Cheap organic fertilizer

Some of you might have seen me in my front yard today with a big bag of chicken crumble and were wondering why I was spreading chicken feed on my lawn. Well we are getting to the time of year when soil temperatures are right for switching from chemical fertilizers to organic fertilizers. An organic fertilizer is a product that you add to your lawn for good fungus and microbes to break down to add nutrients to your lawn. In this case I used chicken crumble which is not advertised as an organic fertilizer but makes a great inexpensive one.I got a 50lb bag for $15 from Tractor Supply in Helotes for example.

New work bench

I like doing many of my projects on the back porch so I decided to build a new work bench on the back porch. I placed it on locking castors so I can wheel it out when working and lock in place. I placed a few holes to be able to mount my vise when I want to use my angle grinder to sharpen a tool. I think I will take that back in after use to avoid too much moisture on it from the humidity out here though.

The container on the bottom holds scrap wood that I often repurpose into parts of other projects and the small metal trash can is my burn bucket that I place small scraps and yard waste to burn and then add to our compost cans.

After freeze yard care

So some of you might be tempted to go out and toss some harsh fertilizer on your lawn. Hold back on that one. After the shock our lawns got with the freeze start with some very mild and balanced mixtures. The best thing you can do is add something like composted manure that comes in with an NPK of 0.5-0.5-0.5. If you want to use a chemical fertilizer I recommend something similar to “The Andersons PGF Balanced Fertilizer” that comes in with an NPK of 10-10-10. Below is a picture of both products.

As far as other plants in your yard I recommend patience. Some of them went dormant hard after that cold shock. You might need to research best care of each after a freeze to treat them correctly. Don’t go and cut your tree/bush/shrub down because it lost leaves, like some have thought they needed to do. Some trimming might be in order but in most cases your plant will come back with some care.