I Fought The Lawn

So I get a surprising number of hits every day from people who, after accidentally burning their lawns with fertilzer, have been asking Google how to repair them. Because some time has passed since I touched on the issue of my demonic lawn, I’ll try to help them out here.

If you’ve burned your lawn up with fertilzer, one of two things has happened: you’ve either used the wrong fertilzer, or you haven’t spread the right fertilizer correctly. Using ‘the wrong fertilzer’ means that you’ve used one that has different kinds of pellets in the bag. What’s happened here is that the nitrate pellets, through no fault of yours, have clumped together in the grass and burned it up. You need to start using Scott’s Turf Builder, which is one of the only brand-name fertilzers that contains all of the different kinds of pellets in one pellet, and which will not burn your lawn at all. Be warned: other fertilzers will say they won’t burn your lawn. They will.

If you think you’ve been using the right fertilzer, you haven’t spread it around correctly. You’ve got to use a spreader to prevent clumping. If you have used a spreader and it still burned, then take a look at your lawn closely. I’m willing to bet that the spots that are burned up are the spots where you turned the spreader another direction while walking, and didn’t close the flow of the pellets as you were turning. This causes clumping, and it’s how your lawn gets burned up.

So it’s burned, and you’re wondering what to do. Firstly, you’re gonna have to get down in those burn spots and pick out the excessive fertilzer bits. Get as many as you can before you do anything else. Next, pick up some Miracle-Gro. You’ll want the one you can attach to your hose, but if the store doesn’t have it then get the blue powder kind and mix it into a watering can. If you’re going this way, mix in three scoops of the Gro into a standard watering can [the scoop comes in the box].

Now you’re ready to water. And baby, you’ve gotta flood that puppy. Watering the lawn is the only way to get the green grass back; adding the Gro will make it grow back faster and thicker, and the water itself will help take the excess fertilzer away while it saturates the lawn. You need to water every day for a couple of weeks to get that green lawn back. The more you water it – and I’m talking 20 minutes a day after the initial flood – the faster you’ll get your lawn back.

There’s no short-term answer here, kids, but the Miracle-Gro will help you. That stuff is magic. If you have enough left over, use it on your flowers and they’ll go crazy. Hope this helps.

BIG, CLUMSY POSTSCRIPTS: It’s a million degrees in Toronto today, and Jalal from the convenience store in my building at work seems to comment silently on it here. There’s no AC in my office, and hasn’t been any for six years. The air quality is atrocious in here. The building’s gonna have to ante up on an AC unit soon, or I’m not working in here anymore.

- BC