Yearly Garden Additions

This is for the gardens, which received about 560 pounds of organics (not including mulch), or about 280 per thousand square feet.

Date	N	P	K	Iron	Organics	Other Notes
3/18/2010	2.25	0.90	0.00	1.80	45.0	Milorganite
3/28/2010	1.80	0.72	0.00	1.44	36.0	Milorganite
4/7/2010	3.40	2.88	0.40	1.44	36.0	Milorganite, Starter
4/11/2010	1.75	0.25	0.50	0.00	25.0	Soybean Meal
5/6/2010	2.50	1.42	0.70	1.44	36.0	10-10-10, Milorganite
6/3/2010	2.95	1.77	1.02	0.00	25.0	10-10-10, Starter, Soy
7/1/2010	2.25	0.93	0.63	0.00	25.0	Starter, Soybean Meal
8/1/2010	1.05	0.90	0.13	0.44	11.0	Starter, Milorganite
9/1/2010	1.75	0.25	0.50	0.00	25.0	Soybean Meal
10/2/2010	0.90	0.36	0.00	0.72	18.0	Milorganite
Total per K ft:	20.60	10.36	3.88	7.28	282.0	564 active organic total

Yearly Lawn Additions

As of today, the year is done. The Winterizer went down this afternoon!

Here's the chart of all additions on the lawn throughout the entire gardening season. It sums to about 2,880 pounds total material, or about 450 pounds per thousand square feet. I'll publish the gardens separately.

Date	N	P	K	Iron	Organics	Other Notes
3/7/2010	0.64	0.26	0.00	0.51	12.8	Milorganite
4/1/2010	0.77	0.31	0.00	0.75	15.4	Milorganite, FeSO4
4/11/2010	0.35	0.14	0.09	0.00	21.4	Cracked Corn
4/25/2010	1.16	0.17	0.33	0.00	16.7	Soybean Meal
5/7/2010	0.60	0.81	0.15	3.57	0.00	Starter Fertilizer, FeSO4
5/21/2010	1.01	0.28	0.14	0.41	17.4	Soybean Meal, Milorganite
6/15/2010	1.01	0.28	0.14	0.41	17.4	Soybean Meal, Milorganite
7/8/2010	1.01	0.28	0.14	0.41	17.4	Soybean Meal, Milorganite
7/20/2010	0.00	0.00	0.00	3.57	0.00	FeSO4
8/1/2010	1.11	0.39	0.06	0.73	21.0	Milorganite, Soybean Meal
8/15/2010	1.26	0.24	0.29	0.21	19.4	Soybean Meal, Milorganite
8/29/2010	1.77	0.44	0.29	0.62	29.7	Milorganite, Soybean Meal
9/12/2010	1.00	0.14	0.29	0.00	14.3	Soybean Meal
9/19/2010	1.16	0.00	0.16	0.00	0.00	Vigoro 29-0-4
9/26/2010	1.00	0.14	0.29	0.00	14.3	Soybean Meal
10/3/2010	0.96	0.39	0.00	0.77	19.3	Milorganite
10/11/2010	0.83	0.00	0.11	0.00	0.00	Vigoro 29-0-4
10/17/2010	0.90	0.36	0.00	0.72	18.0	Milorganite
11/15/2010	1.55	0.68	0.29	0.00	194.2	Leaves
11/28/2010	1.50	0.00	0.21	0.21	0.00	Vigoro Super Green
Total per K ft:	19.59	5.31	2.98	12.89	448.7	2879 active organic total

More Leaves

I've finished the leaves through most of the lawn, leaving only about a hundred square feet so I have a place to mulch the garden waste for composting. It's likely I'll get a few more bags. Some will be composted, plus I'll add some to the problem areas in the lawn to help retain water next year.

The total so far is 1,050 pounds in 91.5 bags. I skipped the swale, so that's a grand total of 175 pounds per thousand, or about 1.4 pounds nitrogen, 0.61 pounds phosphorus, and 0.26 pounds potassium. Plus small amounts of every other element.

The organic total for the lawn so far this year is 429.5 pounds per thousand, or 2,814 pounds over the entire lawn. I'm probably done with the organics, but won't post the charts for the year until winterization is complete, probably in a week or two or three, depending on our weather.

Leaf Score!

Click on the above for a larger version.

Today's leaf score was 27.5 bags, mowed small and packed down solidly. Figure that's close to 350 pounds of leaves--estimating low, which I always do. That should be sufficient to cover about 2,000 square feet of lawn.

I'm shooting for around 150 pounds per thousand square feet total this year, or about a thousand pounds of leaves. Some areas will receive around 300 pounds per thousand, most notably those where I had drought damage this summer. Those retain water less well than other areas at the moment.

So why am I mulching that many leaves? Click here to see why!

Ferrous Ammonium Sulfate

...and some basic chemistry.

