Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucky1
Why would anyone with a home within the prohibitted areas want to use fertilizers??? My small home came with a sandy beach and grass. The grass is not that green cut lovely looking grass that looks like a golf course. It is full of weeds. clover, dandilions and bare spaces because all that is done to it is to have it cut. Sometimes I rake it a bit and have even added seed, but no way would I want to use fertilizer as I am lucky enough to own a home on our wonderful lake!
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Lucky, I have some bad news for you. Your home by its mere existence is a detriment to the lake. All the impervious surfaces such as the house, walk-ways, decks, etc are bad for the lake. Sandy man-made beach? Bad. Bare spots (read: denuded)? Also bad. Very few lake front lots don't have a direct slope towards the lake. Food for thought.
Although you may think just mowing is doing favors for the lake, that is not the case. Grass as nature intended was never meant to be mowed at the heights we do for lawns. Most of the cool season grasses in New England were introduced for forage of animals. Today the newer cultivars of Kentucky Blugrass like Midnight are better suited for lawns. If you seed and properly establish the grass with Kentucky Bluegrass you should not have to seed every year as KBG spreads. The fact that you get spots that die off every year is mother nature telling you that something is wrong
If you have bare spots in your "lawn" then you either have a soil problem or you have an improper climate (read: shade) to grow grass. You should consider a mulched bed of shrubs and perenials as an alternative, and perhaps some small trees if it fits into the landscape.
Grass is not some evil thing. Grass is a plant and with good soil can hold a lot of water which is good for both the grass as well as the environment.
I'm truly not trying to pick you apart but hopefully you and others can re-think what turf/soil management is all about. I think a better way to describe the issue is the
improper use of fertilizer. Once people understand the nuances involved then the picture becomes clearer. If properly applied, applying fertilizer within the 25 ft buffer would be fine. The 25 ft buffer is nothing more than an attempt at an "idiot proof" zone.
Last fall I saw a guy with a leaf blower and cleaning the leaf litter right into the lake. There is phosphorus in those leaves. This is the tip of the ice-berg of things I see going on. It's easy to pick-on fertilizer but there is so much more too it. Plus, eutrophication is a natural process.
I am going to give some advice that applies to everyone.
First and foremost, GET-A-SOIL-TEST. Do not go any further without one....
If you don't do anything else to your lawn, get the pH and macronutrients right. If your pH is too high or too low then nutrient uptake is impaired and the grass plant will not thrive. Soil amendment (using either lime or gypsum) to adjust the chemistry is the key to everything. With good soil your lawn will thrive. With bad soil you have to put the lawn on life support and feed it repeatedly to keep it looking good. Sound familar to what happens?
Even without fertilizer, proper soil chemistry goes a long way to make grass grow, thicken, and increase water retention.
If I had my way, you would not be able to buy fertilizer without a lab soil test in the last 60 days. Not only would the soil test help educate homeowners to what their lawns need, but the results could include educational material. At the very least every bag of fertilizer should have the information about soil chemistry but then they would end up selling less fertlizer
Also, packaging fertilizer at 0.5 lb N per 1000 sq ft instead of 0.7-1.0 lb N per 1000 sq ft would help as well. The problem is not fertilizer, the problem is the guy who has no idea the size of his lawn and just buys the biggest bag on the shelf and he's off to the races. Of course he's also screwing himself by causing too much top growth at the expense of the roots and a host of other issues including leaching potential.
Something I need to point out:
DO NOT JUST APPLY LIME THINKING BECAUSE OF PINE TREES YOU WILL HAVE A LOW pH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!My co-worker asked for help with his lawn. His property is encircled by all pine trees. His pH was 7.2 (above optimum). That was the native soil without ever having applied lime and he's lived in the house for 20+ years. Bottomline: absent a soil test you just don't know!
His soil has a low Ca level and low CEC. He needed gypsum. Lime was the last thing his soil needed. He also now mulch mows instead of bagging. He was following the phos-free fad. His phosphrous level was 1 ppm. Um, that's really low..... And he was wondering why his lawn looked terrible
A year later and we have his lawn well on its way to looking like a million bucks. It's going to take him probably 3 years to get there.
You need the soil test to know which type of lime you need. Don't just grab the cheapest bag. Based on the soil test you will need either calcitic or dolomitic lime. I recommend when buying lime to go to a nursery or better yet an Agway as they can help you. I use the Cal-Turf Pro or Mag-Turf Pro from Lesco/JD Landscape but the fast-acting calcitic lime from Agway is also good. However, brand doesn't really matter as much as knowing what's in the bag and reading the product label. Also, beware the marketing schmucks who throw around the "fast-acting" label. Hence why I say go to Agway or JD/Lesco as they can help you get the right product. Take your soil test with you. Big Box = clueless and will just spew the classic "common knowledge".
