Question
QUESTION: Hello Long Island Gardener!

Is it true that you can take Ammonia for cleaning (which has Nitrogen in it?) and water it down to make fertilizer? I found a website that has alot of advice about household things that you can use. It just sounds too easy.
ANSWER: Short answer: Yes, this is true.

Long answer:  Cheap, high-Nitrogen fertilizer factories make their Lawn Food out of Urea (CO(NH2)2) by mixing Ammonia and Carbon Dioxide.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia) declares flat out on its "Ammonia" pages that if you want to, you can use Ammonia "directly as a fertilizer by forming a solution with irrigation water, without additional chemical processing."

So, yes.  Just add water.

The downside:  Quoting Wikipedia, "This type of use leads to poor soil health."

How?

First, that Ammonia is highly volatile.  Even in the form you buy in a bag, the Nitrogen is escaping into the air fast as lightning.  Some gets to the roots, yes, and it is instantly absorbed by your lawn this way.  But it vanishes quickly.  No more fertilizer until you show up to feed it again.

Feeding grass is not like feeding, say, the family dog, or the family bird, or the family.

Grass does not grow on a schedule.  It does not go out and play, then look at the clock and get called to lunch.  Grass grows, and it needs what it needs when it needs it.

Grass is more like the family television.

You don't plug your tv in for 5 minutes and expect it to work through the entire view of Top Chef.  But this is exactly what you are demanding of your grass.  And it just ain't gonna happen.

Sure, it is not going to die if you do that.  It will languish until the next time you walk across the lawn with the spreader and douse it again with more Urea fertilizer.  And when you do that, it will spring to life, transforming from a basic Kelly green into a visually magnificent all-American verdant hue.  At which point you look at it, and you think, Wow, That fertilizer is great stuff.  Let's buy some more!

That's what your Ammonia-for-cleaning homemade fertilizer is good for.  A few minutes of pride and joy.  With weeks, perhaps months, of ho-hum green in between.

Your grass deserves better, doesn't it?  Which gives you 2 choices.  You can

(a) Stand outside all day, 7 days a week, with your Ammonia/Water fertilizer, heavily diluted, constantly feeding your grass; or

(b) apply a real Organic Nitrogen fertilizer that releases slowly, dosing steadily and reliably with high-N.

It is a novel idea, make your own fertilizer.  But not really something for an Intelligent Gardener.

That's just one of many reasons not to proceed with this project.  Another reason, too complicated to go into here, involves the buildup of salts that are toxic to soil microorganisms -- good, aerobic bacteria needed for lawn health.  Before you see the effect on the grass, you'll see it in the lawn fungus attacks and other turfgrass diseases that afflict the lawns of people who love them too much.

Thanks for writing and let me know if you have any more questions you want to go into further.

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: How does (sometimes) Ammonia burn roots?

Answer
When we hear the word "salt" we think of the stuff on the kitchen table, right?

But most fertilizers in the garden are, technically and chemically, salts.

And so if they are in concentrations that are high enough, those fertilizers -- those salts -- will extract thru osmosis the water OUT of the roots, OUT of the plant, IN to the soil where the fertilizers (i.e., in your case, Ammonia) are.

It's just like you took a match to the roots and vaporized the water out of the plant.  Sort of.

Anything else?