No weed killer on new seedlings. A starter fertilizer should be used at time of planting. An organic choice would be alfalfa pellets or soy bean meal. Once the lawn has been cut once or twice, you may begin pulling weeds by hand. Any weeds that you can reach without stepping on the lawn can and should be pulled any time starting tomorrow. In the mean time, keep it watered. Welcome to the forum and good luck with your new house, lawn and gardens. Bill Hill

I put down Alfalfa Pellets 2 week prior to laying S.A. sod @ 100lbs per 1000sqft and watered. (I have Sandy Soil)

I chose Alfalfa pellets: 1. To Increase Organic Matter, 2. They offer nutrients and a high availability of trace minerals, and 3. They contain trianconatol, a natural fatty-acid growth stimulant, excellent for rooting.

I agree with billhill, NO WEED AND FEED. Use Alfalfa or SBM or both.

The link below has some good info: I like Organic Fertilizer #234 - The Living Soil #211 - Soil Amendments #241

Here is a link that might be useful: Colorado State Extension

Another good amendment is Bone meal. It contains a lot of calcium which is usually lacking in upper-Midwest soils and it also contains a healthy supply of plant available phosphorus. That's the middle number on that bag of synthetic starter fertilizer.

You're going to have weeds. It's best to become socially attached to them at this juncture. Take note of and record what weeds are growing in your soil. There's a host of information surrounding soil issues that can be determined by what kind of weeds grow there.

Once your lawn is established and you've been organically amending it for a season you can start using corn gluten meal for pre-emergent weed control. You should also consider getting a GOOD soil test, I highly recomend the lab in Texas, that will tell you what your soil lacks chemically and this will also be a big step in eliminating unwanted weeds (mostly broadleafs). If you ask them they will make recomendations on amending the soil organically. Their tests are relatively inexpensive and invaluable when looking at the chemistry of the soil.

Greenjeans

Here is a link that might be useful: Texas Plant and Soil Lab

Boy, I'd love to put down bone meal when reseeding. I get super results with it when planting new perennials.
But the price! I just paid eight dollars for a box of it! No way can I afford that for my lawn, unless I apply it very sparingly.

Soybean Meal, however, gets flung about in great abandon. I love the stuff and can't believe I ever bothered with synthetic fertilizers. My grass is DARK green at the end of a four-week heat wave and I don't even water very much.

I find it for $23/50lbs. in my area. I dropped 100lbs. of it on my 4000sq.ft. just last weekend. It sure is a pain to spread though. I put it in a 5-gallon bucket and did the toss method. Worked okay but I was whiter than usual when done.

Greenjeans

Ouch! Can't beat a cheap broadcaster for the SBM. That's got me wondering though, would it even work on a long-time chemically battered lawn? It worked like dark green paint for me about 3-4 weeks after applicating but I hit my lawn with compost tea every week. I mean, it wouldn't do squat (or take a long time) if there weren't any microbes right?

It's ability to produce any visual improvement would be severely hampered in the absence of biology. In fact, it would pretty much just sit there on the lawn until something ate it. Probably birds.

But there's always some biology. The problem with years of synthetic abuse is the lack of diversity in the biology. The plant ceases to support microbes that would otherwise be symbiotic to its survival, so those microbes die off completely or are decreased to almost none.

When the first bit of organic matter is applied, in this case SBM, it starts to feed something and a whole new chain of life begins. Once food starts being introduced it attracts and/or multiplys those microbes that like those kinds of food. The multiplication of those microbes attracts their predators, and then the predators predators, and so on...

The key is hoping you have the right biology there to begin with. What may work for me might not work for someone else. I may have different biology in my soil than he/she does. That's where the benefit of compost tea comes from. The compost tea adds diversity of the organisms living in the soil. Every application adds a host of organisms that many of them didn't exist before. This diversity attracts other, different predators, and so on...

Another way to add diversity, or to promote it, is to switch things up a bit with your foods. Don't use strictly corn meal or strictly SBM. Throw in a little alfalfa a couple times a year. Throw out some molasses every once in awhile. Put down some fish meal or fish hydrolysate when the whim strikes you. All of these feed many different types of organisms. Fungi like the fish and SBM while bacteria like the molasses and alfalfa. Most turf grasses are dependant on bacteria so bacterial food is great for the health of the turf, but at the same time a lot of those bacteria depend on the fungi to break down the lignins in those grains so that they can digest them.

