“I know organic fertilizers are the way to go, and I’m hearing that a lot of landscape companies are using organic fertilizers because they cost less, but I’m on a Conservation Commission here in Massachusetts and am trying to be very specific about the ratios of phosphorus to nitrogen to whatever else is in lawn fertilzers. What is the best ratio, and mix, and are all organics balanced correctly?”

MY ANSWER: Great question and one that’s impossible to answer without a soil test.

I can tell you that from a pure uptake analysis, grass uses nitrogen, calcium, potassium and phosphorus in that order and that most packaged fertilizers contain too much phosphorus and not enough calcium in their ratios.

Good organic fertilizers generally cost more than chemical fertilizers. If an organic fertilizer is really inexpensive, you need to understand if is a) truly organic, b) if is made from human biosolids or c) some other low grade waste product.

Folks who are really focusing on addressing specific soil needs will often apply bulk nutrients that are often less expensive. If you review these earlier posts, you’ll find that information: www.safelawns.org/blog/index.php/2009/07/natural-fertilizers-part-i/ and www.safelawns.org/blog/index.php/2009/07/natural-fertilizer-part-ii/.

Animal By-Products
Call me old-fashioned, but I still take all the manure I can get from the local farmers in my town. I grew up on a dairy farm and helped my grandfather spread cow manure on everything from the cornfields and hay fields to my grandmother’s vegetable and even flower gardens. I’ll never forget my grandmother’s proper sister, Aunt Evelyn, who marveled about the size and quantity of the blossoms in Gram’s garden. She took off her white gloves, reached down to scoop up some soil, and marveled at the rich material in her fingers. “It’s so nice and dark and healthy looking,” she said.
“It’s cow manure,” said Gram.
Her sister turned white and instantly went inside to wash her hands.
On lawns, animal manures are used mainly as composted amendments. Some other animal by-products can be useful if you can find them at a reasonable price, though it is still a good idea to know the source of any animal byproducts.

Blood Meal
Dried slaughterhouse waste containing about 12 to 15 percent nitrogen and 3 percent phosphorous, blood meal should not be used as a top-dressing because it might burn the lawn. However, you can work it into the soil when establishing a new lawn or use it to help activate a compost pile. Blood meal is expensive.

Bonemeal
Containing approximately 22 percent phosphorus and 22 percent calcium and used during seed, sod, sprig or plug establishment but not as a topdressing, bonemeal can help roots establish. Like blood meal, it is highly expensive.

Feather Meal
A common by-product of the poultry slaughter industry, feather meal shows up fairly often in natural fertilizers because of its nitrogen content of 8 to 15 percent. Feather meal is slow to break down, so the nitrogen is released extremely slowly, which can be good, or bad depending on your soil’s needs.

Fish Products
Growing up on the Maine coast, I vividly recall a foul stench at certain times of year when visiting the shorefront of many communities. Low tide always has a distinctive odor, but this was something more: fish-processing factories. By-products would pile up outside, and depending on which way the wind was blowing, the smell could stick with you all day.
By the early 1990s, manufacturers of compost and fertilizer gobbled up the fish waste as fast as it was produced. Fish emulsion, as it is often called, may contain as much as 10 percent nitrogen and 6 percent phosphorus, with high levels of calcium and micronutrients. In New England alone, at least a dozen companies are now making fish-based fertilizers. Across North America, dozens more are including fish in the fertilizer mix, especially when the goal is a high nitrogen count.
A primary benefit of fish in fertilizer is that it is available to the grass plants more quickly than some other organic fertilizers that first need to be decomposed by microbes in the soil. The fish-based products, in other words, can provide a quick green-up because the nutrients are predissolved in the water and ready for the grass plants immediately.

