EXPENSIVE FERTILIZER VS. CHEAP FERTILIZER

are you torn between which fertilizers to use this season or maybe you're brand new to lawn care and you don't even know where to start well in this video we're going to cover a bunch of different types and different price ranges and find out which is the best fit for you all right so the first set of fertilizers we're gonna take a look at are your common big box store type of fertilizers that you can find at lowe's in home depot some will call these the cheap fertilizers but we'll get into that in a little bit [Music] when it comes to these store-bought fertilizers they definitely do have some benefits to them and i would say one of the biggest selling points is that they're easily accessible you could just go to the store buy yourself a bag and throw it down and you'll see fast results but there's definitely some cons when it comes to the store-bought stuff mainly you know if you're really big into organic gardening and organic lawn care then there's not a lot of organic options pretty much one of your only options is malorganite which i'm sure you've seen in a lot of lawn care videos awesome fertilizer gonna give you that deep green lawn but the price has just skyrocketed i remember just two years ago this stuff was like five six bucks a bag and now all of a sudden it's like sixteen seventeen dollars a bag the demand is shot through the roof they hiked up the prices and i personally think that's a lot of money to be throwing down for some milorganite but it's a great fertilizer now this product over here is a product that a lot of people like to knock it's the scott's weed and feed and you know what i'm not going to knock the weed and feed because i remember before i got hardcore into lawn care it actually did a lot to transform my lawn what this is going to do not only is it going to feed your lawn and help it green up but it's also going to help kill weeds the main ingredient we killer is called 24d in here which is a fantastic weed killer it's in a lot of professional herbicides like speed zone and it's going to do a good job getting rid of that so if you're not really hardcore trying to get into lawn care and you have weeds and you want to feed your grass i definitely think the scott's weeding feed is a good option over here this is one of my favorite fertilizers you could buy at the big box store it's called scott's wheat preventer plus starter fertilizer if you're seeding any grass seed and you want to prevent weeds plus feed the grass seed that's popping up this is going to do an awesome job it contains tenacity aka mesotrium which is the only herbicide that you could apply to your lawn when you're seeding and it won't inhibit the grass seed from growing awesome stuff if you're planting grassy you're probably going to be seeing a lot of these type of fertilizers right here which is the scots turf builder and these are like specific for seasons and they have a specific analysis of the mpk ratios that best fit different seasons these are good for people that are in like running gun situations they just want to throw down some fertilizer i would kind of compare this to like buying cut up fruit from the supermarket i mean it's easy ready to go and you know when to throw it down over here this is a simple general purpose fertilizer it has equal parts nitrogen phosphorus and potassium 10 of each one and this is good uh like say if you didn't do a soil test or you don't feel like doing a soil test this will be a good general fertilizer to put down on your lawn if you haven't applied any fertilizer in a long time odds are you might be low on those nutrients so this would be a good thing to feed your lawn through all three categories so this bad boy over here is the notorious milorganite this is an organic fertilizer made from biosolids essentially made from like human crap from the sewage systems and i love using milorganite i usually throw it down about once per year it has a really high phosphorus right into it so if you don't do a soil test you could potentially be doing more harm than good to your soil if you use this but what's good about it is that it has a lot of iron in it it leads to a really dark green up i mean it gives you that dark green lawn i'm sure you guys heard about this before the only problem i don't like about it is that they hiked up those prices but you know i mean what are you gonna do supply and demand i guess that's capitalism what's good about malorganite is it's organic and it's slow release fertilizer and it reacts to the warmer temperatures so as soon as you know the temperatures heat up then it starts breaking down those microorganisms and it starts feeding your lawn and that's when you're really going to see like a green up for me it's in the late spring time i start to see it see the thing about these scots products and these lesco products is that they're fully synthetic some people might not feel safe applying that to their lawn if they have kids or they have dogs running around so malorganize going to be a good option or another one would be like purely organic lawn food those are two organic fertilizers and you don't have to worry about you know anybody stepping in the labels on these fertilizers say once you water them in and it dries then they're safe for people to walk on but i could totally see why some people might not feel comfortable with that another fertilizer you could buy from the store that i really enjoy using is this lesco professional grade fertilizer down here it doesn't have any phosphorous in it which i like because when i apply heavy amounts of milorganite i could apply that fertilizer and not worry about overdoing my phosphorus levels so if you're trying to shoot for a fertilizer that's like on the upper end of the spectrum inside the stores then i would say lesco is definitely a good option speaking of the lesco products since we're back here in the lawn and i haven't applied any fertilizer this year i'm going to go ahead and throw down my first application of fertilizer i usually like to go really light on the application usually between a quarter pound of nitrogen and a half a pound of nitrogen per thousand square feet all right since we just talked about fertilizers let's talk about spreaders a little bit right here this is my spreader it's a lesko 80 pound commercial grade spreader totally overkill for my situation and i'm actually looking to downgrade it because it's too big for my property so if you guys are thinking about getting one of these bad boys and your lawn is less than like say 7 500 square feet i would probably stay away from one of these and opt more for like one of the scots ones or an earthway spreader where you can get a more controlled spread a couple things i definitely do like about this spreader is the pneumatic tires because if you have a bumpy lawn then that can agitate the spreader to the point where it can pop out extra fertilizer and you can over apply and get dead spots in your