hi alabama,

You lost me when you said "i'm finally starting to be able to see the grass darkening so of course i'm pretty fired up".

I don't understand the darkening part. Can you please explain more?

Thanks,

Ron

the grass is starting to turn dark green from actually having some fertilizer.

Hey Bama, Your lawn could probably use another bag of SBM. If you could find some good compost and spread that around, your soil would benefit and all the little microbes would go to work gently feeding your lawn. Most importantly, start cutting your grass long if it is a type that grows well cut long. What kind of grass is it ? Keep reading the posts here in the organic lawn forum and feed your soil. You should have a great lawn in no time all if you can keep it watered. Good luck and welcome to the forum.

You can't overdo it unless you smother the lawn (about 1/4"). It doesn't seem that you're in any danger of that.

12.5 lbs/K ft is definitely reasonable (I tend to shoot for 14 myself). That works out to between 0.75 (at 6%) and 0.875 (at 7%) pounds of nitrogen per thousand square feet.

I don't know what kind of grass you have, so what it actually needs will differ. For bluegrass (that far south I doubt you have it), I'd be adding more and doing it again in mid-August. For bermuda, I'd be adding more and doing it every month during the growing season.

Letting us know what kind of grass you have would really help to put a plan together.

Still, with all that, the microbes can't digest it fast enough to burn the lawn (they'd kill themselves in the nitrates first--and they won't do that).

If this is your first year organic, going toward the high end is probably a good idea. It gets the microbe populations up and running, builds an organic base in your lawn, and the remaining food will either wash out (some) or sit in the soil waiting for bacteria to have time to deal with it (some).

They say that after a few years you can back off somewhat because there's enough organic material built up for the microbes to nibble on. I'm not there yet so I can't confirm that first-hand.

my best guess is that it's centipede, i got 4 or 5 varying opinions the last time i asked so i don't know for sure. i know there is SOME centipede because i seeded some in the very large bare area where the leaves had been. but the little seedlings look alot different than the full grown stuff, but they are pretty small still. i can take as many pics as you need to help identify it!

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