Thanks to Gary in Chicago and some chemical calculations, the lawn has darkened considerably (even more than before):



You can make your own ferrous ammonium sulfate very easily from two separate chemicals:  ferrous sulfate and ammonium sulfate.

I have some rough measurements and calculations that work for me.  The solution should be relatively close to equimolar (containing an equal number of moles of each chemical.  A mole is around 6 × 10²³ molecules, but as long as the molecule count is the same, it doesn't matter how many there actually are).

Fortunately you don't need a very powerful magnifying glass and the ability to count to extremely high numbers!  A little basic chemistry will tell you that there are 151.91 grams of material in 1 mole of ferrous sulfate, 132.14 grams in a mole of ammonium sulfate.  As long as you use 1.15 times as much ferrous sulfate by weight as you do ammonium sulfate, the solution will be close to pure ferrous ammonium sulfate.

It isn't that critical to be precise, so a 1 to 1 ratio is more than good enough.  Ammonium sulfate can strip some calcium from plants, so tilting the balance toward the ferrous sulfate is best--use more than 1.15 times the weight of ferrous sulfate as ammonium sulfate.

One thing to note is that this is by weight.  My ferrous sulfate doesn't seem to pack as well as the ammonium sulfate, so I require about twice as much by volume.  Your mileage will almost certainly differ.

Two to four ounces per thousand square feet in three gallons of water worked best for me.  Let it sit on the grass for 24 hours, then irrigate in well.  This solution should never be applied if temperatures will be over 80 degrees F.

With a good eye, you may notice a slight color change in an hour (I did).  However, if the lawn requires the iron, you'll certainly notice it within a day or two.  Color durability is much better than plain ferrous sulfate--post the next mow, I still saw very dark green color that hasn't faded at all.

Photo Update

Lawn performance has improved since the rains resumed at the end of September. I caught these shots today just before the next rainstorm comes through tomorrow.

The bit of cheating with synthetics I did seemed to increase the lawn density but never caused excessive top growth.

The standard shot. As always, sorry for the slightly blurry thumbnail--you can click the image to enlarge it, and click again on the image on PhotoBucket's site to enlarge it even further!


The gardens. Most of the marigolds have timed out and are gone for the season, but the salvia and celosia just keep going. The cannas aren't looking bad for October, either.


Bonus image! An October rose, with its friends in the background. This rosebush, a Double Knockout, usually blooms through November.

Cheater!

The lawn is having some slight issues coming back from this summer's damage. Root growth has been excellent from what I can tell, but top growth is slow and spreading is very slow.

So I applied 4 pounds per thousand of 29-0-4 (4.8% of that is slow release nitrogen) today and I'm currently watering it in. It works out to just about exactly a pound of quickly available nitrogen per thousand square feet.

The weather is still a bit on the warm side for grasses, and very warm for late September. Our daily high today was 82°, with estimated highs ranging from 73° tomorrow to 83° on Wednesday. That's limiting the lawn's recovery, but we're also running out of time. While frost and freeze may be late, I don't think they'll be all that late.

I could be wrong about that. I hope I am.

I should see the initial impact from this application by Tuesday or Wednesday, with faster growth continuing for a number of weeks.

Seed Starting

I'm putting together a seed-starting unit for next spring. Every year, I need about seven full flats of annuals in the gardens, and our local nurseries always have the same old things available. This will give me a lot more latitude on what I add, although some of the old favorites will still make an appearance.



That's the unit, a standard shelf with open gridwork for air and light transmission between the levels. I hung a T12 work lamp on each level, with 2 40 watt bulbs in them. One warm white and one cool white should give a good enough spectrum for seed starting and initial growth. With minimal distance over the sprouts, I should have around 1,000 foot-candles. That's a bit low, but should be workable.

I put aluminum foil behind the unit for additional light reflection. Mylar would probably be better, but I had Reynolds Wrap on-hand!

I've been collecting seeds from the garden for storage. At the moment, I have Melampodium (Showstar), Bonfire salvia (although they probably reproduced with the Red Hot Sally), and French marigold seed (of random colors as I have a wide mix).

Germination testing on the Melampodium is going well. I suspect the others require a dormancy period before testing, so I'll try those in December or January, early enough to order seeds if they fail.

September Lawn/Garden Photos

The lawn came through the (very) hot summer pretty well, although there are some scorched areas that are recovering. The gardens seem to be about three weeks ahead of their normal point, so I've been progressively removing plants that are reaching the end of their lifespans. What remains looks fairly shaggy for September, but seed production has been quite good.

Oddly, some volunteer plants that normally wouldn't begin to sprout until next year have already begun in the garden. Those will die out at frost.

As always, you can click to embiggen any photograph. Once on the PhotoBucket site, clicking again will make it larger still.

