1. Olive's OIL 1 quart per 5,000 square feet $15 (monthly to 4 times a year)
This is a bio-stimulant that also contains soil penetrants. Olive's OIL does two things: it feeds the organic life in the soil and it helps get water into our soil. Since there is no organic activity without moisture, the combination greatly accelerates the growth of organic life. We need help getting water to penetrate (or percolate) into our hard, tight soil. Also roots and most beneficial organisms need oxygen. As the organic populations grow, they loosen the soil bringing down the life giving oxygen. Actually, the organisms always do all the work. Take care of them and you'll have success.
2. Organic Fertilizer Olive's Growin' Great 40 lbs/ 5,000 sq ft or Hou-Actinite 50 lbs/ 5,000 sq ft (but you can put 8 times stronger and get phenominal results!)
Apply at least spring and fall. People have been trained to feed the grass. I think you should feed the soil and let it feed the grass. Organic fertilizers are mainly soil food. Think about what you are doing to the organisms. First, if you irrigate (and we all have to), you are salting the soil. (We don't drink or cook with tap water in San Angelo because it is so high in alkaline mineral salts.) I've seen the Great Salt Lake and the Dead Sea. Nothing grows there: too much salt. Excessive salts diminish organic life. Since we can't stop using with San Angelo water (or basically all water in Texas and most of it west of the Mississippi River), we need to counter by feeding the organisms. The Olive's OIL does this as do these organic fertilizers. Here's the difference in the two fertilizers I listed above:
Olive's Growin' Great This is a quality mixture of organic base materials and quality minerals added. We recommend applying in the spring after you've mowed the grass twice (not the weeds!) again in two months (probably in June) and again in the fall. Bermuda will respone to an extra feeding in in August and then October to put it to bed.
Hou-Actinite is activated sewage sludge from the Houston area. Appetizing, huh? But it works very well. The city of Milwaukee started doing this over 100 years ago. Milorganite became the preferred fertilizer for many golf courses because it worked so well. They still bag it today, but closer municipalities do it now. To change your point of view, you are made up of water, sunshine, air, and dirt: nothing else. To be totally open and honest, sewage also contains other chemicals washed down the sink. While this is true and worth consideration, there are no living toxins in the processed sludge.
3. Humate and Molasses 40 and 50 lb bags respectively (once a year, any month, covers 5,000 sq.ft.) Soil organisms love these guys. Humate is what's left when compost composts. Organic matter cannot breakdown any further. It's made of humic acid which is water soluble and humin, which is water insoluble. Fifty pounds of Humate probably does as much good as five cubic yards of compost.
Molasses feeds and stimulates bacteria. It's a source of sugar. Just like most insects are beneficial, so are most bacteria. I've had customers use this combination and report back they had much, much better results than applying chemical fertilizer (and there is no plant food of any kind being applied! - just soil food)
4. Watering
One to one and one-half inch of water per week, applied at one time, in the growing season is best. If it doesn't rain in the dormant season, it's best to water twice a month or more. How do you know how much you are watering? Answer: rain gauges. Go back to the old days of tin cans. If you have a sprinklers system put ten cans randomly in the lawn and water for ten minutes. Add up the inches and divide by ten. Do the math (or bring me the info) to figure the length of time to get an inch. You do the same thing with sprinklers. If it takes your sprinkler system 30 minutes to put on 1 ½ inches, you probably will want to go through your zones two or three consecutive times (15 or 10 minutes respectively). This way water won't run off down the street. Those of us who water with sprinklers can water one different spot each day of the week. That is watering once a week. (and I'll defend you in court if need be)
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