Why don't you just purchase a complete organic granular fertilizer & follow the application directions on the package? Because it's balanced you wouldn't get too much nitrogen which makes for large tomato plants, but few fruits. Beans don't need much nitrogen either, but actually can improve your soil for the tomatoes next year if you alternate the rows. Too much of any one thing with individual soil amendments could cause a problem for your garden and you might not have time to correct & replant before your summer crops planting window is over. Like joel_bc amending the row or planting holes for tomatoes, but not the entire garden is reasonable & cost effective. I've lasagna gardened for our new mixed perennial beds, but not in the vegetable beds. It's amazing how much it composts down from where you mounded it all up. I have used a lot of sheet mulch of various ingredients over the years with great conditioning. I've used alfalfa pellets as a topdressing around flowering shrubs & heavy feeding perennials, but not in the vegetable garden. I also have put them in a watering can to dissolve in the sun warmed water in summer, but it really smelled after a few days. Plus where I piled it up & didn't mix into the soil around the hostas it attracted a stray dog that broke all sorts of plant stems getting into the flower garden. I used the diluted liquid for recent transplants to get them off to a good start when planted in our summer dry season & was only a light green not a dark green color. I would be careful about mixing it into the root zone soil of young plants, but should be safe as a diluted tea mixture. Since I prefer to use soaker hoses for summer watering of vegetable beds, mixing a complete fertilizer into the soil prior to seeding or transplanting is less labor than side dressing or watering with anything additional than tap water. Find out what the organic gardeners in your area add to soils. You don't always have time or money for a good soil test, but they can give you a good idea of the condition of local soils whether usually acidic or alkaline. For example in my area with 60+ inches of rain 9 months of the year we have acidic soils that need yearly fall lime + nutrients even in manure enriched soils. It simply washes out, so I follow the recommended application rate in the spring and use organic mulches as well. Nothing seems overgrown or out of the ordinary, but grows more quickly now than in years when I only used poultry & rabbit manures from our backyard animals. It's worth the extra $ to buy the complete organic fertilizer for me. The brands in my area are Dr. Earth or Whitney Farms and the application rate is different for each, so I just read and follow the directions each time I use it. Hope that helps~ Corrine

Thank you so much for the replies. parafly9: The ChemLawn guy didn't say our problem was JUST the lime, there was a list of things - but I didn't go into it since I was trying to keep the question specific to lime. So he said we need a lime application, grub control, thatching and slit-seeding. All of which we are going to try to do ourselves since there estimate is out of control! We really are beginners to this lawn care thing as we recently moved into our new home. So we've put down the Scotts 5 step program, we have a sprinkler system and watered every day in the summer. We put weed control in the summer which helped at first but they came back. So wejust continued watering not knowing we had a grub problem all summer long which probably factors into our lawn condition. We also had a bad weed problem which never went away and we kind of gave up on it. And by fall, the lawn was beyond hope - weeds, brown, and dieing. So we are hoping to fix it up for next year. Thats our story! :) So I think you guessed right - the lack of water and care probably is why it is brown - and not the lime issue. thank you for your help - we have 10,000 sq feet of lawn and so we will buy lime according to what you said - but yes we will buy a kit and take it from there. My main concern was how much to put and if I can do it with the grass seeds - which you answered. How often do you have to put the lime - you mentioned doing it twice a year? I guess you test your soil in spring and apply accordingly? Or do you just apply lime twice a year, every year??? billl - Thats for your responses as well - Yes I am going to look into buying either the kit or calling the township tomrorow. Does the township charge for this service? Any idea how much it is in HD or lowes? As mentioned above - yes our lawn has got a lot of other issues - so the browning could be due to that. Since I am new at lawn care - I wasn't sure which was the main cause - I guess it is a combination of all.

An average loam soil will have 4000 pounds of nitrogen, 4000 pounds of phosphorous, and 20,000 pounds of potassium per acre in the top eight inches most of it in forms that are unavailable to plants. Many minerals present in the soil are most available to plants if the soil pH is neutral to very slightly acid. Soil in my region is neutral. We do not run fertilizer through the irrigation system. If your irrigation water is alkaline, you will have to adjust it to increase soil fertility. Your county ag agent is your best source for information. We use organic mulches and green manure crops for soil fertility. We do use bone meal at planting time on our large dahlia crop. But, hey, I think we need to use alfalfa like LizaLily because we want 100 blooms per day on our Chilsean's Pride dahlia. In correcting deficiencies of minor elements, it is important to realize that the difference between a therapeutic dose and a toxic dose is pretty small for some of the nutrients. Essentially, what we use here in the Great Lakes Region is probably going to have no bearing on what someone uses in your area. Talk to growers in your area and your ag agent. We have received valuable information from both.

Our understanding of nature is continuing to expand. I feel that there is a dilemma as to whether one should apply the precautionary principle when there is "new science" that suggests "bad effects" but the "new science" needs to be followed up by additional research. The link below leads to a new paper that I feel fits this description. http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/07/31/toxsci.kfw111 ----------------------------------------------------------- I have a copy of the full paper. In the Introduction section the following appears: "The toxicity of imidacloprid is embodied in neurotoxic action through disrupting neural signaling in adult insects (Tomizawa and Casida, 2005). However, little is known about its potential toxic effects on early embryo development in spite of a few reports on human health, including reproductive ability (Elbert et al., 2008; Gu et al., 2013; Wamhoff and Schneider, 1999). Currently, more and more attention is being paid to the toxic effects of pesticides on embryo development, including neural dysplasia. And the public is concerned about the risk of congenital diseases caused by exposure to pesticides, such as imidacloprid. However, there is no direct evidence of toxicological effects on neurogenesis or corresponding mechanisms nowadays. In this study, we investigated whether or not imidacloprid could affect neurogenesis and explored the relevant mechanism of imidacloprid-induced neural tube defects (NTDs) during early chick neurogenesis." The final sentence of the Discussion section states: "It is obvious that more precise molecular experiments are required to completely reveal the toxicological mechanism for imidacloprid exposure to embryonic neurogenesis."