How does baby shampoo help my lawn?
darktower00844
8 years ago
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8 years agoRelated Discussions
Using Baby Shampoo
Comments (3)I didn't think about that either. Most of the shampoo posts on this forum are from me. If you go to another forum, which I cannot name here, you will see many more people commenting positively. That's where I learned about it. You could Google "soil conditioner with kelp help plus humates." That forum is also where you will get the best help with your Logan Labs soil test....See MoreApllying Baby Shampoo
Comments (14)Word up, dudes. To get technical, any anionic surfactant will work fine. Cationic and zwitterionic (I love that word) are ineffective and not very effective respectively. Soap just happens to be cheap and handy--and you can often do better on price than baby shampoo. When lazier, I tend to use Suave as the price per ounce is much cheaper and it goes on sale a lot more often (and I like the apple scent). When not lazy, I use 4 ounces of sodium laurel sulfate (available at good price from Bramble Berry) in 1 gallon of water as a concentrate, then apply 3 ounces of that concentrate per gallon to the lawn. Price per ounce is very low. At higher concentrations, it'll also remove oil from your garage floor very easily. Toxicity is very low, but if using the SLS powder, don't breathe the stuff while mixing. It's not toxic, but it's a major irritant. I wear a mask. The 3 oz per thousand measurement is extremely flexible; I've gone as high as 15 when I've had a "greasy soil" problem. Vast overuse can cause sodium buildup (all soaps are sodium or potassium salts), but I've never seen it become a problem (yet). Soap allows water to penetrate more easily into the soil the same way that soap allows water to coat your hair, beard, skin, and dishes. It also creates an environment in soils of more diverse ions, which causes the soil particles to flocculate (gather together) into nice, small peds that allow water and air to penetrate soils much more easily. Bacteria also like the peds as they make good homes with lots of cracks and caves for them to live in--and then the bacteria further flocculate the soil for you. Conversely, clay and silt tend to be deflocculated soil, arrayed in plates and sheets that don't allow water or air to soak in easily. These soils tend to be hard, either soaked or bone dry, crack when dry, and don't support a great deal of microbial life below the surface. Although any other soil type can become deflocculated, it's a little more rare in sandy soils....See MoreBaby Shampoo method for the perennial bed?
Comments (18)Continuing this discussion...those reluctant to use baby shampoo may substitute organic Simple Green, available in every grocery store. Following the directions I gave above you will not harm the birds, worms, children, pets, etc. Just do not expect any surfactant to work the miracle of turning solid clay into friable soil as Texas Ranger is explaining above. Sunny Borders has requested more information on my remark about using a fall surfactant treatment on older properties with compacted lawns and garden soils. This is a common problem encountered by pros which can be handled in numerous ways. Sort of depends on the pro's philosophy and training. Often noted will be low sections of lawn that perk slowly after a rain, garden beds that are just 'played out'. I am encouraging the trial of a late fall surfactant treatment along with whatever else is deemed necessary to restore the soil. I find that after such a treatment the soil in the spring will have a different, loose texture and drainage is improved. My experience with all this goes back to the late 1970's. I have used surfactant treatments in many situations including on soils that have been heavily panned at construction sites and on compacted golf course greens. I prefer to use a surfactant named Nitron A-35 (available online) or one of the humic acid preparations if it is best for the situation....See MoreNo aeration. Baby shampoo but what's next...?
