Southcentral Alaska lawns hardly ever need fertilizer

Every fall, I get questions about fertilizing the lawn. I know many people don't like my answer: Your lawn probably never needs to be fertilized. Ever.

I don't want to make light of addiction to prescription drugs, as serious a problem as that is, but I can't help noticing some parallels with the excessive use of fertilizers, specifically of the lawn variety, in this country. It has reached epidemic proportions with serious consequences.

It is not clear to me how the American yardener got hooked on feeding lawns. The story that garden writers like to spin is that the advent of color television followed soon after by shots of the fairway at a U.S. Open golf match resulted in a collective national desire for deep-green clover- and dandelion-free lawns.

In actuality, the green color TV viewers were seeing was about as artificial as the rest of TV colors back in the primitive days of television. And nitrogen-giving clover used to be included in standard lawn seed — until it fell victim to the herbicide used to kill the dandelions on the golf course. Because this couldn't be prevented, clover was reassigned to weed status.

More likely, the idea that lawns should be fertilized every spring and fall is due to the manure-loads of advertising encouraging the use of high-nitrogen and phosphorous mixes. Just as the drug companies that make prescription opioids reached out to prescribing doctors, those responsible for sales of lawn foods keyed in on garden writers, bombarding them with material that reinforced the message.

Those writers, like opiate-prescribing doctors, doled out scripts for all manner of lawn fertilizers, passing on bad information and reinforcing what print and TV ads were trying to get across.

I know. I was one of those writers. Every year I attended a convention of garden writers and we ate free breakfasts from Scotts and took home samples of all manner of products and propaganda in "booty bags" filled to the brim. We brought extra suitcases to the meetings.

Today, I know better. So, let me say it loud and clear: With extremely few exceptions, there is absolutely zero need to fertilize a lawn in Southcentral Alaska. Once a lawn becomes established here, it will grow and thrive — albeit invaded by dandelions and clover (the latter of which is extremely desirable).

Yes, a struggling lawn, one that can't get started or one that is simply sickly yellow, could do with a dose of food, hopefully of the organic variety. Short of that, all our lawns need is water. If you don't believe me, go out and look at your lawn right now. I am betting it is green. I will go further and bet that even most of the dog pee spots and anything damaged during the winter are also green by now.

I have written three books, the research for which has convinced me that there are enough nutrients in our soils, supplemented by glacial flour and volcanic dusts, to support grass plants, provided you leave clippings and run over fall leaves so that there is enough organic material returned to feed the microbes in the soil. Grass plants associate with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and these take carbon from the plants and convert it into soil carbon. Unless the cycle is broken by removing clippings, these plants will stay green and healthy.

Again, trust me and not Scotts: If you leave clippings and leaves in place, all your lawn needs is water. If for some strange reason it turns to an unsatisfactory color indicating poor health, then, and only then, consider feeding it. (Use compost or an organic mix of soybean meal and granulated molasses.)

Stop the addiction to needless waste of chemicals that are deleterious to our environment. Lawn feeding should be the exception, not the rule.

Jeff’s Alaska garden calendar

Harvest: What are you waiting for?

Mushroom Walk and ID: Alaska Botanical Garden hosts a mushroom walk on Thursday, Aug. 31 from 6-7:30 p.m. $12 for members and $15 for nonmembers. More information is available at eventbrite.com/e/mushroom-walk-and-id-tickets-37223949836.

Master gardener training: A master gardener course starts Sept. 11 in Anchorage, and Sept. 12 in Palmer. For more information, or to register online, visit bit.ly/AnchMG17 (Anchorage) or bit.ly/MatSuMG17 (Palmer).