Whats the difference between fertilizer and plant food?

Question

Which is more importan? one more thing does anybody know where to get a good pH testing for soil? ~*~Thanks in advance~*~ !!!

Answer 1

Actually plant food is an incorrect term.  Plants make their own food through photosynthesis.  What we apply to the soil are nutrients.  The plant takes up these nutrients supplied by the soil or supplemented by us and uses the energy captured during photosynthesis along with the carbon, oxygen and hydrogen in CO2  and water to manufacture the carbohydrates, proteins, fats which in turn become amino acids, etc which in turn become plant parts.  Think of the soil nutrients as the Alphabits: Zn (zinc), K (potassium), P (phosphorus), Ca (calcium), Fe (iron) etc which become plant parts like chlorophyll, cell walls, flower petals, etc.  

Fertilizer is a product (manure or chemical supplements (...those Alphabits) used to make a soil more fertile......that is a soil containing the nutrients as well as the physical structure condusive to good plant growth.

Oh yeah, the pH.  Well a good soil testing laboratory will do that for you, but the key is in getting a good sample which is not as easy as it seems.  If you are in the US, your state university probably has a soil testing facitlity.  Contact your Cooperative Extension agent for info on how to get a good sample and where to send it.  CES agents are found in the government pages of your phone book Cooperative Extension Service.  Your you can do a Google search (your state) Cooperative Extension Service and plow thru their websites.  

Actually unless you have an acidic soil that will benefit from lime, changing the soil pH can be very difficult  for some soils.  No chemistry lesson here, but suffice to say often you have to live with what you have for a soil pH and work to gradually move it more towards neutral and better growing conditions.  

If you want a down and dirty way, take a teaspoon full of soil, (not top soil, but rather the stuff an inch or two down) add distilled water to make a slurry, let it sit until the soil precipitates down and then stick a swimming poor or spa test strip into the liquid.  It will get you in the ballpark.