Lawn Fertilizer – Organic or Synthetic
What is fertilizer?
Humans and animals get nutrients through our diet. Plants must produce their own food from some essential elements, such as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc. Using the sun as energy source, the elements are turned into carbohydrates and proteins for leaf tissue, roots, genes, and DNA. This is a chemical process called photosynthesis.
The essential elements needed for plant growth are chemical elements. As example, Water is a product made up from two chemical elements: hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O). You may have heard it called H2O?? Fertilizers are also a collection of chemical elements, such as Nitrogen (N), Potassium (K), Magnesium (Mg), etc. Do you remember the "periodic table" from science class?
Fertilizers are products which contain collections of essential (chemical) elements needed for plant growth.
Grass plants primarily take up fertilizer elements through the roots. They do not care if the origin were organic or man made sources, as long as the nutrients are available in the chemical element form which they can use.
What is a synthetic fertilizer?
Synthetic simply means "man made" and the common nitrogen sources such as ammonia, ammonium sulfate, and urea are by-products from the oil and natural gas industry.
Synthetic fertilizers are typically manufacturered into salt compounds. You know what salt is?
Table salt (sodium chloride) is a collection of sodium molecules and chloride molecules held together (bonded). When placed in water, the water molecules will diverge on the sodium chloride, break the bonds between their molecules, and pull them apart into their individual chemical elements: "sodium" and "chloride" (strong little critters, aren't they?). This is why salts tend to "melt" in water.
Plants need little sodium or chloride, and therefore table salt (sodium chloride) is not used as a plant fertilizer. Other salts may contain molecules such as potassium, nitrogen, calcium, and magnesium instead. These elements are useful for plant growth and are commonly referred to as essential (chemical) elements. Table salt is just one type of salt. There are many other types of salts, some of which "season the lawn".
Because salt based fertilzers dissolve quickly into thier chemical elements, synthetic fertilizers are also referred to as "Chemical" fertilizers. Some people have then mistakenly assumed, that the fertilizers were similar to hazardous toxic waste. This is of course not true. While you certainly should not eat synthetic fertilizers, they are no more "chemical" than water and table salt. In fact, all fertilizers (synthetic or organic) are chemical (contain chemical elements).
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