Lawn Care and CompostBeautiful Lawns Start with CompostFirst Edition

David Dittmar

Lawn Care and Compost

Lawn Care Facts

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The following list contains a set of professional tips to help you achieve the lawn of your dreams. You do dream about your lawn don’t you? If not, give these tips a try and soon enough you’ll have a new love in your life. Achieving a healthy, weed-, disease-, and pest-free lawn is not difficult as long as you understand a few key facts and follow a few simple practices. Lets begin…

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Plants, including turf grass, receive the majority of their nutrition from microorganisms/microbes in the soil, not from fertilizers. When you fertilize your lawn, soil microbes must first convert the fertilizers into plant available forms before your lawn can use them. These microbes work on an exchange system with plants. Plants provide microbes with sugars and in exchange microbes provide plants with the nutrients they require at that particular time. Now that's service. Without these microbes in your soil (or if their numbers are limited), your plants will have suppressed immune systems and be highly susceptible to pest and disease attacks.

• Pesticides kill soil microbes.

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Fertilizers with high N-P-K values (even if naturally-sourced) eventually lead to the death of soil microbes.

• Plant health is directly related to the health of the soil in which that plant grows.

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When your lawn care practices are geared towards increasing the

health of your soil (i.e. the health of your soil microbes) your lawn will naturally flourish. That means a lush, green lawn with minimal weeds, disease and pests.

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Feed your soil not your plants. Now repeat this until you can hear the little microbes chanting and cheering along with you. “Feed the soil not the plant.”

Topdress with Compost

Lawn Care and Compost

Like the lawn in any new residential development, most lawns lack adequate top soil (i.e. organic matter). When present, this layer of soil is filled with life (i.e. microorganisms) and actively feeds your lawn. The fastest way to

re-establish this organic matter is by top dressing with high quality, fine-screened compost. Although this step seems expensive it is one of the most cost-effective practices you can do to rejuvenate your lawn’s health. Topdressing with compost is also one of the best ways to add microorganisms back into your soils. Remember, these

microorganisms are your best friends and your lawn and gardening success depends on their survival. To learn more about the importance of organic matter in your soil, please visit our compost benefits page.

Locate a source of high quality (let us help you find the compost supplier nearest you), fine screened compost and apply a ½

to 1 inch thick layer to your lawn’s surface. It’s easiest to order a bulk load of compost, then dump strategically placed wheelbarrows around your lawn which you will then rake out into a ½

to 1 inch thick layer.

To calculate the cubic yards of compost required for your property, please use the following formula:

Total Area (in square feet) x Depth (in inches, e.g. 0.25”) / 324 = # of cubic yards

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Overseed

Lawn Care and Compost

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Over-seeding refers to the practice of re-applying seed to your lawn each year. This can be done in the spring and then again in the fall. It is best to overseed immediately following topdressing with compost since this gives the new seeds a comfy bed into which they can germinate.

Why over-seed you may ask? In order to understand why over-seeding is so critical to a healthy lawn we must think about the life cycle of a turf grass plant. The goal of any plant is to reproduce. This means it must be allowed to go to seed. However, in our lawn systems, we rarely allow this to happen since we continuously cut it. Since our lawns can’t reseed themselves, overtime they will become sparse and weeds will take over. Thankfully, we can prevent this from happening and ensure a thick lawn by over-seeding in the spring and fall. Doesn’t that make sense? Nature is so smart.

Apply Compost Tea

Compost tea is a concentrated liquid created by a particular process to increase the number of beneficial organisms within that liquid. This liquid is then sprayed on your lawn and soil. Compost tea is the fastest way to add biology back into your soil. Compost tea has been scientifically proven to provide the following benefits –

increase microbes in your soil, help suppress disease, help extend root systems, increase water and nutrient retention, is 100% safe and natural,

helps to breakdown toxins in your soil and on your plants, and more. Click here

to learn more.

When applying compost tea you can either drench your lawn’s soil or apply it to the foliage of your lawn. We recommend a soil drench at an application rate of approximately 2 L/1000 square feet. If applying it as a foliar spray you do not have to dilute your brew and can apply it at approximately ½

L/1000 square feet.

Don’t Forget to Fertilize

Lawn Care and Compost

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When we speak about fertilizing we aren’t talking about your traditional synthetic N-

P-K fertilizer from your local hardware store. We are talking about highly available naturally-occurring fertilizers like kelp meal, liquid kelp, humic/fulvic acids, liquid calcium (calcium nitrate), gypsum, sea minerals, Recharge©, liquid fish hydrolysate, and organic blackstrap molasses.

These fertilizers come in various forms (e.g. liquid or solid), and can be applied in a couple ways, including foliar sprays or through a spreader.

For foliar fertilizing, it is best to mix several of these liquids (e.g. liquid kelp, liquid calcium, molasses, Recharge©, humic/fulvic acids, liquid fish hydrolysate) together with water and apply all at once. The thought here is that we only have a vague idea as to what your lawn may need during a particular day or stage of growth, so if we provide it with multiple options it will select what it needs. Isn’t nature brilliant? The last thing you need to remember is that your soil microbes are lazy and less active in the summer, so apply about half as much fertilizer in the summer as you do in the spring and fall.

Remember…feed your soil not your plants.

When you follow these simple steps (along with watering for long, infrequent periods), your lawn will look so good that your neighbors will be drooling with envy. Soon enough, they’ll be asking about your lawn care “secret.”

If you have any compost or lawn care questions, please write to us. And remember…we can’t become the Web’s biggest tribe of compost enthusiasts without your help, so please visit us again soon.