Compost
Mentioned hundreds of times in this book, compost is the basis of all organic gardening. I submit that the conscious creation of compost and the subsequent addition of compost to the soil is humankind’s primary contribution to the health of the planet as a whole. Plants almost literally can’t get too much.
One quick aside . . . Years ago, when world-famous homesteaders Helen and Scott Nearing were farming in Maine, they would faithfully send a sample of their soil to the Cooperative Extension Service at the state university. When the authors of The Good Life got their results back, they were always the same. “Too much organic matter!” they would exclaim together, and then laugh out loud like children.
An optimum goal for lawns, according to numerous agronomists, is 5 percent organic matter mixed in with the particles of clay, silt, and sand in the soil. Since most compost is about 25 to 40 percent organic matter by volume, you need to mix it in liberally to achieve 5 percent organic matter in the overall soil profile. And if you go above 5 percent, it won’t hurt the lawn one bit. Organic matter is constantly cycled by soil microbes, which will quickly devour any extra they get.
The challenge for the homeowner these days is to find good bulk sources of really fertile compost. The least expensive material may contain a high percentage of biosolids (see page xx). Some of the poorer-quality composts may contain high levels of sawdust, which is good for growing trees and shrubs but should not be used in abundance on grass. Compost should also be “finished.” That means it should smell sweet and earthy, not pungent or like ammonia, and it shouldn’t be hot with steam rising from the pile as it pours off the truck.
Some companies do make decent bagged compost, but bagged products are expensive when used on areas as large as a lawn might be. Turn to page xx for a breakdown on how much compost is required for a {1/2}-inch topdressing for spring and fall. For example, you’d need 1{1/2} cubic yards of compost to top-dress a 1,000-square-foot area {1/2} inch deep. That amounts to 40.5 cubic feet, or almost 14 bags each containing 3 cubic feet.
Once you find good compost and can afford it, don’t skimp. Applying compost builds soil structure and adds soil life. In addition to the organic matter, most compost also has some nutrient value, usually about 1 percent each of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Compost does it all in an organic lawn program.
“Think of it this way,” says Todd Harrington, a noted organic lawn care professional from Connecticut. “Ninety-nine percent of the growth in grass happens in the organic matter of your soil. If you don’t have enough organic matter, you have limited your lawn’s potential right from the start.”

My point for this post, though, is that you don’t necessarily HAVE to buy bagged products to apply to your gardens. All sorts of naturally occurring materials can be used as fertilizers. Here are just a few (as culled from my book, The Organic Lawn Care Manual):

Plant By-Products
For years, animal-based products led the way in fertilizers. People never thought twice about manure from cows, chickens, and other farm critters. Then along came fears about mad cow disease, E. coli, and other pathogens associated with animal waste. Suddenly, gardeners were taking a second look at plant-based soil amendments, some of which have wide practical application for lawns.

Alfalfa Meal
Often available in pellets containing approximately 3 percent nitrogen, alfalfa meal is readily available at farm stores as an inexpensive animal feed. It works well as a lawn soil amendment, probably because it’s a grass product.

Corn Gluten
A by-product of the milling of corn syrup products, corn gluten has been marketed as a pre-emergent weed suppressant since 1991. A thin layer of the material applied on lawns and gardens inhibits the germination of seeds (although I think it’s oversold in this regard). High in proteins, corn gluten also contains significant amounts of nitrogen, up to 10 percent. Just don’t apply it at the same time you’re trying to overseed your lawn; the seeds won’t germinate.

Cottonseed Meal
A rich source of nitrogen at 7 percent, cottonseed meal is popular as a fertilizer in some areas of the South where cotton is grown. Most organic certifiers reject cottonseed meal, however, since the majority of cotton in the United States is heavily sprayed with pesticides.

Soybean Meal
A component of many high-end natural fertilizers because of its high nitrogen content, about 7 percent, soybean meal is on the expensive side.

Seaweed Products
The anecdotal evidence has always been there. Gardeners in England and Ireland, where seaweed is plentiful, gather every speck they can find. If you’ve ever seen one of their gardens, you’d have to believe the stuff works. I’ll never forget visiting the organic gardens of Olympic gold medal marathon champion Joan Benoit Samuelson, who lives by the shore in Freeport, Maine. She harvests seaweed by the bushel and lays it in the rows between her plants, and her soil is amazing.
Much of the new generation of bagged fertilizer products has embraced seaweed as one of the key ingredients. Myriad studies have shown kelp contains all 16 elements needed for plant growth as well as a particular hormone known as cytokinin, which is responsible for cell division and cell enlargement. Cytokinin is often lacking in lawns that have suffered root declin and kelp can help restore root vigor. Many organic lawn specialists also point to increased seed germination and seedling vigor when seaweed products are applied.
Dried seaweed contains about 1 percent each of nitrogen and phosphorus and 5 percent potassium.

Wood Ash
Readily available to people who burn wood to heat their homes, wood ash is often used in place of limestone to raise the pH of soil. On average, wood ash contains about 2 percent phosphorus, 6 percent potassium, and 20 percent calcium. Beware, though: Don’t use wood ash from unknown sources, and avoid wood ash if your soil pH level is already adequate or high.

TOMORROW: Free lunches for the lawn