Comments (3)So you're the sad lawn poster child :-( The good news is that you're doing everything I was doing when I first came to this forum in 2002, everything, so there's hope for you. You're on your way with shampoo. Your moisture penetration will improve greatly. You'll feel it underfoot after it rains. You should never have to reseed with KBG. It spreads by itself to fill thin areas. Could it be your trees have grown up to provide too much shade for KBG? It needs a good bit of sunlight every day. Chances are you don't have clay, but we don't get many people from Denver on this forum. Maybe there is clay there. There are two ways to check that. One is the bottle test. Get a bottle with straight sides and fill it half full of soil. Take a picture with a ruler next to the jar. Then fill the jar with water and a drop or two of shampoo or dish soap. Shake the jar until the soil is completely incorporated in the slurry. Set it down and wait 2 minutes. Take a picture with the ruler at 2 minutes, 2 hours, and 2 days. Sand and gravel will settle instantly. At 2 minutes you'll have an idea of sand, gravel, and silt. Loam will settle in 2 hours. The really fine particles will settle in 2 days. If you can see through the water after 2 days then you likely have no clay at all. Clay tends to remain suspended in the water for many days. The other way to check for clay is to have your soil tested at an excellent lab like Logan Labs. You've probably read some of those soil test posts here. Clay soils will have an exchange capacity up above 15. Having gone through all that, if you have an imbalance of salts (sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium) then the soil can act just like clay in almost every respect. But this can be fixed by rebalancing the salts. The good soil tests will give you that information and morpheuspa (a member of this forum) can help you get the right stuff added. I don't know what will happen to your water bill, but you are not watering right. Get some cat food or tuna cans and place them around the yard. Turn on your sprinklers and time how long it takes to fill the cans. That will become your watering time from now on. What changes is how frequently you water. The basic rules are that you deep water once per month when temps are below 70 degrees F. Water once every 3 weeks with temps in the 70s. Water once every 2 weeks with temps in the 80s. Water once a week with temps in the 90s. The reason this works is you are deep watering every time. When water is deeper in the soil where the temps are cooler, the water evaporates more slowly giving the roots longer to absorb moisture. This also forces the roots to grow down deeper giving you better drought resistance. Going hand in hand with watering properly is mowing properly. You should be mowing KBG or fescue at the mower's highest setting. Tall grass grows deeper roots and provides more shade on the soil helping to keep it cool. Organic fertilizers are made from animal feeds, so I like to go direct to the feed store and get it at "wholesale." Seriously you save about 5/6 the cost of organic ferts by buying 50-pound bags of soybean meal, cottonseed meal, alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow), corn meal, or corn gluten meal. Call your feed stores and see what they have and get prices. The application rate is 15-20 pounds per 1,000 square feet. Milorganite is fine if that's all you can find. That concoction of stuff you read about is, surprisingly, not all that bad. The guy who made that popular is Jerry Baker, "America's Master Gardener." Back when he was on TV everyone on these forums just laughed about his recipes. Now, however, with some more thought, there's really nothing wrong with those. You'll get better results from 15 pounds of alfalfa pellets, though. The same goes for compost. You'll get much better bang for your buck with organic fertilizer. If you want to fertilize, use fertilizer. If you want to kill weeds, spot spray with something like Weed b Gon or Weed b Gon Chickweed, Clover, and Oxalis Killer. Those won't kill grassy weeds. For those you'll need to identify them and get more specific help. Post pictures here and ask for help. Speaking of pictures, if you could post one that shows your shade situation that would help. You might be able to loosen the extra soil and get it out. Try loosening it with a rake and water washing to move it around or get it more level. Leveling is a different topic. You might search this forum for more info on leveling. That will give you more questions to ask. So essentially lawn care boils down to watering properly, mowing properly, and fertilizing. Those are in order of importance, by the way. If you're not watering properly, then the fertilizer choice is immaterial. Here are some motivational pictures. The first one shows the fertilizer effect of alfalfa pellets.Thanks to mrmumbles for this picture. The alfalfa pellets were applied in mid May. The picture was taken in mid July. You can clearly see the improved color, density, and growth. This next picture is morpheuspa's lawn. These lawns are all KBG in eastern PA. The big difference is that morph's is watered deeply once a week in the summer and he's mostly organic with fertilizer. This was taken in July several years ago. His neighbors water every day....See Moredarktower00844
8 years agodan1018
8 years agoUser
8 years agodchall_san_antonio
2 years ago
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