Gardening / Landscaping

[Fu Manchu]

Molasses is often said to feed the plant sugars. It doesn’t. It does feed beneficial microbes though. It’s complex sugars are amazing for it. Mycorrhizal fungi are the unharnessed power house. They are what drive strong resilient plant growth. They are greatly harmed by unsophisticated NPK fertilisers and controversial fungicides. That then further pushes the lawn toward greater and greater dependency on these shitty fertilisers and the industry has a lot to gain from that.
The home gardener or poorly skilled turf manager will see inconsistent performance and constantly be spending money fixing problems. Endlessly.

The best domestic lawn I ever saw was a buffalo that used less water than most. 5mins twice a week. Never “fertilised”. Perfect. Cut long too. No catcher used.
The neighbour had a couch. Mowed weekly and the resources they put into it when I saw it was concerning. Still not as good as the buffalo.

The same can be achieved with any turf variety.

 

[losh1971]

Blood and bone is good but for a large lawn it's not economical. I'm going to use Rapid Raiser as it's the same as Dynamic Lifter but around half the price.

 

[Fu Manchu]

Neve fertilise in the heat. You may as well throw your wallet off a jetty into the water.
Do spend time and money on wetting agents, seaweed & molasses.

 

[losh1971]

I'm going to also use some Yates chemical fertiliser for the iron content. I have different shades of green and it's because some seed had fertiliser and some didn't. Plus the fertiliser all sits to the bottom so when you get low in the bucket of seed you get the fertiliser mixed in to the seed.

 

[Drawnnite]

Croplift 400 is amazing stuff for grass and really cheap. ($40 or so for a 25kg bag, has lasted years)
Previous owner did Buffalo, gave me the info he found from commercial turf growers and I followed it.

Its basically 3 fertilising times a year, water it in, cut it long and youre all sweet.
If i can be bothered in summer to water it goes super green, so the back gets a water, but the front i get lazy and let nature do its thing.

 

[Fu Manchu]

I'm going to also use some Yates chemical fertiliser for the iron content. I have different shades of green and it's because some seed had fertiliser and some didn't. Plus the fertiliser all sits to the bottom so when you get low in the bucket of seed you get the fertiliser mixed in to the seed.

Get Iron Sulphate from ag suppliers if you have a large area. However the mollasses will help the mycorrhizal fungi establish, which in turn can pull trace elements otherwise unavailable to the plant and feed it into the plants root systems. They are symbiotic with the root system. So with a more diverse microbiology in the soil, a greater range of minerals into the plant than a human can apply.
This is a concept lost on many in my industry. We are trained to think the plants is dependant on a human to grow well. Yet we can delegate the job of nutrient delivery to something else which does it better than we can. Less work. Less money. Better results

 

[Fu Manchu]

It should be noted the fertiliser advise from commercial growers is not ideal. Their advise is based on out of date training and experienced advice that doesn’t factor in side effects of their practices. They are unaware of the side effects. Is the lawn green? Yes. Job done is no way to advance their industry.

A turf manager will not be using fertilisers at rates used by home gardeners and lawn mowing contractors. Someone managing a multimillion dollar turf surface/s is going to use nutrient in extremely managed amounts. They use fertilisers that are some of the most advanced around.

I recall a bunch of UWA students that looked at fertiliser application rates on retail fertiliser products. Recommended rates were around 10 times what the nutrient requirement per square meter actually is. Then people use even more thinking that’s even better!

At the turf conference some years ago, they were concerned of the uptake of plastic grass and couldn’t understand why people want to move to other alternatives. They are their own worst enemy. Laying turf how they advise and how they tell people to maintain turf is not sustainable and people just get fed up with the results.

Point being is amazing turf is easily achieved with minimal effort and cost as long as you look away from the mountain of mainstream advise.

If anyone thinks for a second I’m some anti chemical hippie, you’d be desperately wrong. It’s all about using the right tool for the job to achieve the best result with the least amount of effort and resources.

Most of the permaculture and organic methods of growing plants are also significant contributors to nutrient leaching and runoff problems, as well as inefficiently growing plants.

 

[Deuce]

On another note, I have 30kg of salt which I cannot use for the softener as it has small amounts of stone and she'll in it.
Can I add this to water and use as a feed spray? Does super salty water kill whatever plant I spray it on?

 

[Fu Manchu]

It’s not great. We are talking about regular salt? Sodium Chloride?

 

[Drawnnite]

I take it you work in the lawn/garden industry Fu?

The info I got was from the bloke before me who had loads of time to chase down info and ask lots of people questions.
Some of it was more along the lines of don't spend a fortune at a local hardware store, instead go to x or y place that does agricultural stuff or sells to places that look after impressive gardens/farms etc. He did the hard stuff getting it going, wanted that hard work to then not be wasted.
The garden is full of natives, to get them going he really cared for them, since then I'll almost neglect them, maybe give them a water if the weather necessitates it and try to remember to feed them once a year. In doing so they have gone ballistic.
Same with the grass, really don't use much feed, just an occasional bit if remembered. If it's been used and water it goes crazy, otherwise if it just gets a good bit of sun and rain/water it still goes nice and green anyway.