Wow, what a great post David! Thank you.
I'm really starting to understand this organic way of taking care of our lawn, and I like it! We went to the feed store to get the organic fertilizer but were talked into getting the synthetic fertilizer to correct the NPK, and were also told we can do organic after that, but that it would take a longer time to see any benefits. Oh well, so many different advice, and we're still learning.
We're struggling to revitalize our Bermuda lawn from several years of neglect. When we had to give up the lawn service, we just cut the lawn. Now we can see what you're saying . . . it takes a lot of time and money to make it look good. BTW, our sodium level on the test was also very low . . . I guess that shows that we didn't fertilize with synthetics either?
Anyhow, we're going to take your advice and hunt down the cheapest organic fertilizers that we can find and hopefully apply each month. I'll probably alternate between the free coffee beans, soybean meal, and whatever else I can find around here.
Thank you so much for your great explanations! It helped a lot. I'll let you know how our lawn does this summer.
Jules