A Greener View

Question: I see all the ads for lawn fertilizers that include a variety of weed and insect killers and I wonder if I should use them on my lawn. How do I know which one to use?

Answer: You probably do not need any of them. Many fertilizer companies selling to homeowners promote the use of pesticides in your landscape when there is no reason to do so. This indiscriminate use of poisons is one of the reasons I believe that the EPA will eventually remove many of these products from the homeowner use market place. Homeowners are much more responsible for the applications of many wasted pounds of pesticides than the professional lawn care services.

If your lawn does not have an unacceptable level of a pest, you should not use a pesticide. If your lawn was free of crabgrass last year, or it only had a few crabgrass plants, you would be wasting your money and poisoning your landscape for no good reason, if you applied a crabgrass preventor this spring. If your lawn had lots of crabgrass, then it would be a good investment to apply a crabgrass preventor and then to do the other lawn care jobs that put your lawn into such good shape the crabgrass can be prevented without the poison. The same holds true for broadleaf weed and grub killers.

Many weed and insect pests are best prevented by having a healthy strong lawn, not by waiting until the pest shows up and then trying to kill it with poisons. It is also not a good lawn care management plan to use chemical pesticides as preventatives for problems that do not or will not exist and to neglect proper lawn care practices.

Unfortunately, a mowed lawn is a very unnatural environment. The grass plants are over planted to keep a full lush look and the grass also has competition from the surrounding landscape plants. Then we do a dastardly thing, we mow the grass down from its natural height of a foot or two, to only a couple of inches tall. Grass plants with reduced tops can only grow small root systems, so the whole plant is in trouble. The more activity the lawn receives, like in an athletic field, the more damage that will be done to this weak grass plant and the more help it will require, if it is to stay healthy. If we do not feed, weed and water, the lawn will slowly succumb to problems.

Do not rake the grass blades that died over the winter out of the lawn in the spring. When you do a spring raking, you will pull healthy grass plants out of the moist soil. The dead grass will just decay away and supply nutrients to the lawn. If an entire area has completely died out from a winter fungal disease, then go ahead and clean out all the debris and start over, but otherwise leave it alone.

In the spring, do not scalp the lawn by mowing the grass low enough to hit the tops of the grass plant. Trying to get rid of the brown grass on top, so the new grass will show through, will just run the risk of damaging the grass plants.

Do not fertilize the lawn too early. Too much nitrogen, especially early in the season, promotes a lush growth of leaves that is very susceptible to diseases. Wait until it is actively growing, before applying a fertilizer. To promote leaves in plants and lawns, a ratio from 3-1-2 to 6-1-2 is what we are generally looking for in spring and summer fertilizers and in the fall we reverse the ratio to around 1-2-2 or 3 to promote more root growth.

Lawns are recommended to receive a maximum of one pound of actual nitrogen per one thousand square feet, each time the lawn is fertilized. In many instances, only a half-pound of slow release nitrogen is better. Remember, that the numbers in a fertilizer's analysis are actually the percentage by weight of how much of that nutrient is in the bag. So, a 10 pound bag of fertilizer with an analysis of 10-3-6 has ten percent nitrogen for a total of one pound of actual nitrogen and it will cover one thousand square feet. Just put a decimal in front of each number in the analysis and multiply it by the actual weight of the bag and you will get the actual weight of that nutrient in the bag.

A weed free lawn is not nearly as important as a healthy lawn and healthy environment. Reputable companies do not recommend applying weed killers when there are no weeds. They do not apply weed killers to a whole lawn when only a few weeds are scattered about, they spray them individually. A home owner who maintains their own lawn has the time to do a better job, so do not waste your money on bags of pesticides if you do not need them.