QuestionWhen you fertilize a lawn but don't water it,why does it die?
AnswerTatiana, If you use Organic Fertilizer, the lawn does not die. You can put as much Organic Fertilizer on grass as you want, and if you wait for rain, the Fertilizer will do absolutely no damage at all.
But if you use Chemical Fertilizers, that's where you get into trouble. Some people find the Chemical Fertilizers completely destroy their lawns even though they water the fertilizer in. I had several questions this summer from people who used something called Scott's Turf-Builder. The Scott's Company knows that their Turf-Builder (nice name, isn't it?) will burn the roots on all the grass on a lot of lawns. So they will give people back their money if the use Turf-Builder and it kills the grass instead of making it greener. But Scott's won't buy its customers new grass.
So, Tatiana, why should any fertilizer burn and kill a plant?
Fertilizer 'burn' is a phenomenon that happens because fertilizers are in a group of chemicals called Salts.
Grass plants have roots; these roots are made of cells. The water inside the cells and other tissues also contain salts and other things. As long as the grass is surrounded by soil and water with less salt than the grass cells have, the fertilizer and organic matter in the soil will be absorbed, through osmosis, into the root and leaf cells. Everybody's happy.
But if you don't have any water to dilute those salts to a healthy level, the salts in the soil will absorb water straight out of the tissue of the grass. The sad result is fertilizer burn.
We see the same thing happen when someone walks their dog on the lawn and the dog pees. The urine burns the grass - due to the high concentration of salts in the urine.
If the salts concentration is high enough, the result is the same as if you took a blow torch and scorched the leaves and roots. By not adding any water at all, the salts are free to take every single molecule of H2O out of the leaves and roots. With a sad ending.
Any questions?
