Natural Lawn Fertilizer
Many homeowner's goal is to have a lush,
green lawn that’s free of weeds and one that’s
relatively easy to maintain. In addition, most of us want to
protect the environment, and our family’s health, by cutting
down on the use of lawn chemicals.
 So what’s the solution?
Almost everyone has turned to natural lawn
fertilizers.
The idea behind it is pretty
simple. Healthy soil grows healthy plants. Growing turf
with the use of natural lawn fertilizers seems like the best
means avialable. Why? Because when we feed the life in
the soil, those growing populations of microorganisms begin to
accomplish many of the jobs that would have consumed great
amounts of our time, money, and
energy.
So how does natural lawn
fertilizer keep soil healthy? You might know
already that soil is actually an example of a
biome — a place where many
different organisms live. When you look at soil, you
think it’s just soil and nothing more. In fact,
there’s a lot more than the eye can see (literally).
That’s because soil is actually home to a lot of
different microscopic activities that helps keep the soil
healthy enough for plants to grow in.
The principal
characters are the soil microorganisms — bacteria,
fungus, etc. They are organisms that make the
soil their natural habitats. These microorganisms play a
very important role in lawn
gardening as
the activities they participate in help to provide the
necessary nutrients your plants need in order to grow and
thrive. You could say they're the key to healthy
soil.
These microorganisms help fertilize the
soil by fixing nitrogen from the air, mineralizing the soil
organic nutrient, generating carbon dioxide (the plant’s
most important nutrient), and dissolving mineral nutrient
from rock.
Some microorganisms also help in
de-thatching, by decomposing the thatch and other organic
mater into valuable nutrients and humus, which in turn increases the
water and nutrient holding capacity of the soil. So, even if you add a whole
bunch of compost and humus to your soil, if there
are no microorganisms to de-thatch these and convert them into
nutrients beneficial to plants, the soil amendments you made
would have been a waste of time.
As well,
microorganisms aerate the soil and control many insect and
disease problems by competition and predation — just
a few of the benefits that soil microorganisms provide.
Researchers agree there is still plenty
more to be discovered about soil microorganisms and what
they do for plants.
When you use natural
lawn fertilizers, you encourage the growth of
these soil microorganisms. Since natural lawn
fertilizers, unlike chemical fertilizers, don't contain
harmful substances that could destroy the microorganisms or
render them unable to do their jobs, there aren't
any worries.
While the nutrients contained in
natural lawn fertilizers help growing plants stay health, the fertilizer itself
isn't invasive on healthy bacterial life in your lawn soil. In
this way, natural lawn fertilizers are
dual-acting.
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