Do you want a nice, healthy lawn but don’t like the idea of putting lots of fertilizer on it?
To stay green and growing, lawn grass needs water, good soil, and just the right amount of nutrients. Supplying those nutrients is where lawn fertilizer comes in. Applying fertilizer at regular intervals throughout the growing season helps keep the lawn lush and green.
As many modern homeowners start moving away from commercially available lawn chemicals, you might be wondering if there’s an organic alternative for fertilizing lawn grasses. There are an increasing number of safe, organic lawn fertilizers that you can apply just like you would traditional chemical fertilizers. Another option is to use compost on your yard.
Compost is a great addition to or replacement for other lawn fertilizers. As long as it’s made the right way (more on that later), compost is safe to use and healthy for your lawn. Keep reading to learn more about how to use compost as a fertilizer or “top dressing” to keep your lawn healthy.
Reasons to Use Compost
Compost is familiar to many of us as an organic soil amendment. We work it into garden soils before planting because it improves the soil texture and provides nutrients. Applying compost to a lawn that’s already growing might seem strange. However, it can be a great way to feed lawn grass and improve the soil in your yard.
Applying compost can also reduce or eliminate your use of chemical lawn fertilizers. It’s a “green” fertilizer that won’t burn grass or leech into local waterways the way chemical fertilizers can if they’re overused. It might even help you save money, depending on whether you purchase compost or make it on your own and what type of fertilizer you were purchasing before.
In addition to the nutrients compost adds, it also acts as a soil amendment. By adding organic matter to your lawn, you’re improving the texture of all soil types (including sand and clay). It also adds beneficial microorganisms that work to make your grass roots healthy. This is one reason that it’s a good idea to apply compost after aerating. The holes left in the soil by an aerator lets compost get deeper into the lawn soil.
DIY Compost
You can purchase compost by the bag or truckload. Some cities even have a community composting program, which you can often locate through a Google search. It’s also easy to make your own compost using kitchen waste and yard scraps.
To start composting, select a location in your yard for a compost pile that’s between 3×3 feet and 5×5 feet square. You can keep the pile on the ground or compost in a bin. Turning compost piles or bins every few weeks helps speed up the composting process. If you turn the compost and the weather is warm, you can start using it in as little as 1 or 2 months. With less care or cooler weather, it may take as much as 6 to 12 months for all the material to break down.
Layer the ingredients for your compost so you have about 30 parts of “brown” material to every 1 part of “green” material. Brown material includes dry, non-living things like shredded newspaper, dry leaves and branch clippings, and cardboard. Green material includes things with a higher moisture content like kitchen scraps, grass clippings, and farm animal manure.
For more information, click here to read “Composting 101 – A Simple Guide For Getting Started”
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Make Sure It’s Fully Composted
As mentioned earlier, compost is a safe and organic fertilizer when it is made correctly. The compost that you use should be “weed free” and “fully composted.” This means that all the original components of the compost have broken down and that the compost got hot enough while decaying to kill weed seeds.
When animal manure, shredded newspaper, kitchen scraps, and other compost materials break down, the decomposition generates heat. You’ll often see people talk about compost “cooking” because the temperature can get up to 120 to 160 Fahrenheit. Those high temperatures kill weed seeds and any bacteria that might be in animal manure.
Commercially available compost from a reputable source will meet these requirements. If you’re making compost yourself, make sure that it’s fully composted before use. You can tell when compost is ready by looking at the texture and temperature. Finished compost looks like rich garden soil. It also won’t heat up anymore, even after mixing the compost pile.
How to Put Compost on the Lawn
Fertilizing with compost is done by “top dressing” the lawn. Topdressing machines or compost spreaders may be available for rent or purchase in your area, or local lawn care companies might offer topdressing as one of their services. Usually, though, you’ll use a wheelbarrow, shovel, and rake. It’s a little more work than applying fertilizer with a spreader or sprayer, but the results are worth it.
Your goal is to apply a layer of compost about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick across the whole lawn. That works out to about one cubic foot of compost for every 25 to 50 square feet of lawn. Once you have your compost, distribute it across the yard in small, evenly spaced piles. The wheelbarrow and shovel come in handy for this task.
Then, use a rake to spread the compost out over the soil in an even layer. Keep raking until there aren’t any clumps of compost and you can see the grass blades through it. Finally, water the lawn to help the compost start moving into the soil.
When to Top Dress with Compost
You can apply compost to your yard any time the ground isn’t frozen. For best results, apply right after aerating your lawn. In Texas, aerating is a yard task for the late spring or early summer. If desired, you can also apply compost through the growing season. As your soil conditions improve, you can cut back to applying compost just once or twice a year.
If you want to supplement compost with a slow-release lawn fertilizer, apply it in the spring as the grass comes out of dormancy, again in early summer, and once or twice in late summer and fall. This will supply the extra nutrients needed if you’re planning to water your lawn and keep it green, lush, and actively growing.
Fertilizing your lawn with compost is a natural, organic way to supply needed nutrients and improve the soil. It might take a little extra work than more typical lawn fertilizers, but it also comes with extra benefits for your yard and the environment.
