On Sun, 31 Oct 2004 10:05:26 -0500, JustMe wrote:

If I put down weed-and-feed on wet grass and do not wash it off, and it
does not burn the lawn.

If I do that with some other fertilizers it burns the lawn.

Are fertilizers made of different things?

Is there non-weed-and-feed fertilizer that does not burn the lawn if not
washed off?


Generaly speaking, you *should* apply weed & feed when the grass is damp.
This will ensure that your weed chemicals stick to the plant surfaces and
get's absorbed. This may not be true of the scotts weed&feed as I don't
use it. Weed&feed is usually made up of one of three chemicals: 2,4-D,
MCPP or dicamba or a mix of chemicals related to these.
My opinion as a professional is it's a bit fool hardy to spread a
herbicide all over your lawn to kill a few weeds. With better lawn
culture and a little tollerance on the customer's side, most issues can
be over come in time at a cheaper cost to the customer and the
enviroment. Weed & Feed (imho) tends to be a waste of chemicals that are
spread on non-infected areas and are a waste of money. Don't get me
wrong, I'm not totally against the use of lawn herbicides, but I use a
ipm (Intergrated Pest Management) approach. If the percentage of the
affected lawn area is large enough or the customer's tollerance level is
low enough to mandate the use of herbicides, then they are used. But by
no means would I advocate the use of weed & feed in a preventive
maintiance program for your lawn area. Higher lawn hights combined with a
healthier nutrution base will over come most issues.
I would suspect that your applying too much non-weed&feed fertilizer or
the type of fertilizer that your using has high amounts of ammonium
nitrate. This type of nitrogen is very water soluble and I would assume
that it's leeching into the grass via the follage instead of the roots,
thus overdosing the plant. Too much of a good thing is never a good
thing.The weed&feed on the other hand very likely is using urea nitrogen
which is needs to break down in the soil to become advailible.


--
Trees are like children, train them right when their young.....
or spend a lifetime trying to correct them.