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Feeding the Lawn
My last Rant dealt with fertilizing ornamentals, or rather not fertilizing them and instead relying on organic matter as the only source of nutrients. Now it’s time to address lawns.
So let’s take it from the top with the simple question: Do lawns need fertilizer? And the answer is…maybe, but not necessarily. How’s that for a definitive response?
Here’s the deal. Turf grasses are tough plants, which is why they’re used as turf. They can stand up to soccer matches, Bocce ball tournaments, and every other form of foot traffic imaginable. But because they’re constantly being cut during the growing season, they live in a state of continuous stress. Cutting the grass is, after all, a drastic procedure. Each time the grass is cut, it responds by putting on new growth. And to grow, it needs a source of nutrients.
MY Rant
July 2009
But must that source be fertilizer? No. If you use a mulching mower, which basically recycles the nutrients in grass clippings back into the soil, you can have a decent lawn without supplemental fertilizer. The grass may lack the vigor of your chemically dependent neighbor’s lawn, but that’s hardly the end of the world.
And if you can find an organic topdressing, a sifted compost that can be applied using a broadcast spreader (or a shovel if you’ve got a small yard), and if you apply it once, maybe twice a year, your lawn will likely rival that of your neighbor’s. All without fertilizers. (Unfortunately, I must admit that topdressings are hard to find, but they are out there, so keep looking.)
That said, I’m certain that many of you will continue to use fertilizers on your lawn, and that’s cool. But at the very least, you should do the following.
Stop using synthetic fertilizers. All synthetic fertilizers do is turn your turf into a botanical junkie. Because they’re highly water soluble, the nutrients they provide are only available for a short time, and during that time the roots can’t absorb them all, so the excess winds up polluting rivers and groundwater (and lakes and oceans). Synthetic fertilizers also leave behind salts, and those salts are toxic to soil microbes, so in time the soil becomes sterile. Synthetic fertilizers also have the potential to burn turf grasses unless the grass is watered well and often, and they cause quick growth spurts, which means more mowing.
Organic fertilizers aren’t very water soluble, so their nutrients are released slowly, and at a rate that enables roots to absorb virtually all of them. Organic fertilizers don’t form salts, they won’t burn turf grasses, and they feed the grass slowly so you don’t have to mow as often. What’s more, organic fertilizers actually feed the soil.
So how often should you fertilize? Twice a year – once in the spring just as the grass is beginning to green, and again in fall, maybe six weeks before the first hard freeze. And if you can only afford to fertilize once a year, do it in the fall. Grasses have the ability to store carbohydrates over the winter and use them to get a head start on growing the following spring. The only people who advise you to fertilize four or five times a year are the people who sell fertilizer, or those who benefit in any number of ways from their association with the people who sell fertilizer.
Of course, there are other issues to deal with in the lawn – weed control, aeration, proper watering and mowing practices, and so on. I’ll get to those in time. But the real issue, the much, much bigger issue has to do with our perception of what a lawn should look like. And that perception has been shaped not by sound horticultural practices, but by companies that sell synthetic fertilizers and the outright lies they tell. And that is my next Rant.
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