Inactive Ingredients in Fertilizer
- Most chemical fertilizers today come with several active ingredients needed to enrich soil. These include nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, which are the basic components in fertilizer used by farmers and gardeners everywhere. Most are inorganic, or man made, in other words. Organic fertilizers like composts, manures and fish emulsions release natural types of nitrogen, to name just one compound. Also, they rarely contain inactive ingredients like their inorganic cousins, which are actually made up mostly of inactive ingredients.
- In chemical-based fertilizers, inactive ingredients include dirt, sand, limestone and sawdust, to name just several, and they're all used as fillers. A major reason they're included is to reduce the concentration of active ingredients down to appropriate soil-use levels. They dilute and help to mix the fertilizer more thoroughly. For example a 10-10-10 fertilizer has 10 percent each of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Fillers and lesser nutrients make up the other 70 percent.
- A fertilizer's inactive ingredients are also selected for their absence of reactivity to the active chemicals contained within it. It's important when adding nitrogen into a fertilizer, for example, that it not be allowed to react with anything else put into it. That's why you'll often see sand or dirt or limestone or even sawdust used in most chemical fertilizers. They're inert, meaning they won't negatively affect or combine with any of the active chemical ingredients.
- In reality, most anything that's guaranteed to not react with the specific chemicals used in fertilizers can be included in them. They also enable you to more evenly spread your fertilizer. However, that doesn't mean they don't react with your garden soil: not all inactive ingredients are benign or harmless. Some may be possibly toxic and could also end up in groundwater, for example. Reading the fertilizer's label can help you determine just what's in it.