lawn so if you are looking for a spreader i definitely recommend getting one with pneumatic tires a few of them that have those would be the echo the earthway the lescos so just do your research and find out which one is best for you you've probably seen these kind of spreaders in the store this is something called the drop spreader and traditionally it's used to spread grass seed i don't recommend using this specific spreader to spread fertilizer because it's very easy to get uneven patterns and you'll start seeing striping in your lawn not to mention sometimes they don't have the best spread say compared to our broadcast spreader like the lesco where it shoots out the fertilizer evenly in a fan so unless you're seeding i would probably stay away from one of these i'm getting ready to throw this down and real quick i want to give you guys a quick tip on how to spread fertilizer and what setting you should use for specific fertilizers i know that there's a bag rate on the bag but you actually don't have to follow that if you try this one trick if you take a look inside the hopper you can see that it opens and closes and you could adjust how big the opening of the hopper is so take a look at your prill size and see exactly what the size of that would equal out to in the opening and then set it a little less than that and this is going to spread the fertilizer super slow around your yard you might do a couple laps around the yard but that's all right because you're going to get a more even coverage you won't risk burning your lung and it's a good exercise hi we're in my front lawn right now and i'm getting ready to throw down some fertilizer these are a couple of the premium boutique type fertilizers that i have well some of the benefits of these is that they have more micronutrients in them also they contain more organic compounds i know specifically this flagship from yard mastery is like half synthetic and half organic it has the bionite in it which is similar to malorganite and what's good about these is not only are you going to get the fast acting nitrogen to get that quick green up but you're also going to get the slow acting nitrogen that will help keep that green up consistent technically these fertilizers are a bit more expensive than those big box options that we took a look at earlier but really it's not as much as people would think like a bag of scots is like 45 and a bag of this is like 54 so you're talking like 9 10 difference between the two i haven't personally tried the flagship yet so this is going to be my first time trying it out we're in my front lawn right now i like to use more premium fertilizers up here because i'm trying to get that golf course lawn i just seeded this kbg back in the fall and i know it doesn't look great right now but hopefully with a little bit of this nitrogen we'll be able to push some of that growth and be able to spread some of that kbg out more before the summer time another thing that i like about these premium fertilizers say compared to the other ones from the store is not only do they contain macros like npk but they also contain micros like magnesium and boron and copper and zinc and everything else granted your lawn might not need those depending on your soil test but it's always good to have that extra nutrient boost aside from the micronutrients these fertilizers also contain some iron in them which is going to give us that deep green dark thick lawn that we all want so not only are you going to feed the lawn with the mpk and the micronutrients but you're also going to get those deep greening effects from the iron another type of premium fertilizer that i personally just started using recently last season are liquid fertilizers this is a 1648 from simple lawn solutions i feel like that's a good balanced npk ratio specifically for my lawn because it fits my needs perfectly what's good about the liquid fertilizers kind of think about it as like a fast-acting ibuprofen you know once you take it it's going to go to work immediately it's going to break down into the soil and it's going to release those nutrients almost immediately not to mention if you spray it furtherly it's going to be absorbed by the plant right away so you could actually see the greening effects from liquid fertilizer the very next day after applying it definitely the con when it comes to these liquid fertilizers is the cost per pound of nitrogen when you buy a granular fertilizer you're definitely going to get more money per pound of nitrogen than the liquid stuff but you also have to keep in mind that you're not going to put down the same amount of nitrogen with a liquid fertilizer versus say a granular fertilizer because a lot of the times you'll be applying it directly to the plant and it just doesn't need that much whereas a granular needs to take time to break down not to mention some of the granules are coated with a special polymer hey what's up neighbor that's all right i'll put you in the video uh but yeah like i was saying some of these granules they have a polymer coating on them which actually break down more slow so you're able to apply more nutrients to the lawn at one time another thing with the liquid ferts is that you have to be careful when you apply it that you don't over apply liquid fertilizer can tend to burn your lawn easily if you're not careful and you don't follow the label 100 i personally had to learn that the hard way last year and i ended up burning a lot of my lawn so when you apply it make sure you follow the label 100 if it says water it in make sure you water it in because the application rates are very precise so actually i'm excited to try out this flagship i'm going to apply about a quarter pound of nitrogen to my lawn right now the kbg right now is actually still sleeping it's still about 50 degrees here in chicago and it's extremely slow to wake up so i'm hoping applying a little bit of this is going to help boost it up and then maybe in a week or two i'll take a look at how the lawn looks and i'll apply an application of liquid fertilizer but hey this is your first time in my channel my name is george and i'm obsessed with my lawn thank you so much for stopping by i really appreciate it if you guys enjoyed this content make sure you hit that little thumbs up button and with that this is george from princess cup peace [Music] you

Channel: Princess Cut Lawn Care

Views: 91,140

Keywords: Best lawn fertilizer, Fertilizer, Lawn care, how to apply fertilizer to lawn, Lawn fertilizer application, Lawn fertilizer schedule, Scotts turf builder weed & feed, Lawn care for beginners, Spring fertilizer, ironite, liquid fertilizer for lawn, Best fertilizer for grass, Spring fertilizer lawn, Best liquid fertilizer, What is the best fertilizer, Best organic fertilizer, Scotts fertilizer, Scotts green max fertilizer, Flagship fertilizer, Best organic lawn fertilizer

Id: VPDfVQvGmrE

Length: 11min 50sec (710 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021