Another Heavy Feeding

Summer isn't even thinking about winding down yet, but organics take a while to work in. I added 110 pounds of soybean meal and another 72 pound of Milorganite to the lawn over 7,000 square feet--I usually don't feed the swale, but I've done considerable work back there and it could use the energy to spread.

For those of you playing along at home, that's 1.6 pounds of nitrogen, which is a very heavy feeding for July. That's on top of the 1.7 pounds that went down at the beginning of the month. Fortunately there's no chance of burning it, and the number of worms is exploding again.

This is the last year I'm going to be striking it this heavily.

I have to take photos of this. The lawn resembles June more than July (however, so does the weather around here), and is an incredible dark green with an aquamarine overtone. The color is more from the iron than the feeding, however.

Beginning Composting

Our township gave away (well, paid for by my taxes) 95 gallon yard waste containers. My mother had a 65 gallon container with a small hole in the bottom which she wanted to get rid of, so I took it.

An hour later with the drill, it looks like it was used for buckshot practice by somebody who can't aim very well. I can't tell you how many holes are in it...one every inch to an inch and a half all over the container.

I tossed in some leftover sod after bashing off the soil and ripping it apart, followed it up with a pile of lawn weeds and a bit of shrub cuttings, and shredded some plain paper junk mail to get some browns into the pile. Half an ounce of molasses got added with some water as well to start the process.

I'll initially turn the pile in the next week to mix everything once I'm done weeding the gardens again, but after that it's going to be relatively unturned. Every once in a while I may get around to it.

I'm hoping that, filling it by August, I have compost next spring.

More Corn and Milorganite

I fed with another 50 pounds per thousand square feet of cracked corn today, and added another 18 pounds of Milorganite on top of that. Hopefully the Milorganite will repel the birds and rabbits a bit.

Our weather is holding more like early June than July and we're still getting sufficient rain, although June's deluge seems to have stopped at least temporarily. While I wouldn't normally feed that heavily in July, this year won't be an issue.

Looking at the soil condition lately, this is the last year I need to apply at these incredibly high rates. The soil's finished transforming from solid clay to something much more friable. Technically, I could stop now, but there's no issue with continuing through the end of the season.

I do need to update the photos as the lawn is continuing to darken from the iron applications. I'll wait until I mow to do that.