How to Make Your Own Lawn Fertilizer
Healthy grass looks great and chokes out undesirable weeds such as dandelions and wild onions. Regular applications of lawn fertilizer maintain healthy grass and eliminate the need for chemical herbicides that may harm pets, family members and wildlife. You can collect animal waste and food scraps and recycle them into lawn fertilizer to provide grass with beneficial nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Poultry, cattle or goat manure
- Burlap bag
- 5-gallon bucket
- Fish guts
- 55-gallon drum
- Animal bones
- Logs
- Garden sprayer
Instructions
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Place manure in a compost pile and allow it to decompose completely. Only use fully decomposed manure for fertilizer to eliminate undesirable organisms or seeds that could spread weeds. Fill a 3-foot square burlap bag with finished manure and place it in a 5-gallon bucket with 3 gallons of water. Set the bucket in the sun for a week to make compost tea. Compost tea will provide nitrogen to your lawn.
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Mix one part fish guts with two parts water in a 55-gallon drum and allow the mixture to fully decompose. Use fish fertilizer as an alternative to manure fertilizer to provide your lawn with nitrogen.
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3
Make a wood fire and place any animal bones in the fire to burn. The resulting bone and wood ash will provide your lawn with phosphorous and potassium, respectively.
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Dilute 1 cup of strained compost tea with 1 gallon water in a garden sprayer. If using fish fertilizer, fill a garden sprayer with strained fertilizer. Spray your lawn with either solution at a rate of 3 gallons fertilizer per 100 square feet of lawn.
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Spread 5 lbs. of bone ash evenly over 100 square feet of lawn.
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Spread 5 lbs. of wood ash evenly over 100 square feet of lawn.
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Tips & Warnings
Fish fertilizer will attract wild animals and dogs.
References
- Photo Credit Hemera Technologies/Photos.com/Getty Images
