Fertilizer

📖 In short

Fertilizer is something we add to soil to help plants grow strong and healthy. Just as you need nourishing food, plants need nutrients in the soil. Farmers and gardeners use fertilizer to get big harvests and beautiful flowers.

🤩 Did you know?

More than 95% of the world's fertilizer is used on crops.
Morocco has the world's biggest reserves of phosphate rock.
Earthworms make wonderful natural fertilizer.
Green manure is plants that are grown and then ploughed into the soil to feed it.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 What do plants need?

Plants need three important elements: nitrogen to make leaves green, phosphorus to strengthen roots and flowers, and potassium to keep the plant strong and healthy.

🔍 Natural fertilizer

Farmers make natural fertilizer from animal manure and rotting plants, leaves and vegetables. The mix of rotted scraps is called “compost”.

💡 Make your own compost

You can put vegetable and fruit peelings and dry leaves in a box in a corner of the garden and turn them now and then, and after a few months they rot down into rich fertilizer.

🎯 In moderation

Too much chemical fertilizer harms the soil, and rain can wash it into rivers and pollute them. So we must use the right amount.

📸 More pictures

🧩 Test yourself

1 Why do we put fertilizer in soil?

2 Which Arab country has the biggest phosphate reserves?

3 More than ?? % of the world's fertilizer is used on crops.

4 Which picture shows “Fertilizer”?

🌳 Discover more

📷 Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons

Suyash Dwivedi · CC BY-SA 4.0
Fenrisulfir · CC BY-SA 3.0