Searching For A More Sustainable Fertilizer For Lawn And Garden

Hayground School students had a soil science class recently that started with looking down at the ground beneath their feet.

To the north was the glacial moraine that formed Long Island and created the soil underneath the grass they stood on. This was once a prime potato field with a nice thick layer of world-famous Bridgehampton loam that trickled out from the meltwaters of the glacier and covered over the sand. If you make a mud pie out of this silty loam, it holds together better than the sand, and it maintains nutrients for a longer period of time. Knowing your soil type is important when determining how to amend it, when to fertilize and what to fertilize it with.

The kids looked at kelp in liquid form and dry form, biochar, coir and local eelgrass. They were about to pot up their chestnut seeds that they had kept over winter. We had brought along fish bone meal, coir and biochar to improve their Bridgehampton loam and get the chestnut seedlings off to a good start. The students investigated the look, feel and smell of each soil amendment. Surprisingly, they liked the smell of the seaweed. It reminded them of a day at the beach. We also discussed packaging and what we were using for planters. Milk cartons, plastic pots, baskets, terracotta and biodegradable pots made of newspaper were all available to pot up with.

I want to stop using liquid formulations of fertilizers in large plastic jugs that are not recyclable. I have been using kelp from Iceland and Down to Earth Natural fertilizers that come in paper bags. But those fertilizers — no matter how organic and earth-friendly — are traveling long distances to the East End from Oregon and Iceland.

I remember, when I was young and gardening in the sand of North Sea, picking snap peas with a young girl one day. Eating them off the vine I said, “I feel like a rabbit in paradise.”

“I feel like a kangaroo in paradise,” she countered.

We were standing in a garden that had local eelgrass for mulch and was fed with fish emulsion made from the heads and guts of alewives caught at the alewife drain. Occasional donations of dead fish went right into the soil, and the dogs inadvertently dug them in for me. I could go down to Peconic Bay in spring and find a 2-foot-high windrow of eelgrass deposited along the shoreline and pitchfork it into my truck bed, hardly making a dent in the wrack line. I spread the dark brown papery ribbons a foot thick in the garden. As the season progressed, it compacted down and eventually disappeared, turning the sand into a dark brown rich soil. My neighbor provided fish emulsion from a huge tank out in the middle of his field. It smelled so bad you could not keep the watering can near the house. But it worked.

My friend at Cornell Cooperative Extension, Caroline Kiang, asked me once, “Doesn’t the salt in the eelgrass affect the garden negatively?” I never saw evidence of that and never saw any slugs either. There is a chitinous-like creature that adheres to the eelgrass and keeps slugs away.

Eelgrass is not available the way it used to be because of the brown, rust and burgundy tides that plague our bays. The Hayground School kids were clear that it is stormwater runoff that has affected all of our surface waters negatively.

Plants need nitrogen for growth, phosphorus for root, stem and fruit development, and potassium for flowering and health, plus a bunch of micronutrients. So how do we fertilize correctly? I asked local professionals about their favorite organic fertilizers and why they use them.

Dan Oliva of Sierra Land Design, a longtime Southampton resident, uses Sustane, a granular fertilizer for shrubs, flowerbeds and lawns made of pumice, coir, humic acid, kelp and mycorrhizal fungi combined with organic matter. He only applies it twice a year to the lawn — once in early May when the ground starts heating up and again in the fall.

“Sustane does not have a lot of dust to it and so it does not cause any allergic reactions for my employees, which is very helpful, and it does not have a pungent smell,” Oliva said. “So those are two positives as far as applications go.

“And the results have been pretty remarkable,” he continued. “The plants get slow feeding throughout the growing season, and in the fall the product just breaks down slowly and provides nice nutrients for the roots. We find that going into the spring, the fall fertilizer from the previous year has broken down and been absorbed. For all organic fertilizers, applications are done with the idea that six months from now the plant will start to absorb the nutrients. It is a delayed response.”

For a more immediate effect, Oliva uses drenches and foliar sprays of compost tea. The plants can use the nutrients right away, which is why he uses compost tea for flowers and vegetables in the summertime.

“The lawns that we take care of organically are green for all of the growing season,” he said. “We mix in white clover that provides shade for the grass crown. It keeps the grass greener looking mid-July to the end of August. I find the organic lawns, hands down, look much better and are healthier than the inorganic lawns that our customers have. I send photos of what the organic lawns look like when people who don’t have organic lawns complain.” Every single time they are greener and look better.

“There is more vibrance of life in organic lawns. We see more butterflies and birds. It is a nice happy environment for people to be in and creates a comfortable oasis.”

Jim Rewinski of James Rewinski Landscape Design grew up on National Golf Links. His father, Tom, was the greens superintendent for 28 years and was a town trustee for many years.

