Welcome to the states! Milorganite is not a chemical fertilizer made from chemicals like ammonium nitrate, potassium sulfate, etc. It is a product made from sewage sludge treated with heat to sterilize it. From a safety stand point, it is safe to use. Since it contains nothing but treated organic byproducts, it has the same ingredients as many other organic garden materials. But in the eyes of the USDA, it is not suitable for use in a certified organic program because the original source is human waste rather than cattle, hog, horse, chicken, bat, or sheep waste. Most homeowner lawn care takers are not on a USDA certified organic program and can use Milorganite freely. Whether you want to or not depends on your own personal level of "ick" associated with the use of human waste. Whether it has the best bang for your buck depends on the cost of several other commodities. Milorganite prices their product competitively with their commercially bagged organic fertilizer competitors like Espoma, Medina, and some others. However, in the background there is another circle of non commercially bagged organic fertilizers. These are the grains used primarily for animal feed. They include corn, soybean, alfalfa, cottonseed, and sometimes wheat, milo/sorghum, rye, rapeseed, and flax (depending on where you live). These are all commodities and fluctuate in price not according to commercially bagged fertilizer prices but instead according to worldwide market for human and livestock food. When corn is expensive, as it was for the past two years, then corn was not the best product for the money. When corn was practically free in the early 2000s, it was a great organic fertilizer. Back then 50 pounds of corn meal was $3. Last year it was $23. But at the same time last year alfalfa held on at $12 per bag - the same price for about 10 years now. Four acres is a lot of fertilizer. If my calculator is working right, that's about 70 bags of alfalfa or anything else at 20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. $850 is a lot of hobby money. You might consider installing more of a prairie grass on 3.9 acres and concentrating your organic approach on the 0.1 acre right adjacent to your house. Four acres is a lot of grass...period. I like lawns but really?! Four acres?? Have you thought of converting a lot of it to any of these alternatives to grass arbors (for vines) bamboo bee keeping butterfly garden decks edibles (veggies) fences fountains fragrance garden gazebo greenhouse hedges herb garden hot tubs hummingbird garden Japanese garden moon garden (plants and lights for night time viewing) orchard other groundcovers out buildings (like sheds) outdoor theater parcours (exercise stations) patios ponds pools putting green rock garden rolling hills rose garden sitting or reading area statuary topiary tulip garden walkway walls wildflowers Zen garden

Lawns/turf are so different from conventional gardening it's practically it's own field of horticulture specialty. It gets even more specialized on sports/golf turfs where drainage is extremely important. The grass growing on a fairway of a golf course is extremely different than how you'd manage a home lawn...and the grass on the putting green is a form of turf management science because of how low it has to be cut and the extreme amount of drainage found on it (along with the extremely high demand for uniformity, health, and quality). Unless you're starting with an initial planting of turf sod or seed it's very hard to change the soil structure without a lot of amending over a long period of time. Most management is done via chemical (organic or not) means on a season/yearly basis. Best management includes giving grass the proper water/nutrients at the proper time to encourage deep root growth. Even with the deep root growth, though, it's still extremely shallow compared to almost every food or ornamental crop we grow.

"Instead of calling people down you could have just said compost does meet the requirements I need" --Why the heck would I say that? Are you daft? That's exactly the opposite of what I've been saying, that it WON'T meet my requirements for a fertilizer as the NPK values are too low. "Comparing rice to being a protein would be like comparing compost to being nitrogen since it has, arguably in amounts, nitrogen in it. This analogy is just wrong. " Are you stupid? I am not saying that rice IS a protein. I was saying that calling compost a fertilizer due to it having minimal amounts of NPK would be akin to calling rice a protein since it has a tiny bit of protein. Get it now? I was using that to point out that even though compost has a minute amount of NPK, that I wouldn't call it a fertilizer just cause NPK is present, as it does not have enough NPK to really fill the role as a fertilizer in a lawn program. It's there to provide microbes that digest the organic protein from the corn meal, SBM etc. *Facepalm

Load up free Sumner Grow at Sumner Bonney Lake Wastewater Treatment Facility 13114 - 63rd Street E, Sumner WA 98390 253-299-5760 Bring your own buckets & shovel to the shed in front of the anytime. I also wear a mask because it's dusty. If you're putting it inside a vehicle bring lidded containers or plastic bags you can tie shut. The dust can blow all over your vehicle...along with the odor. Bring a separate pair of shoes to put in a bag if you don't want to track it into your car. The shed is a 3 sided structure & the material spreads out from there, so you stand in the residue to shovel from the back. It's dry granular black with dust & is dense in weight like gravel. A little goes a long way. The smell is distinctive, but not horrible. My family doesn't like the smell nor do deer. I've not used it for a year on the lawn & ornamental plants because of the smell. Not ever in our edible gardens. Do call ahead if you're getting a pick up load. The shed doesn't hold that much. Corrine Here is a link that might be useful: about free Sumner Grow