Choosing A FERTILIZER
Introduction
Inorder to keep your lawn healthy and looking at its best you must apply fertilizer but these come in many variations so how do you choose the one your lawn needs? In this article i'm going to try to explain based on my exeriences and knowledge how yuo can best select these. Fertilizers are not cheap so you want to be also selecting what your lawn actually needs.
The 3 important Letters
When people talk about fertilizers they will always mentioned 3 letters which represent the nutriants and they proportions in the product. These 3 letters are NPK are For Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium (K)
The Fertilizer Nutriants and their benefits
- Nitrogen (N): Promotes lush, green growth. The way I look at this is that its for upwards grown or leaf growth on the plant
- Phosphorus (P): Encourages strong root development. This is for downward growth or root growth and health.
- Potassium (K): Improves resilience against stress, drought, and disease. This helps harden the plant
Quality or Quantity
When you buy a fertilizing product the product will show number values next to each nutriant value. The values represent the Percentage of the product that is that type of nutriant. E.g 22-5.10 would mean 22% Nitrigen, 5% Phosphorus and 10% Potassium.
Some lawn experts use these numbers to aslo determine if their getting good value for money from the product they bought. Again if we look at the 22-5-10 example . Then you can see that the product would contains 37% of nutrients. Some might say that the only nutrient you should consider is the nitrogen content however a high nitrogen content isn't alway best.
Nitrogen comes in many forms
Its imprtant to understand that not all nitrogen is made equal and this has a big impact on how quickly their obsorbed into the plant and released into the soil
Types of Nitrogen:-
- Urea - a concentrated form of nitogen making it cheap but the urea needs to convert to ammonia before then converting to nitrate. This requires Nitrogen in the soil to start the Enzyme process. This can result in the in a slower uptake
- Nitrate - This is a form of nitrogen that is readily available for plant uptake.They disolve in water and wash throught he soil quickly. The do not bind to other materials
- Ammonia - converts to nitrate when introduced to the soil and it binds to materials unlike nitrate. This means its less likely to wash through the soil but it can tun to Gas under the right conditions and chemical reactions in the soil.
Considering your soil type
When selecting Fertilizer ideally you should look at your soil and if possible have it tested. Your soil nutrient levels will help you determine what you need to put into the soil to give your turf what its needs. It also means your not wasting your money by putting down fertilizer your lawn doesn;t need. The type of soil will also make a difference to how often you will need to apply a fertilizer
- Clay soils hold nutrients well so this means less leeching and less frequent fertilizer applications
- Sandy soils are the opposite as water and nutrients pass through it quickly meaning more frequent applications are required
- Loam soil mixes are the middle ground and hold nutrients better than sand but offer some of the other benefits of sandy soil like drainage properties.