“My go-to fertilizer has been Espoma Lawn Food,” Jim Rewinski said. “It has everything in it, all the micro- and macronutrients. You get good green-up on the lawn from the iron. It is a slow-release, 100 percent organic fertilizer with little water solubility. If you keep turf healthy, it will bounce back. A fertilizer application is supposed to last eight to 10 weeks.”

As for April showers bring May flowers, he has this advice: “You have to pay attention to the weather. Don’t apply fertilizer before thunderstorms that might wash it down into the street and into the storm drains” because those drains lead to our surface waters.

Rain provides nitrogen. Rewinski the elder called it “the poor man’s fertilizer”.

Jim Rewinski tries not to fertilize grass in the summer. “I would use rock dust and iron in later July,” he said.

He noted changes made since his dad’s time: “The landscape industry is moving away from Milorganite, and getting a custom blend of fertilizer based on your soil test, is much more common.”

He’s adding biochar for retention of the microorganisms that break down organic material in the soil.

“Compost is not plant available,” he pointed out. “It is food for the worms, which eat it and then it becomes food for the plant.”

High-calcium lime to regulate pH is another product he uses frequently. It helps eliminate dandelions and red thread fungus too.

Pam Healy at Fowler’s Garden Center tries to steer people in the right direction when it comes to organic fertilizers.

Espoma is very popular because everyone has heard of it, and it is self-explanatory, easy to use and is now more focused on organics.

Jonathan Green produces an organic lawn fertilizer that gives good coverage for a reasonable price. It is made of feather meal, soybean meal, blood meal, sulfate of potash and calcium carbonate.

Healthy Start is a more advanced fertilizer with mycorrhizae and microorganisms added in to improve soil health, root growth and uptake of nutrients.

Coast of Maine produces a lobster and crab compost that can be used for everything. “This is an all-encompassing formula that is good for everything,” according to Healy. “It is manure free, and this company is trying to go peat-moss free.” Healy recommends it for topdressing lawns, pots, vegetable gardens and more. “Take last year’s soil and topdress it to rejuvenate it.”

Elizabeth Yastrzemski stopped digging around at the Halsey House on South Main Street where she is renovating the gardens to tell me about her favorite soil amendments. She uses dehydrated manure because “it builds the soil and is long lasting,” she said. “I use a couple of handfuls when I plant in my garden and in containers too. My backyard has clay and sand so in order to rebuild the soil I use a ton of dehydrated manure.”

She also likes Coop Poop, which is chicken manure.

“Fertilizing is something that does not need to be done all the time,” explained Alice Raimondo, a horticulture consultant at Cornell Cooperative Extension. “You have to test for and maintain your pH effectively to make the nutrients available to the plant. The biggest misunderstanding is that folks will fertilize thinking that they are feeding their plants. Plants feed themselves — you need to feed the soil. And the only way to do that is know what you are lacking. There are lots of labs that provide nutrient analysis.”

Island Bio Greens can mix a fertilizer based on a soil sample and make a blend of nutrients specific to any individual property.

We all have our favorite tools and our criteria for what works. I would like to see tons of eelgrass wash up again, myself. That would mean that our bays are cleaner, that scallops would come back, and brown, red, burgundy and rust tides disappear.

Seaweeds act as natural root-growth hormone for plants, feed the soil and act as mulch. The newly formed Montauk Seaweed Company may help in my search for the perfect fertilizer. The company grows sugar kelp, which captures carbon and removes nitrogen from surface waters, and sells it in paper bags.

Sean Barrett has worked hard to get legislation passed for this idea to become a reality. The Kelp Bill was just passed in New York State so now there are 16 kelp farms across the East End, which is good news for local waters and our landscapes.

RegenSea is the Montauk Seaweed Company’s best seller. It is a New York ocean- and bay-farmed sugar kelp that can be used as a top dressing or a liquid foliar spray to fertilize crops, golf courses, greenhouses and ornamentals.

Cornell Cooperative Extension did a study to see if the sugar kelp performed as well as Ascophyllum nodosum, or wrack weed, in producing root growth in plants, and indeed, it works just as well.

The sea-to-soil movement has begun, according to Barrett, in the waters of the Peconic and Gardeners bays. Farmers, Seed Long Island and the Shinnecock Nation have all reported great results. They have observed larger flower, vegetable and fruit sizes, and taller corn.

I am looking forward to the results of the Shinnecock Nation Kelp Farm in Shinnecock Bay. The Sisters of Saint Joseph, who are working with the Shinnecock farmers, see themselves as shepherds of all living things. They are closer than Montauk, reducing my carbon footprint even further, while as, Barrett explains “harnessing the power and nutrients of the ocean to strengthen and fortify our soils.”

Chris Gobler of Stony Brook University has been actively working with the kelp farmers to grow the sugar kelp in the winter months. In an SBU bulletin he noted that kelp farming is a way to improve our local water quality now. Fertilizer should be good for the environment and for our surface waters. And it is something that will work well with the North Sea sand or the Bridgehampton loam.