Hi, I am hoping someone out there with turf experience can advise me. I live on Vancouver Island, near Nanaimo, and for the last three years I have tried to revive my lawn. (I know lawns are not very eco-friendly but I really like the look of a lawn and I try to minimize the environmental impact as much as possible). My lawn has very little shade and is on a timer controlled irrigation system. It is about 1000 square feet. I have been applying 90 KG of bagged composted chicken manure twice a year (May and October). (I calculate this to be about 3 pounds of Nitrogen each time.) I originally seeded the lawn with a perennial ryegrass called Elka 3 and I over-seed each year with about 10 pounds of the same seed. Spring and early summer the lawn looks very good (thick and dark green) but each year, around late July the lawn starts to turn yellow and I now suspect this is because I am not giving it enough Nitrogen. I am pretty sure it is getting enough water and this year, when the yellowing started, I doubled the amount of water and saw no improvement. My questions: 1. Is there a better seed, more suited to my climate, that I can convert to? The lawn gets a lot of sun, and only gets traffic when I mow it. 2. If this Elka 3 Perennial Ryegrass is suitable, can you advise the right amount of fertilizer I should be using? The spec sheet on the Elka3 describes it as needing mid-high nitrogen. 3. I use chicken manure because I would like to be as organic as possible but it is a lot of work to spread. Is there an organic fertilizer, available here in BC, that would work for me that is in pellet or some other easier to spread form? 4 . I fertilize twice a year thinking that is better than once - am I right? Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me here. Regards, Ed
It is not possible to say for sure what is the cause of your problems without knowing your soil, your drainage, the amount and timing of your watering, etc. Having said that, I strongly suspect that chicken manure is a contributing factor. You have to remember that chicken manure contains much more than just Nitrogen. Besides the three most common NPK elements, it contains trace minerals, which, if in excess, can be harmful to plants. Due to today's feeding practices the level of some trace elements in the manure may be abnormally high. For example, the levels of Boron, Copper and Zinc are usually excessively high. The manure may also contain antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, herbicides and disinfectants used for cleaning. All this you dump on your soil. In long run it may only have detrimental effect on the soil organisms, including your grass. My advice is to stop using the manure. In fact, stop fertilizing at all. You are not taking anything from the soil (hope you leave your grass clippings on the lawn), so you don't need to add anything. Try to water deep (measure the amount of water), but as infrequently as you can. Frequent, shallow watering can be another source of your problems. Wait before watering to see if your grass really needs it (it will start changing colour ever so slightly when thirsty). Force-feeding with water is not good for your grass as it would not be for you. Simply, just take it easy and your grass will recover and grow by itself. Try it and you will see.
Sorry for my delayed response and thanks for taking the time to help me. When I first put the lawn in I did not fertilize at all except for a small amount of compost from our kitchen scraps. I had good success with this on a smaller lawn back in Toronto but this lawn is double the size and the soil here on Vancouver Island must be very low in nutrients because after the first summer, after only spreading what I got out of my compost bins, my lawn was terrible. It was only during the second year when I gave in and started to use composted chicken manure that the lawn started to look okay. I learned that the soil here is mostly what they call pit run and the only organic I have is what was in the sod that was laid and what I have added via compost. I tested my soil (samples shaken in a jar of water) and I believe it is sandy loam. I carefully calculated the water I need for the area and don't think it is a water issue. And yes, I do leave the clippings on the lawn. I have now increased the amount of chicken manure by 60% and the yellow color is fading and the grass is looking much better. My theory at this point is that I was too low in nitrogen. My plan is to continue to use this higher amount of manure and test my soil for nitrogen next summer.
