Written by Nickie Fleming in Gardening
Viewed by 81 readers since 04-16-2009

If you intend to take care of your garden in a more environmental way, you can choose for organic lawn fertilizers. Conventional (chemical) fertilizers may pollute the water, can harm wildlife and have health effects on people and animals. Next to this, pesticides used for tackling weeds can also damage your lawn. These pesticides kill the good organisms that help the plants to grow and encourage diseases to break out.

Before you start using organic fertilizers, you should have your lawn tested. This is necessary to know the level of nutrients in the soil. A soil tester will provide information on how healthy your soil is and whether or not it lacks organic material. A healthy soil should contain high levels of organic content and teems with biological life.

Next you have to make sure that the organic fertilizer you want to use is indeed environmental friendly. You should check to see that it reaches the standards of the EPA and OSB (National Organic Standards Board) for friendly garden care products. It is also good to know that most products that are certified by EPA will pose no threat to your pets.

An organic lawn fertilizer is designed to build up the soil. It helps to stimulate the presence of beneficial soil mechanisms. These critters can help to break down some elements of the lawn fertilizer and will increase their efficiency. If your soil is healthy, with a lot of organic material mixed and a high number of soil organisms, then your grass will have a natural ability of fighting back diseases and pests that attack your lawn.

In applying an organic fertilizer to your lawn, you have the choice between dry or liquid organic fertilizers.

Dry organic fertilizers work great on large areas. To use them properly, you’ll need some kind of spreader, otherwise the fertilizer won’t be distributed evenly over the lawn. These dry fertilizers will stay longer on the lawn and will require fewer treatments. They may contain natural ingredients such as blood meal, alfalfa, corn gluten meal and feather meal.

Liquid organic fertilizers are easy to use, as you just have to attach them to a garden hose. This works ideally for smaller or irregular patches of your lawn. They are easily absorbed, which means that excess nutrients are less likely to find their way into local water supplies and won’t contaminate the water. These liquid fertilizers are ideal for a quick greening of your grass, as they slowly release nitrogen and won’t burn your lawn.

When you take care of your lawn in an organic way, you should allow some weeds to grow. Besides, some plants that are considered ‘weeds’ (such as clover) are actually beneficial. They add valuable nutrients to the grass and help to create a healthy lawn. In general, when you have less than 10% of weeds, you don’t have a weed problem!

Initially, treating your lawn with organic fertilizer may be a bit more expensive, but in the long term it may cost you less money.