What is Soil Amendment?
If you spend time caring for your lawn or garden, it’s quite likely that you have used a soil amendment, such as compost, lime, or gypsum. Soil amendments play different roles than fertilizers and, by understanding what they do, you can have the spectacular lawn you have dreamed about!
Jonathan Green is a leading supplier of cool season grass seed, soil enhancers, fertilizer, and organic lawn and garden products to professional customers, such as sod growers and independent retailers, including garden centers and hardware stores, throughout the United States.
We are also leaders in organics and have developed an environmentally sound approach to lawn care called the New American Lawn Plan. The Plan combines our Black Beauty® grass seed mixtures with organic and traditional soil amendments, lawn fertilizers, and control products that feed your lawn AND your soil so that air, water, and nutrients will get absorbed by the grass.
Common Types of Soil Amendments
A soil amendment is any material that is added to soil to improve its physical properties, such as water retention, permeability, water infiltration, drainage, aeration and structure. The goal is to provide a better environment for roots. Soil amendments include:
- Lime – raises soil pH, reducing acidity
- Sulfur – lowers soil pH, increasing acidity
- Gypsum – improves aeration of compacted soil, helping it drain more efficiently
- Biochar – increases the soil fertility of acidic soils and provides protection against some soil-borne diseases
- Humic acid – transports water and nutrients from the soil to the plant, preventing them from leaching away
- Fulvic acid – improves the uptake of minerals, stimulates plant growth
- Compost – decomposed organic matter that improves aeration and moisture retention and enriches the soil
- Bone meal – adds phosphorus and calcium to the soil, can be harmful to pets
- Blood meal – increases acidity and adds nitrogen back to the soil very efficiently
Our Soil Amendment Products
Jonathan Green Organic Lawn Food is a complex, organic lawn food that promotes strong grass growth. It can also rejuvenate a thin, stressed lawn by adding organic content to the soil. The easy-to-spread granules can be used on established and newly seeded lawns or when sodding.
Organic Lawn Food contains food-grade organic soil amendments, such as feather meal, bone meal, blood meal, wheat shorts and molasses, that help to improve soil structure and the water-holding capacity of the soil. It will also help your lawn withstand environmental stress.
Jonathan Green Mag-I-Cal® Plus is an innovative formula that combines our Mag-I-Cal® and Love Your Soil® products. It helps to stimulate soil microbes, break up clay and compacted soils, make the soil more alive and porous, improve root penetration, and increases biological activity while helping release trapped nutrients in the soil.
First, use our Soil pH Test Kit for Lawns to determine the pH of your soil in minutes. Based on the results, choose either Mag-I-Cal® Plus for Lawns in Acidic & Hard Soil, which contains calcium, sulfur, iron, humic acid, and wood biochar, or Mag-I-Cal® Plus for Lawns in Alkaline & Hard Soil. which contains calcium carbonate in a completely soluble form, sulfur, and other amendments.
With the additional soil amendments in Love Your Soil®, such as iron humate and molasses, you will be well on the way to revitalizing your soil and growing a lawn that will be the envy of your neighborhood!
Mentioned Products
For more information about soil amendment and what you can do to grow a lush and beautiful lawn, visit Jonathan Green online or your nearest independent hardware store or garden center. They will provide reliable lawn and garden advice that will help you achieve great results.