Another word on compost tea: Did you know you'll never brew the same tea twice? I don't care if it's the same food, the same compost, the same everything; you will always have a different diversity in the tea everytime it's brewed. The reason why is because GOOD compost is so diverse. One handful of compost does not contain exactly the same concentration or type (not sure if type the right word) of microbe as another handful taken from the same pile. What this means is every application of compost tea you make you're expanding the diversity. You can further expand it by switching it up with the compost. Use a little home-grown thermal mixed with some Alaska humus and a pinch of worm gold. That's just about as diverse as you can get! LOL

If you're finding you feed grains are being eaten up quickly and grass clippings seem to disappear in a couple days, but the turf's not showing signs of improvement; you may be lacking in predators. When the predators food source is decimated by salty synthetics, the predators are quick to follow. How long can anything live without food? How long can it live without water? Not very. To replace the predators in your soil try brewing up a nice batch of protozoa tea. You can do this by getting a big handful of natural meadow grasses and putting it in your ACT brewer. Skip the foods, or add a pinch of molasses (and I mean a pinch, don't get carried away), and brew that for a day. Apply this to your turf as a soil soak or foliar application and you've added some predators to release all that nitrogen the bacteria have fixed.

I just enjoy talking about this stuff. Ain't it fun?

Greenjeans

Greenjeans, can you remind us again what molasses does? It increases the bacteria? It obviously doesn't provide NPK right? When do you apply molasses? It's in a dried, powdered form? Can it easily be broadcast with a spreader? What time of year is best to apply? Is it beneficial to apply when seeding a lawn?

I have a couple 40lb bags of dried molasses sitting in my garage. I had planned to spread them every couple weeks just as an extra source of food for whatever (mostly a bacteria food I believe) was hanging out in my dirt. When I first got the bags I didn't know what to expect as far as appearance since I didn't know what dried molasses looked like. It's easily spreadable by broadcaster and doesn't quite look like what you would think. As far as N-P-K I personally ejected the terminology from my brain after I ditched the chemicals. I still pay attention to how much nitro I should be getting my lawn through the grains I apply but other than that I let my soil and its residents take care of the grass. Hey, Greenjeans, I like reading your stuff probably more than you like typing them- so don't ditch the board any time soon.

Molasses is great stuff! I recently read an article shown to me by Louis from Midlothian, TX. I'll go dig it up and post it here in a new thread. It makes for great discussion.

I use liquid molasses, Grandma's Unsulphured Blackstrap when I can find it. Otherwise just any unsulphured. Some may argue that others are better but to me it's all sweet and I think the bacteria feel the same. I'd like to try the dried molasses but have never been very aggresive about finding it. I always forget when I'm making the trip to the feed store (it's almost an hour away) and usually just grab some Grandma's when I'm at the grocery store.

I mix four tablespoons molasses in my hose end sprayer along with a half teaspoon of powdered seaweed concentrate and 1/2 teaspoon of humic acid. Mix 'em up with warm water and spray it all over everything. Usually right before I do a foliar application of ACT. I like to do it before I apply the ACT so I'm not knocking the freshly applied bacteria off the leaf surfaces, and it gives them a nice sticky food to sink there feet into.

What better way to keep foliar bacteria applications in place than to paste 'em there with molasses? LOL Actually they create their own bio-film which helps them to adhere to leaf surfaces. The benefit is they're outcompeting any disease organisms for food on the leaf surfaces so it greatly reduces the risk of common airborn diseases. It worked on my crabapple trees for Cedar Rust this year. Last year they were horrible, this year it's been drastically reduced to just a few leaves. Next year I suspect it will be even better.

Good soil soaks of ACT reduce the risk of soil born diseases, but keep in mind that's only going to work if your soil is aerobic. If you've got compaction it's not allowing enough oxygen to penetrate and the soil can and will become anaerobic. These anaerobic microbes is where pathogens and diseases come from (not all diseases are anaerobic, but all soil born pathogens are).

Make sure you've got good organic matter deep in your soil and not just at the surface. Use a tree root feeder to inject Efficient Microbes into the lower layers of soil so they can start to make it inhabitable for the anaerobic guys. Follow it up with Nitron A-35 injections to further the cause and then give it a shot of good fungal dominant ACT. Once these microbes get in there and start working on the soil they'll make it there home and compaction will be a thing of the past. You'll see your soil change colors and texture as the seasons pass. You'll build a soil that your hands easily penetrate. Imagine planting bulbs in Fall or annuals in Spring without needing a spade or trowel. Imagine walking past a weed and snatching it from the ground with no effort. Imagine growing vegetables that are sweeter and better for you than anything you can buy at the store.

Did you know that a vegetable or fruit becomes sweeter and taste better the more nutritious it is? Many of us have never tasted what is really possible with growing vegetables in soil laden with elements and minerals that our bodies crave. There's a way to measure these nutrition levels through the brix in the plant with a refractometer. An inexpensive little device that uses the liquid from a crushed leaf or fruit of a plant to measure the amount of sugars in the plant. The higher the brix levels, the more nutritious and better tasting the fruit of the plant will be.

Well, I've got work to do. Good talking to you guys and hope that gives ya'll something to think on for awhile. Fescue Planter I'll be around. If anyone has any questions I do answer my emails if you don't hear from me.

Greenjeans

Here is a link that might be useful: Inexpensive Refractometer...