Compost Top-Dressing: A Nurturing Blanket for Your Lawn and Garden

MAINE–(ENEWSPF)–May 22, 2012

The inspiration for today’s post comes by way of Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright designed home in Spring Green, Wi. By the legendary architect’s directive, the grounds are beginning their second century of organic maintenance this year.

That means Taliesin’s lawns were planted before the Titanic set sail, and before Arizona and New Mexico were states. That means they’ve grown longer than the field at Fenway Park in Boston, where the head groundskeeper hawks chemical fertilizer and writes books about how to maintain Major League grass around your own home. I wonder if Dave Mellor and any of his breathren have ever been to Taliesin to experience its serenity, majesty and, most significantly, healthy landscape.

The intent here, however, is not to pick on Dave and others who make their living perpetuating the modern marketing myth that stuff to make your lawn green needs to come from a bag or a spray tank. Rather, I want to point out the big, blue machine on the Taliesin lawn. It’s a compost spreader full of, in this case, bulk compost from Purple Cow Organics made right in Wisconsin. People ask “What’s the best compost?” almost every day and the best answer always begins with finding a local source wherever possible.

In the Organic Lawn Care Manual, I continually stress the importance of compost for a healthy lawn. It improves fertility by bringing soil back to life and, most importantly, improves the water-holding capacity of the soil. I recommend blanketing the lawn with a quarter to a half inch layer in the spring and fall in the first year of the transition from a synthetic chemical program.

Don’t apply so much that you smother the grass; it is possible to burn lawns with compost, especially if you apply it in the heat of the summer. Tips of the grass should always be poking up through the compost when you’re done.

It’s a remarkably scary process for some folks. Either they’re afraid of doing it wrong, applying too much or too little, or wary of all the labor required. The truth is that lawns are forgiving, so even if you burn them a bit, they’ll usually recover. And good, finished compost should be lightweight, with the relative consistency of dry peat moss. A wheelbarrow load isn’t heavy and raking it across the lawn is work, but not really what you might call hard work.

The photos, below, showcase just a few of the tools and techniques that can be used to get the compost out on the lawn.

This gasoline-powered machine can be maneuvered around tight spaces to distribute the compost evenly.

These piles of compost were spread by wheelbarrow last fall in preparation for overseeding with grass seed. The lawn was aerated first.

In this shot, from the Organic Lawn Care Manual, I am spreading out the piles of compost with a landscape rake. Afterward, it’s a good idea to feature the compost in with a bamboo or leaf rake.

This load of compost, by comparison to the one above, is fully finished and ready for use.

OTHER COMPOST CONSIDERATIONS:
1) Be a good shopper and ask good questions. Buying compost in bulk is a challenging proposition and no two composts are created equally; components will differ from batch to batch and, in the case of municipally produced composts, sources may include grass clippings tainted with synthetic chemical weed killers.

2) Do a simple germination test prior to your purchase. Simply put a few seeds of annual ryegrass into a container of the compost, keep it watered, and wait a few days to see if the seeds germinate readily. If the seeds germinate and the grass appears to grow quickly, then you probably have safe compost. If the seeds don’t germinate, then either the compost isn’t “finished” or it’s tainted with pesticides.

3) Give it the touch and sniff test. The texture should be granular with few recognizable objects inside (seashells and wood chunks are OK; other debris may be sign of a sloppy operation). The appearance should be dark brown to black when the compost has dried in the sun. And, speaking of moisture, the compost should not be overly moist when you’re using it; toting it can be more difficult, both from a weight and spreading standpoint. As far as smell, it should be sweet and earthy, not pungent or reeking of ammonia.

4) Compost is the single best way to increase the percentage of organic matter in the soil — and each percentage point increase in organic matter raises the soil’s water-holding capacity by 50 percent. That’s an important consideration when factoring the true cost of the product. In other words, bulk compost may seem expensive, but if you’re lowering the cost of water and fertilizer in the equation, then the bottom line may be net savings.