Soil Activator For Lawns: Correct Application

Lawns in particular benefit from the promotion of soil life. We show important ingredients and how to use soil activators for lawns correctly.

A soil activator is used to revitalize and improve stress – that is, soil that is depleted of humus and soil organisms. In the following, you will find out what lawn soil activator can be used for and what you should consider when selecting and using it.

The soil under lawns is often anything but vital and healthy. Here you can find out how a soil activator can help and, if you choose the right product and use it correctly, can even reduce matting of the sward.

What does the lawn need a soil activator for?

A lawn is flat and green in the center of most gardens as a matter of course. But what the creation of a lawn area means for the ground underneath is not clear to very few lawn owners: Because lawns are a heavily consuming permanent crop that is very resource-intensive. The soil under the green, therefore, dries out easily in summer and is too often forgotten when fertilizing the lawn.

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As a rule, nutrients are also constantly removed from the area by mowing – unless you are using a mulching mower. In addition, fast-acting, mineral fertilizers are all too often used on lawns to achieve a strong green color. However, these also hurt the soil by stimulating humus degradation. After years of disregarding the needs of the soil beneath the lawn, it finally shows the following symptoms:

• The soil is hard and compact
• The lawn becomes light because the compacted areas are difficult to root through
• The lawn dries out faster and needs to be watered more often
• The lawn growth is inhibited
• The turf becomes matted faster because the soil life is unable to transport dead material into the soil and decompose it – so it has to be scarified more frequently
• Wild herbs, which are more competitive than the lawn on compacted or dry sites, spread

In fact, it is not the lawn, but rather the soil underneath that needs fertilization. Such soil fertilization is done with the help of a soil activator.

Tip: Your lawn is growing poorly, even though you have been fertilizing the soil organically and caring for it regularly for several years? Perhaps the turf seed mix being used is the problem. A lawn is always made up of different types, types, and varieties of grass. The right mixture, for example for a shady lawn, dry lawn, or sports and play lawn, is decisive for the health of a lawn in the long term. In our special article, you will find information about which lawn type makes sense and when.

The right soil activator for lawns: what you should pay attention to

Soil activators contain a lot of organic matter, main and trace nutrients, persistent forms of beneficial microorganisms, often lime, and rarely some clay minerals such as bentonite. You can see which ingredient has which effect in the table below:

ingredient	Effect on the floor
Organic matter	Carbon and thus energy source for soil organisms
Main and trace nutrients	Source of nutrients for soil organisms, for example, to build proteins, membranes, DNA, and enzymes
Persistence forms of microorganisms	For repopulating soils on which microorganisms have been decimated
lime	To increase the pH value, as useful soil bacteria multiply more at higher pH values and are inhibited at lower pH values
Clay minerals	For the formation of clay-humus complexes with the humus molecules created by soil fertilization

Not every soil activator necessarily contains all of the components mentioned. Soils that are not in a completely desolate condition can benefit enormously from the application of organic material alone. Here it can also be sufficient to regularly spread a thin layer of ripe compost on the lawn, rake it in, and water it.

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Severely affected soils cannot do much with this measure at first, as their activity is so reduced that they can hardly convert the freshly introduced structural substances. In this case, reaching for a full-fledged floor activator is the better alternative. When choosing, keep the following in mind:

1. A soil activator based on vegetable raw materials provides exactly the trace elements that your lawn can use and is more sustainable in production than a product based on animal raw materials. In addition, there is a more pleasant smell of animal-free raw materials.
2. The solid structural material is the most important component of a soil activator. Liquid soil activators, therefore, do not contain this.
3. Granulated material is easier to dose and dispenses without generating dust.

Because we missed an animal-free and organic-certified soil activator in our range, we developed our Gardender organic soil activator. It is granulated so that it can be distributed with a fertilizer spreader. As a user, you can rest assured that our fertilizer has nothing to do with ethically questionable factory farming or the waste of valuable resources. Nevertheless, it delivers exactly what revitalizes your lawn – or rather the soil underneath – and improves it in the long term.

Tip: There is another possible reason for a light, regeneration-lazy lawn. Lolium perenne , the German ryegrass, is usually used as an under grass. However, it is a little susceptible to frost. After severe winters, it may be that it has been completely banned from the lawn so that it becomes very light. In this case, re-sowing the lawn with the missing grass helps – of course, combined with lawn fertilization.

Application of soil activator for lawns

Because the amount of nutrients in a soil activator is small and is bound to the organic matter by the activity of microorganisms, there are no restrictions on the application. You do not have to be afraid of being washed out or incorrectly fertilized, as is the case with almost all organic fertilizers. The application of our Gardender organic soil activator is carried out as follows:

1. When preparing the ground for a new plant, 150 to 200 grams can be hooked into the upper soil layer. This corresponds to about a 10-liter bucket on 30 square meters.
2. Existing lawns can be treated with 70 to 150 grams per year, i.e. with 5 to 10 liters per 30 square meters. The effect unfolds optimally when the soil activator is introduced into a freshly mown and scarified area in spring. Subsequent extensive watering washes the granules into the soil and initiates the conversion processes.