitrogen that they themselves can process and produce. In most current circles, the discussion of humanure (it’s exactly what it sounds like) is verboten and taboo. But I really think that’s a shame.
With a lot of research, the proper infrastructure, and thoughtful handling, a composting toilet can be an effective, earth-friendly, renewable source of soil fertility that cancels out your homestead’s contribution to sewage pollution, and fills the nitrogen need without a trip to the garden store.
I won’t get into the specifics of that for this article, but if you are willing to look into it, the well-researched resources on this functional, useful, and clean system (such as the oft-cited Humanure Handbook) arefreely availableonline. I wrote an article onbuilding your own composting toilet systemearlier. It’s chock-full of resources and battle-tested tips.
所以,对于你们中少数认真寻找真正的、可持续的、长期的解决方案来管理有机土壤肥力的人来说,你们需要努力抓住每一个氮源,以保持你的花园绿色和强壮。你土地上所有生物——包括你自己——产生的粪便太有价值了,不能忽视或浪费。
Artificial Sources of Nitrogen
Bias alert: I loathe artificial fertilizer. I can never recommend it because the unsustainable and wasteful nature of producing artificial agricultural nitrogen is mind-blowingly shortsighted if you take a look at how it’s produced. But since I don’t expect you to always agree with me, and since it’s important to the discussion, let’s talk about how it’s made so you can decide what you want for your land.
Modern fertilizer factories produce tons of nitrogen fertilizer through theHaber process.Those artificial fertilizers are typicallypetrochemical byproductsharvested from land-destroying enterprises that pump crude oil and natural gases to the surface.
It is said that plants can’t distinguish this artificial nitrogen from the infinitely complex natural sources of soil fertility that also include nitrogen, but I think that line came from the marketing department who peddles this product, not reality. Natural fertilizers feed the soil as well as the plant, allowing the world of microflora and fauna to render minerals and nutrients more available to growing plants in a still-being-understood manner of exchange.
Artificial nitrogen doesn’t work as currency in the natural soil economy, so its long-term use eventually renders the soil little more than a lifeless, growing medium. And, since it’s such a potent punch of pure nitrogen, it is absorbed with lightning speed, rather than taken up by the soil biome and broken down over time. When it rains, the inevitable excess still trapped on the soil surface is often washed away in runoff and enters waterways (this is why algae blooms happen — all that nitrogen causes an explosion of growth).
To summarize: While it’s your choice what you buy, you can surely do better than buying the unbelievable waste of artificial nitrogen, especially if you’re taking care of a backyard garden or homestead food plot. There are abundant natural sources that are far superior for soil health and don’t add to the already broken system of nitrogen mismanagement that’s polluting the world’s water.
作为一个有趣的补充,重要的是要意识到,一些污水处理厂从水中分离出来的难以形容的物质生产肥料。这种被精细地称为“污泥”的固体是冲厕、道路泄漏、水槽排水和其他工业过程中的废物的结合,被加热、干燥,并重新包装成土壤改进剂。虽然我认为它确实挽救了一些被冲到下游的氮,但使用充满微塑料和药物的肥料的所谓安全性充其量是值得怀疑的。
My advice is to avoid sludge-derived fertilizers at all costs. You’ll have to do some research on your own as these products are marketed under benign names such as “Dillo Dirt,” “Chesapeake Sunshine,” and “We Care Compost”(click here for more products containing sludge)that belie their sewage-y origins).
Growing a lush, productive garden is something everyone can and should have the ability to accomplish. If this article offers anything, I hope it’s the assurance that you don’t need to shell out tons of money at a garden store to grow your own beautiful, clean, organic produce. The very resources you need to provide for yourself are more accessible than you may realize.
你把氮放回花园的方法是什么?关于如何向土壤中添加氮,你还有其他的建议吗?请在下面的评论中告诉我们!
Haroldsays
Great Article! I have found using Hairy Vetch as a late-season cover crop to be an excellent nitrogen-fixing crop.
Ella Starrsays
谢谢你提到工厂生产的氮肥。今年夏天我要开一家新公司。我会在当地找一个不错的食物区管理服务。