As the lawn service industry experiences its fastest growth in a couple of decades, the amount of new companies and products entering the marketplace hoping for a piece of the action is growing at an even faster rate. This is leading to a considerable amount of time and energy being spent on products and less being spent on programs. There continues to be a drive for consumers to find a magic bullet for their program, but the focus ends up being product specific. Every year there are new products from every major and minor company in the fertilizer and chemical business. Often times it is an old or sometimes higher amount of active ingredient is being recycled and re-purposed with a new name and marketing dollars to get people excited.

While this may not seem like terribly new or exciting information, the impact on the bottom line or the ultimate turf response could be the victim. As I’ve stated before, the most important thing you can do for your plants and soil is to keep the nutrients switching around to make sure that all aspects of the plant and soil are being fed throughout the entire growing season. We’ve all seen the results of a program that never changes. Mostly the reason for not changing a program is that a company has hit a state of equilibrium where sales equal cancels. When a growth curve hits a certain point, the desire and need for the “most effective” program changes to the “most cost effective” program. The thought of implementing new products at that point becomes superficial at best because the idea that customer retention is going to increase is a hard pill to swallow if that hasn’t been a constant in the past.

Every company that makes fertilizer and chemicals for the turf industry has great products. There is no doubt that “Company A’s” glyphosate is better than “Company B’s” but, “Company B’s” phosphorus is better than “Company A’s.” This is the “marketed to” realm in which we live. Seeking differentiation in the market place has become more and more of a challenge as companies continually recycle products and merely state a different university study. The current push in the fertilization world is “Carbon Based Liquid Fertility.” Some of you may giggle at that since it is what I have been preaching since the advent of this company. It makes me have a bit of pride that researchers and production companies are taking up this new mantle and educating people rather than dismissing it as “pseudo-science.” There are more “carbon based liquid fertility” products on the market today than there have ever been, with most being released in the last 2 years.

The next big push happening is “Nutrient management” products. I have seen a number of these come through in the last 2 years as well, as more is being discovered about the role plant hormones and simple carbohydrates play in nutrient regulation and the release extension of applied nutrients. Again, for us there is nothing new here. We have been showing this model for over a decade.

All of these new components are beneficial to the market place as products… Where these new products are failing the industry though, is in the implementation of a “fertility program.” There seems to be a lack of this understanding in many of the traditionally “synthetic” fertilizer companies who are adding carbon based products to their catalogs. Simply put, they have added products that will make their granular fertilizers work better but they lack the ability to solve problems by creating and/or adjusting a “fertility program.” The products exist in their catalogs for the sole purpose of attempting to meet a market demand.

I constantly try to expand the reaches of our products. It is a passion of mine. Finding out more and more about what our fertilizers and specialty products can do in different environments has been and continue to be a fun journey. The reason that we’ve had so much success in our results as a company is that every product is a specific piece of an overall designed program. As an example; the RGS was born out of a need for companies with ride on sprayer/spreaders to get a product out that would stimulate roots and begin re-mediating the soil in a simple fashion. The programs that many companies were running on these carts lacked a major nutritive component for the roots and this beautifully filled that role. It was only after interviewing the client and getting a better understanding of everything that was being applied could I recommend plugging a singular product into their program. For some companies, the RGS may not be a fit but Sea-k or Humic12 would be. This always depends on what the rest of the program contains.

For myself and how I’ve developed programs over the years, I base my choices on these five things:

1. Quickness of turf response and color
2. Utilization of materials based on the heat/rainfall/environment
3. Utilization of materials based on soil pH
4. Measured amounts of ALL nutrients
5. Cost equivalency to standard “OTC” programs

These items are crucial in my recommendations and it allows for us to build programs based on the immediate need of a client rather than something spit out of a computer. We have the ability inside our organization to build programs that will include looking at your overall budget for fertilizers and chemicals, making natural and conventional recommendations for controls and ultimately evolving your lawn care program into a more robust, higher functioning and more cost effective system. It is becoming a standard practice now for many of our clients to call me or their company representative and start planning their next rounds a mere 2-3 weeks before starting in order to have the most up-to-the-moment prescriptions based on all of the most pertinent info of their current round. While we can’t predict future weather events, we can certainly take advantage of the immediate ones.

I encourage everyone as they go through the season to be reaching out and asking questions. Let us be a resource here to help you and the turf and trees under your care to grow at their maximum potential. Greene County Fertilizer Company was born in lawn care. Everyone who works within this company was an owner, operator, technician, or manager of a lawn care company before coming to work as part of our core group. We have all been in the field, gotten our hands dirty, played with many and most products available on the market, and can talk about your business just as easily as your program. We are here to help your business thrive.

This is your invitation to reach out. We are not just a fertilizer manufacturer and a service brand. We are your fertility program partner.