Everyone desires to keep a healthy environment to his garden. To ensure the proper growth of the plants of the garden, people nowadays, mainly use two component-compost and fertilizer. Compost is a natural element having no side effect for the plants. Where as fertilizer is an artificial and chemical- based element.
Though it is not a very tough task for the expert gardeners to decide whether he will use compost or fertilizer or both in his garden. But the new gardeners face trouble to decide that which one will be better for his garden.
In this article, I have given a brief overview regarding of these two useful elements of plants as well as discussed here details features, advantages and disadvantages of them.
What is Compost?
Contents
Basically, compost is a mixture of some decaying natural substances-such as dead leaves and the dead body of animals and birds. Cow dung and asses have also used a compost. When all these natural substances are mixed together, then it works as a food of soil.
Advantages of using compost
Compost, popularly known as “black gold,” is mainly a decomposed organic substance. The decaying animals, birds, vegetables, fruits, leaves, egg shells, coffee grounds, grasses are used as compost which make the soil fertile and add nutrient elements to the soil. The advantages of the compost can be summarized followingly.
- Helps for the proper growth of microbe.
- Works as a good food for the entire soil.
- Keeps the natural health of the soil.
- Provides sufficient nutrient elements to the soil.
- Helps the soil to keep its moisture.
- Ensures the proper growth of the plants.
- Helps the soil to fight against the diseases.
- Works as a direct feed of soil.
- Helps to control weeds.
- Less Expensive and environment-friendly
Disadvantages of using compost
Unlike all other natural substances, the compost has also some drawbacks. But they are very few in number. First of all, when you are going to use compost in your garden, you have to be sure that any plants of your garden do not have soil-borne pathogens. Because it may infect your healthy plants. In a whole, these fewer numbers of disadvantages of compost may be summarized as follows.
- Takes more time to create the effect in soil.
- Takes more time to make compost.
- So obviously you need more patience to make compost and to get results of using compost in your garden.
- Takes more physical labors.
- Spreads bad smells as it is made from decayed substances.
- Takes more space to store and process.
What is Fertilizer?
Fertilizer is mainly a chemical component which also plays a vital role in growing plants. Though sometimes there are some natural substances used in fertilizer making, mainly some well-known chemical including nitrogen, phosphorus, manure, and potassium are used in fertilizer. Fertilizer also includes some others chemical components used for the soil.
Advantages of using Fertilizer
Fertilizer works more specifically in the garden. It helps the plants to grow faster. It meets up the demand of some component: such as magnesium, potassium, calcium, and phosphorus. It works to fulfill the growing demands of micro and macro nutrients of plants.It provides plants all the nutrients elements very fast. Thus it ensures the healthy growth of the plants. Above all fertilizer has a varied range of advantages which can be summarized as follows:
- Adds nutrients elements to the soil.
- Works faster.
- Ensures the fastest growth of the plants.
- Fulfills the specific needs of plants.
- Helps to alleviate some specific deficiencies.
- Fulfills the lacking of macro nutrients or micronutrients.
- Provides the essential nutrients including magnesium, potassium, calcium, and phosphorus
Disadvantages of using Fertilizer
Here is the main difference between the fertilizer and the compost is that where the disadvantages of compost are very few in number, there are a lot of drawbacks of using fertilizer in the soil. The most negative aspect of using fertilizer is that it is harmful to the environment. So, no doubt it will create an unfriendly atmosphere in your garden. Moreover, your soil may be overloaded with nutrients for excessive use of fertilizer.
The balanced mixed of microorganisms in your soil may be broken down which is very essential for the proper growth of the plants. The chemicals of fertilizer may disturb the existing relationship of microbes in the soil. The most dangerous effect of using fertilizer is that if it gets mixed with the ground water or nearby waterbed it may cause serious water and environmental pollution.
So in a brief, using of fertilizer has the following disadvantages.
- Remains risk of overloaded nutrients in the soil.
- Causes severe environmental pollution.
- Pollutes groundwater.
- Upsets the symbiotic relationship of microbes in the soil.
- Breaks the microbial balance in the soil.
- The elements of fertilizer are harmful to harmful for the environment as well as human body.
- More expensive.
Final Verdict
After the above discussion and scrutinizing all of the above information regarding both of the useful component of soil, it can be said as the final verdict that compost can get more preference to use in soil as it does not create any negative impact on the environment.
Both compost and fertilizer are essential for the soil and both of them have some drawbacks. The thing which keeps the fertilizer ahead than compost is that it works faster. But you have to keep in mind that it not environment-friendly at all.
On the other hand, though the compost works slowly, It is very environment-friendly. It is also less expensive.