You can get a soil test from Lesco/JD landscape (drop in to get the sample bag), or from co-ops such as UNH, UMASS, or UMAINE.
I'll even do some of the work for you and give you the links:
http://extension.unh.edu/Agric/AGPDTS/SoilTest.htm
http://anlab.umesci.maine.edu
http://www.umass.edu/soiltest/
The only bad part about some of the testing labs is that the recommendations are not ideal but rather for "minimal input". A while back I inquired with the UMaine Soil Testing Lab about their recommended values and their feedback was the tests are, "to provide numbers for a minimal cost to the homeowner." Unfortunately this is like buying a Ferrari and then using cheap tires. Sure, you can do that but why not go for "optimum"? So, I strongly recommend a pH of 6.2 to 6.8 for your soil. The labs (all of them) list a pH as low as 5.5 as satisfactory. Obviously grass will grow in the soil but why not go for ideal when it's not that hard and lime is cheap? I digress....
If the test says you need 40 lbs of calcitic lime per 1000 sq ft then you need to apply at that rate. Just buying a bag or three of lime and throwing it down and calling it a day is a waste of time and money. It's not that hard to measure your lawn with a tape measure and you only have to do it one time.
The generic statement about 6 months for lime to work is BS as well. The correct answer is "it depends". Many factors such as existing soil chemistry, soil structure, temperature (ex: are you applying in April or November?) all play into the answer.
You can follow the recommendations from the labs and if your soil is really bad you will still see marked improvement. However if you want to go a step further take the time to either call the lab you use, JD/Lesco, Agway, etc and ask them about how to improve things further based on your soil tests. Just bear in mind that how landscapers do things are for profit which means ease of use, time-saving, generic to most lawns, etc.
It would be impossible for me to cover every soil test scenario. It's a tad more than just pH, Ca, and Mg but those are the starting points and get you 80% or more of they way to success. If you have a really low CEC and organic matter you are better off half-dosing your lawn with fertilizer. Keep mulch mowing and in the fall, mulch your leaves into the lawn, don't bag them. That's free organic matter you are working hard to just throw away.
So you know, I started as a clueless homeowner. I got the lawn bug and read every book I could get my hands on and then attended the online Penn State turf program. There is a lot more to soils and turf management than what you see in the aisles of the big box stores.
Why don't landscapers get soil tests and do all the fine tuning? Well, remember the post where someone wanted the local kid to undercut the professionals? Landscaping is cut-throat with a lot of guys who know nothing more than how to run a lawn mower and trimmer and bottom dwell when bidding. If I charge you more money for the soil test and my knowledge and try to convey to you in the 1-2 minutes I have to get your attention when selling my services, guess which guy you are going to go with? Plus, I would have to keep track of each lawn as to how much to apply (and some may not need anything = less revenue) so my logisitics would be chaotic. And now you know why Tru-Green and friends all feed everyone's lawn from the same tank on the truck
Add in the guys doing it with no insurance and under the table and you see how this goes. So, landscapers put lawns on life support and over feed them as even if the pH is out of whack you can just over dose so at least some food gets into the plant and the rest leaches away. The soil will still suck but as long as the grass looks better the homeowner thinks the landscaper has some magical powers. It also keeps you coming back to them because as soon as they stop the feeding regimen your lawn looks sickly again.
If a landscaper ever wants to sell you on a lime application without a soil test you will get immediately know how clueless they are. I know the local Scott's Lawn Service my neighbor uses does it every fall and they have not tested his soil once. Ridiculus.
Let me also clear up one of my pet peeves. Nobody, and I mean nobody who lives on the lake has a "golf course" lawn. Golf courses have and use chemicals that are not legal to use on residential turf. They use mowers that you would never use on a residential lawn. They mow the greens and collars every 1-2 days. How do you think they get the greens so smooth? Sand.
Want your lawn to look like Camden Yards (best MLB field IMO) or Fenway? Don't even try, you will fail.......
The OP reminds me of my neighbor. She would probably have a calf if she saw my commerical spreader. As a joke I donned a tyvek painters suit and put on a respirator and filled my sprayer with water and went over my lawn.
True story.
If I have made you think about soil chemistry instead of the name brand and attention grabbing labels on the bags I have done my part. Water smart fertilizer is the latest BS.
Have you had your soil tested?
