Why I Oughta...

I put down 72 pounds of Forever Green Natural Lawn Food in the front yard, parkway and IB2DWs and 72 pounds of the stuff in the backyard.  I've done this type of late-season dormant lawn fertilizing for the past few seasons.  Here's last year's - where I used e-corganite .  And, I used the same E-Corganite from Menards in 2021 , too.   They switched to carrying this Forever Green Natural Slow-Release Nitrogen Fertilizer which has an N-P-K of 4-3-0.  I applied it pretty heavy and spread it right on top of the small, chopped-up leaves that I have been mowing into the lawn.  I won't apply a fertilizer on the lawn until I put down a pre-emergent (with fertilizer) in the late Spring.  Well...if you call the topdressing with municipal biosolids 'feeding' (which it is), then I'll probably go sooner than pre-emergent.   2023 lawn care season is now wrapped.   Can I do better next year?  Probably.  

Back at the end of February, I posted my 2023 lawn care plan that included applications of both organic and synthetic fertilizers across the growing season . 5 feeding applications in total.  The first...was slated to be an early feeding that was combined with a pre-emergent.  I've gone back and forth with early Spring fertilizers over the years - doing it sometimes and skipping it others.  Why skip it?  Because, I don't want to have to mow.  But, buying pre-emergent WITHOUT fertilizer is hard-to-do around here, so this year, I went with the combo.   As for the timing, the GDD calendar tells you when to apply .  Here's the screenshot from today, showing that our Zone/Zip Code is in the the "Optimum" category this week.  Yesterday, I went out and applied two bags of this synthetic combo from Menards that comes from Forever Green.  I posted about the new Menards organic biosolids product from Forever Green earlier this year .   Below are a few photos showing this la

Here's a quick, early-April check-in on what has happened since the application of a light layer of municipal biosolids as topdressing to our parkway - specifically the section that is IB2DWs.  I top-dressed with these Downers Grove biosolids in early March - so right about one month ago.  Peek at this post to see the state of the lawn in this section pre-biosolids .   Then...have a look below.  On the right, is *our* section of the parkway.  On the left is the untreated section.  That's an emerging domination line , isn't it?  Sure feels like a pretty clear outcome from the biosolids, doesn't it? 

I saw this bag of Lesco 19-0-7 lawn fertilizer with pre-emergent at one of the big box stores recently and thought it was worth tracking here for both price and N-P-K makeup.  For reference, Milorganite has a 6-4-0 N-P-K and based on what I've both read/watched and my initial soil testing, finding something like this that has a # in the Potassium part of the equation is, inherently interesting to me.  At $68 a bag, it is a little bit LESS interesting, though. This post and photo, however...reminds me that I NEED to keep an eye on my 2022 lawn care schedule as I'm planning on making some changes to the treatments this year - especially as I try to balance my historical heavy N-P's in the N-P-K analysis.