Here's the standard shot. Color is fair to middling for September, but starting to improve as the season cools and rain comes a bit more often:



Again, I found this amusing. The property line is sharp and there's definitely no doubt of where it is. There's some slight dormancy in here, but that's reversing:



Here's a photo of the garden. You can see the marigolds are giving up fast, but the salvia and cannas are doing well:



Bonus image! A nearly perfect aster (with a beetle of some sort noodling around in it):



Another bonus! An almost-perfect rose...no beetles on this one!

Highest Feeding Point

The weather still says summer with highs of 94 degrees or better through the week (exceedingly odd for late August). However, the grass will begin consuming massive amounts of nitrogen in September, so the year's heaviest feeding went today.

I applied 14.3 pounds of soybean meal, plus 15.4 pounds of Milorganite per thousand square feet. That will supply 1.77 pounds of nitrogen, 0.44 pounds of phosphoric acid (equivalent), 0.29 pounds of potassium, and 0.62 pounds of iron.

The next feeding will be applied in two weeks, but that will be somewhat lighter.

More Lawn Feeding

We have showers coming through today, so I ducked out between the raindrops and fed the lawn for the second time in August.

This time, I used 14.3 pounds per thousand square feet of soybean meal, and 5.1 pounds per thousand of Milorganite. That works out to a grand total of 1.26 pounds of nitrogen, 0.24 pounds of phosphorous, 0.29 pounds of potassium, and 0.21 pounds of iron per thousand square feet.

Technically, this feeding was completely unnecessary--it brings my August total to 2.37 pounds of organic nitrogen per thousand square feet. However, with the damage done to the lawn by the hot and dry summer, plus the fact that fall lawns are very hungry, this can only help it out.

The current grand total is 159 pounds of organics per thousand square feet, yielding 8.92 pounds of nitrogen. September's feeding will be similar, and I'll back off in October and November.

Feeding Update

I've been pretty good about publishing photos, but I haven't been so good about updating how I'm keeping the lawn looking like that!

With my low iron levels (1.3 PPM on the last soil test), and slightly high pH, iron's critical. I've dropped 50 pounds of ferrous sulfate (7.1 pounds per thousand) this year to help with both iron levels and the pH. Ferrous sulfate has about 1/8th the acidifying power of elemental sulfur, so this is the equivalent of a bit under a pound of sulfur per thousand.

I've backed off on feeding this year what with the heat and the fact that the soil simply doesn't need it any longer. So far, 118 pounds per thousand square feet of organic feedings have gone down. I'm dividing that into half Milorganite, half soybean meal for most feedings, although I did drop 20 pounds per thousand square feet of cracked corn earlier in the season to help with any fungal issues.

All things considered, that works out (per thousand square feet so far this year) to 6.5 pounds of organic nitrogen, 2.5 pounds of phosphorus, 1 pound of potassium, and 9.6 pounds of iron.

August's feeding goes right around the first, and that will be pure Milorganite. The second August feeding will be soybean meal, around the 15th. That will help get the lawn fed for fall when it really wants the nitrogen. I'll continue heavily feeding in September as well since the weather is still compatible.

Drought Lawn/Garden Photos

We're in an irregular and extended drought in the area, but the lawn and gardens are still doing amazingly well.  I haven't irrigated the lawn since the Fourth of July (although, of course, the gardens require water regularly).

If  you click on the blurry (sorry about that; PhotoBucket doesn't do a good job with thumbs) image below, you can enlarge it.  Clicking on that resulting larger image will show you an even larger one!

Here's the standard lawn shot:



I found this amusing:



Here's a shot of the back garden:



And a bonus image--a new Gaillardia just sending its first bloom. There are plenty more where that came from.

More Lawn & Garden Photos

I'll be letting the lawn go down for the summer around the fourth this year, it's too hot and dry to try to maintain it at any reasonable cost.  So instead of waiting a few extra days, I took my photos today when the lawn is at its peak.  The gardens will be maintained, of course!

As always, click on any shot to embiggen it. The larger versions aren't blurry...

Now, if you click on the PhotoBucket enlarged shot, it'll enlarge again.  I changed over to uploading photos in the 1 Mb version.

The standard lawn shot:



Here's the southern face of the lawn, now with robot tracks all over it. I'd just finished mowing it.



The front line damage hasn't repaired itself much, but the weather's been too hot and dry for spreading:



I've even had some losses in the gardens due to the weather, but fortunately I have Rocket snapdragons and celosia volunteering all over the place.



And here's a bonus closeup of the blossoming bee balm. I had to flip the bees off of it to get the shot.

Lawn and Garden Photos

Here's the standard lawn shot from today, June 17th (as always, click to embiggen):



And here's the front lawn damage. It's closing fast!



Here's an overall shot of the back gardens. I still have a bit of mess from the last thunderstorm:



Bonus shot! A blooming Asiatic lily: