I was speaking to a garden group recently and for a lark, pointed to an attendee and asked “How big is your lawn?”
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Him: “Ah….umm…..I think it’s around 4000 square feet…..but I’ve never measured it.”

Me: “So when you buy lawn weed ‘n’ feed and it says to apply 6 pounds per thousand square feet, how do you know how much to apply?”

Him: “Mmmmmm….. I just buy a 20 pound bag and spread it over the lawn and it seems to work okay……”

Me: “But how do you know that’s the right amount for your grass? You could be under- or over-treating it, right?”

Him: “Well, I guess so, but the missus is happy and if she’s happy, I’m happy!”
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Folks, having visited big fertilizer plants and vendor conferences, I can tell you that they go into excruciating detail researching how much of their product to apply to a lawn and how to communicate that amount to consumers.

Marital bliss is not one of their objectives! But all of their work falls apart if the consumer has no idea how big their lawn is.

Yeah, some people count paces and use grammar school math to calculate area…..but my guess is that lots of people do like the guy I talked to: they just guess.

This might explain why people grumble that their weeds don’t seem to be controlled and their lawn is yellow.

It seems to me that there should be a phone app that you could use to walk around your lawn, set “pins” at the corners, return to where you started from, punch “Calculate” and it would tell you how large is the area you walked around.

But that app doesn’t seem to exist!

I need your help. Email me if you know of an app or if you have comments on my story.

The health of your lawn depends on it!