Dandelion lawn

 

Dandelion roots about to meet their maker

 

It’s autumn, so it’s time for ‘garden experts’ that offer ‘advice’ in ‘national newspapers’ and the like to tell you to feed your lawn. Phosphates encourage root expansion, and a dose now sees roots burrow down deep throughout winter, to better support those hard-working blades come next year. I can understand why one might reach for the ‘weed n feed’ at the garden centre.

So it also seems the perfect moment to have a bit of a rant about fertilisers. I reckon they have to be the next ‘peat’ in terms of gardeners coming to realise that the benefits they are getting aren’t worth the damage they are doing. Here, from a post on Mark Diacono’s blog (sparked, rather neatly, by an early post on this blog) is a recipe for nitrogen fertiliser:

“For 1 tonne of nitrogen fertiliser. You will need:

– 1 tonne of oil
– 108 tonnes of water

and as well as your tonne of nitrogen fertiliser you will produce 7 tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases in the process. And as it breaks down nitrogen fertiliser releases nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 310 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.”

It’s terrifying stuff, and it seems incredible that gardeners rely on it without much clue as to how it’s made. I even reviewed a ‘Self-Sufficiency’ book recently for Gardens Illustrated that included a picture of pushing plugs of fertiliser pellets into pots. It’s possibly the least ‘self-sufficient’ thing you can do, gardening-wise, but I guess it shows the extent to which it isn’t considered an issue.

The story with phosphates is slightly different. Our agriculture is dependent on phosphate fertilisers derived from phosphate rock, a finite source which we are charging through at a rate of knots. The UK imports 206,000 tons per year from 4 north African countries. At current use there is about 30 years global supplies left, after which, essentially, we’re all up that rather unpleasantly named creek.

It seems a little daft to be sprinkling it on our lawns. I tried a while ago to find a sustainable, organic alternative to autumn lawn and tree fertilisers in response to a question from a Guardian reader and entirely failed, but during my search I stumbled upon a little gem of information. Dandelion roots are extremely rich in phosphates. It seems so logical once you know it: those fierce, indefatigable, infuriating roots – of course they must contain the absolute essence of rootiness! The very stuff of root itself! So here’s another, nicer recipe from me:

Take:

Some dandelions (as many as you can find)

Some water

A bucket

Dig up the dandelions. I’ve snapped off the leaves of mine to make them as purely phosphate as possible, without a hint of leafy nitrogen, but that’s possibly unnecessary. Chop them up into small bits, pour on water and leave for a few weeks. Strain off (the roots may even be dead enough to go onto the compost heap, but I never told you that. If unsure, dunk ’em in water for another few weeks first), dilute and water onto your lawn, trees and bushes, or anything that you want to encourage to develop a strong root system. Feel chuffed, if possibly very slightly smug, that you have fertilised your garden from the ultimate renewable source (well I’ve never managed to kill one) and without the teeniest recourse to distant fast-depleting mines.