Question
You say that you use sugar on your lawn; do you just put the sugar in your spreader?  Do you water after applying the sugar?  We heard that alfalfa is good for plants what is your experience with this?

Thank you for your assistance,
Nancy

Answer
Hi Nancy;
Yep, just plain old white table sugar like you sweeten your tea with.
It doesn't kill anything or such, what it does is nourish the beneficial microbes that work round the clock enriching yopur soil.
I use 4 pounds per 1000 sq.ft.
I just broadcast it by hand, and then water it in good.
I learned this last spring about alfalfa meal, and tried it.
I had to go to a feed store to get it, but I am really impressed with the results.
It adds a lot of nutrients to your soil, and you can just boradcast it by hand and water it in, or make a tea by soaking 1 cup alfalfa meal per 5 gallons of water, overnight, and thn water your houseplants or outdoor plants with it, or you can strain it, and put it in a garden sprayer to foliar feed. It did make the new leaves on my roses about twice as big, and made more and larger blooms.
I was potting some comtainers outside, they were about 14" across, and I just threw a handful of the meal in with the top layer of dirty I put in around the plants.
Lava sand is also very good. Lava is full of nutrients.
I got the alfalfa meal this spring, got the sugar for feeding, and put 1 part sugar and 1 part alfalfa meal in a bucket and broadcast it.
I just got the amount of sugar I needed for the area I was covering, and added the same amount of alfalfa meal, because then it would come out even.
You can do them separately and then water them both in together.
For the lava sand and alfalfa meal, you don't have to have a solid coverage, just strew it around to get a thin covering.
My yard is a total of about 6000 sq.ft that I covered, and I did the whole yard and made tea three times, and threw a handful into about 8 planters, and still have a little bit of alfalfa meal left in the bag.
I don't know how heavy the bag was. I think about 40 pounds.
I am ready to feed for the fall now, so I will do the alfalfa meal,and lava sand at the same time I do the sugar, and water them all in well.
That will fix it up until the spring feeding.
BOY!!! I wish I had known all this about organics 50 years ago. If I had, my back and knees might still be in good shape.LOl
No weeds, because the microbes have made my soil so rich weeds don't even bother to come up anymore. My lizards eat all the aphids from my roses, and the tent catapillars out of my trees.
Either the toads, lizards, or grass snakes, or all of them together, eat all the slugs, grubs, all the icky bugs we don't want.
I use cedar bark mulch around the perimeter of the house and outbuildings to keep away termites.
I sprinkle it all over the yard tokeep out fleas and ticks,ut I put a trail of it about 3 or 4 inches high, and an inch or two deep around the foundations.
Charlotte