I can assume that the organic fertilizers (CGM etc) are not harmful in any way to dogs?? Has anyone had experience with dogs in their yard while the fertilizer is on??

They seem fine. I have three Bichon Frise all in the nine to fourteen pound range (Nikki, the little girl, is 9 lbs, the other two are larger bruisers).

They have no attraction to soybean meal or Milorganite. I wouldn't allow them to eat rotting organics, however.

One side effect is they seem to eat more grass and get sick from it a lot less often.

Your breed may differ, of course, or your individual dogs may have specific issues. That seems unlikely, however.

Best way to kill grass in a small area? I'm trying to save my pregnant self the extra work of actually digging out the grass.

Congratulations! I can understand not wishing to dig with a separate burden to carry.

You can use Round Up. Then, once the rainproof time is past (usually an hour, some are two), rinse it off thoroughly with the hose and *try* to keep the dogs out until it dries.

Fortunately, Round Up has very low toxicity.

You could smother it with a thick coat of soil, or kill it with a covering of plastic (tacked down) as well. Give it a week or three during summer and a good plastic cover will fry it out. If the lilac is really big and shadowing that too much it won't work well or quickly, though.

I am attributing this to the wrong amount of watering, but perhaps I needed to apply the fertilizer better or something?

It could be either, or too low a level of fertilization. Grass wants to be well-fed in May, August, September, and October, a pound to a pound and a half of actual nitrogen per thousand square feet at a time.

Now that I've given the rule, I can tell you that I break it and apply a pound to 1.5 lbs a month, every month during the growing season from April through November. My soil is poor, so if yours is as well you'll probably want to increase that.

Like you noted, water 1" at a time as rarely as possible.

Can I hope reasonably that with the aerating alone that will encourage good microbes??

Unless your soil was drowned or severely poisoned (doubtful), they were there before the aeration. It will help the thatch decay by injecting microbes and soil right into the thatch layer. Organic feeding also helps, and seems to decrease the amount of thatch produced.

You can consider compost, but given your current condition I wouldn't recommend it. It's rather back-breaking to get it down at 1/4" or so across the whole lawn. Unless the soil has been heavily poisoned or under water for a good clip, it's probably unnecessary anyway.

It's available from your local garden shop, and big-box stores carry it bagged (I wouldn't dream of trusting that stuff, though, as who knows how long it's been there?) A lot of landscaping companies will deliver it (at a price), and perhaps some would even spread it (at a much greater price).

have previously used Pro-Rich fertilizer by Richlawn. Is this concidered a chemical base?? Or an organic one?

Define organic. :-) I'd definitely call this an organic fertilizer, given the poultry manure base, even though the poultry may not have had a purely organic diet (they almost certainly didn't, actually).

Purists would say that the poultry need to be certified. I don't agree and happily use genetically modified soybean on my lawn.

A protein is a protein, and any non-organic components diluted and decayed during composting to the point that I doubt there's any reason to worry. Particularly not if you eat chicken on a regular basis, or items containing GM soybean. Which I do.

but maybe I should be sticking to something else that would be better for the lawn?

If it's working for you, that's great. Name brands tend to be more expensive than the basic stuff, but are easier to find.

Soybean meal, alfalfa meal, cracked corn, cottonseed meal, etc. all make excellent organic fertilizers. Finding them can be a nightmare depending on where you live--I have to drive nearly an hour to get mine, so I load myself down and only go twice a year.

I'm presuming you're using the 10-5-5 plus iron lawn food. Using that, you should be applying about 10 pounds of lawn food per thousand square feet to get 1 pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet. You're also getting 0.5 lbs of phosphorous (kind of high) and 0.5 lbs of potassium (just about right) per application.

Er, kind of high doesn't mean killing your lawn or anything, just that it's more than you need, really.

If you have a 5,000 square foot lawn or so (I'm guessing as I didn't see any sizes above), that would mean using 50 lbs per feeding, four times a year (or more), for a total of 200 lbs.

You'd actually need more soybean meal (the one that tends to be the best, overall, in my opinion) as it's 7-1-2. That requires 14 pounds per thousand square feet, times 4 apps per year, times 5,000 square feet, equals 280 lbs. The price runs around $13 for 50 lbs or so.

Fortunately, Round Up has very low toxicity.

I triple dog dare you to do a shot of roundup!!!!

Just kidding, really!!!

No really this is an organic forum. Add OM, avoid the chemicals and enjoy the results .

If you're looking for an organic way to kill weeds, vinegar will do it (I think it may need to be in the sun). Like Roundup, it kills all plants, not just weeds. If you're trying to kill a large area, you can wait for hot sunny days, water the area really well and cover it with clear plastic. This concentrates the sunlight and cooks the weeds. I don't think it's really good for the soil microbes, either, though.

"Organic Base" is a code word for "not organic." They put a dash of compost in an ordinary fertilizer and then claim that the "base" of the fertilizer was compost. The MSDS states is contains inorganic sulfates. Wanna guess what those are? My guess is ammonium sulfate and possibly magnesium sulfate. Neither of these were formerly living materials or byproducts from metabolism. It also contains muriate of potash. That is another term for potassium chloride - also not formerly living or a byproduct. That product is a synthetic chemical fertilizer with a marketing gimmick to make it sound organic. Worked didn't it?!

Most of the ingredients in organic fertilizer can also be found as ingredients in dry dog food. So they are probably not harmful.

If your lawn was brown it needed water. If it was yellow-green, it needed fertilizer.

Grass in full sun can be killed with vinegar spray on the leaves. Depending on the grass you might be able to kill it by blocking the sunlight with black plastic covering the grass. This takes weeks.

Aerating has no effect on microbes. If you ask me, aerating has no effect on anything at all, but people I respect swear by it.

There is one more FAQ over on the Organic Gardening forum. It is near the bottom of the FAQ list.

"Depending on the grass you might be able to kill it by blocking the sunlight with black plastic covering the grass. This takes weeks."

I'm curious about this approach. I've never used the solarization approach using clear plastic, but I've read up on it and understand it.

I've got a spot that doesn't get much sun (even in summer) and has a weedy grass (maybe bermuda). Do you think covering it with black plastic to block the sun would kill it?

I've got a spot that doesn't get much sun (even in summer) and has a weedy grass (maybe bermuda). Do you think covering it with black plastic to block the sun would kill it?

Clueless. In that case, I think I'd use black plastic (like a garbage bag) to block light from the grass, increase the surface temperature of the plastic, radiate that heat downward (well, about half of it), and try to kill it that way.

I think morpheuspa and bpgreen agree that black plastic is what we're talking about.

Yes, give it a try. I like the idea of using a trash bag because it is double thick.

Sorry about the confusion. I was talking about black plastic for this purpose. I've read about watering, then using clear plastic to solarize, but I hadn't read about using black plastic to block the sunlight. The grass I want to kill is in an area that is too shaded to kill using the clear plastic approach (that relies on lots of sun to work). So I was wondering if the black plastic might work.

The grass is still dormant (which is making me think I might be right about its being bermuda). I'll wait until it's growing, take some to the extension office to find out for sure, then try the black plastic.

My dog loves CGM. he'd even lick my shoes when I was done. Most dog food is made from corn, so it won't hurt them.