Hippo @ Zoo

Hippo @ Zoo

Friday, October 1, 2010

Why did I buy poop?

I've learned that lawns should get a hit of fertilizer before winter. I picked out a cheap organic lawn fertilizer at Home Depot. It's a 36 pound bag of Milorganite for $13.
The Good: The package says it is only good for 2500 feet, but on the recommended spreader setting it did my front and back yard twice.
It's cheap.
No need to water it in. Just put it on the lawn and walk away.
It contains iron, which provides greening without extra growth.
It spreads well, without clumping in the spreader.
It's organic.

The Bad: This stuff stinks. Really bad.

The Ugly: It is made of treated sewage! From Wikipedia:
Milorganite is the trademark of a biosolids fertilizer produced by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District. The name Milorganite is a contraction of the phrase Milwaukee Organic Nitrogen, and was the result of a 1925 naming contest held in National Fertilizer Magazine. It consists of activated sludge followed by heat drying and pelletizing at the Jones Island Water Reclamation Facility in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Ew...... I used a bare hand to throw it on Kat's roses. :(

Anyway, hopefully it works. It's cheap & organic, so even though it is gag-me-gross smelling, I'd be willing to buy it again if the lawn comes up greener.

5 comments:

  1. I wonder what it is like to live next to the plant that makes the stuff? I bet its something like living next to a dog food plant...

    Im going to go check this stuff out...

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  2. Seems like the pellets would make it less gross than old-fashioned manure. Hopefully it helps the roses smell better.

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  3. Trey, hadn't thought of that. Disturbing image....

    Lauren, yeah, pellets are probably better than fresh & untreated.

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  4. Yer father uses treated sewage in his topsoil mix. I found this out once when he came to Olympia with the dump truck to pick some up from a landscape supply company there. Yeah, I thought it was pretty revolting... but supposedly the treatment erases the pathogens that would otherwise be present. Um wait, how can they call this organic if it is made from sewage sludge... you don't know what those mammals who produced the sewage it's made from were ingesting, right?

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  5. I just love stories with the word "poop" in it. lol I think I'm gona reccomend this fertilizer to my dad, he's always lookig for better and cheaper ways to make his lawn beautiful. I bet your lawns gona look great.

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