If I put down weed-and-feed on wet grass and do not wash it off, and it does not burn the lawn.
If I do that with some other fertilizers it burns the lawn.
Are fertilizers made of different things?
Is there non-weed-and-feed fertilizer that does not burn the lawn if not washed off?
Thanks
On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 10:05:26 -0500, JustMe wrote:
Generaly speaking, you *should* apply weed & feed when the grass is damp. This will ensure that your weed chemicals stick to the plant surfaces and get's absorbed. This may not be true of the scotts weed&feed as I don't use it. Weed&feed is usually made up of one of three chemicals: 2,4-D, MCPP or dicamba or a mix of chemicals related to these. My opinion as a professional is it's a bit fool hardy to spread a herbicide all over your lawn to kill a few weeds. With better lawn culture and a little tollerance on the customer's side, most issues can be over come in time at a cheaper cost to the customer and the enviroment. Weed & Feed (imho) tends to be a waste of chemicals that are spread on non-infected areas and are a waste of money. Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally against the use of lawn herbicides, but I use a ipm (Intergrated Pest Management) approach. If the percentage of the affected lawn area is large enough or the customer's tollerance level is low enough to mandate the use of herbicides, then they are used. But by no means would I advocate the use of weed & feed in a preventive maintiance program for your lawn area. Higher lawn hights combined with a healthier nutrution base will over come most issues. I would suspect that your applying too much non-weed&feed fertilizer or the type of fertilizer that your using has high amounts of ammonium nitrate. This type of nitrogen is very water soluble and I would assume that it's leeching into the grass via the follage instead of the roots, thus overdosing the plant. Too much of a good thing is never a good thing.The weed&feed on the other hand very likely is using urea nitrogen which is needs to break down in the soil to become advailible.
I'm not sure what that says, but for about $10 per 5,000 sq ft you can get rid of most weeds. Broad-leaf weed killer from Vigoro is cheap and effective. There is a question about whether you want to apply it in the fall, given that the weeks are annuals that have already dropped their seeds. Those seeds *will* sprout next spring.
Thanks to both
Then, as I understand it, the answer to my question is:
Non-weed&feed fertilizer uses ammonium nitrate which is very water soluble and leeches into the grass via the foliage rather via the roots, thus overdosing the plant and "burning" it.
Weed&feed on the other hand very likely is using urea nitrogen which is needs to break down in the soil to become available.
Sounds to me like the ammonium nitrate should be applied in smaller doses but more often than urea since it leaches out of the soil more readily (I.a., it is more water soluble). True?
His point was that in general there is no need to use a weed/feed product regularly. Companies like Scotts include it as part of their
4 step program marketing, telling people that it should be used every year. People have the idea that this is required, many doing it multiple times a year. IMO, this is environmentally unsound and a waste of money. That chemical runs off, gets eaten by birds, absorbed into pets feet, etc.A lawn that is properly maintained should not need weed killer applied all over. A dense lawn, mowed at the right height should only have a few weeds, which can either be easily eliminated with spot spraying or ignored. My lawn looks great, only has an occasional weed and I've never applied any weed killer to the entire lawn. This practice is like taking a high power antibiotic every time you have a slight sore throught.
I can see using this type of product if you have an extensive weed problem on a lawn that was out of control. You may need to use it a few times. But these should be the exception, rather than the rule.
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