Video | Did you Know? The Secret to Fertilizing your Trees and Shrubs Without Using Chemicals.

You might be fertilizing your trees all wrong. I’m Basil, and today we’re talking about fertilizer. Usually, when someone says fertilizer, they are talking about chemical-based products with nitrogen, and phosphorus, and potassium. These are the sorts of products you might find at your local hardware store or on Amazon. You can use chemical-based products to feed your trees, but this does ignore how trees are naturally fed in the forest.

Trees are fed by the millions of little critters that live in the soil, including bacteria, fungi, and earthworms. All these little critters, they extract minerals from the soil and turn it into tree food. They give your tree everything it needs, including nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. So a better way to fertilize your tree is to care for the little critters in the soil.

We can do this by leaving leaves to rot, by adding wood chips around the base of the tree, and with compost. You can make your own, or you can buy some locally. This is especially good stuff. We should also avoid chemicals. Fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides... all these chemicals actually kill those little soil critters that feed our tree.

Your tree is not missing nutrients! They are all around. What your tree is missing are those little critters that live in the soil that actually make tree food. So instead of fertilizing your tree using all the traditional chemical fertilizers, think about caring for those soil critters. Let things rot, add compost, avoid chemicals. This will help make a healthier tree, improve local ecology, and ultimately will benefit our planet.