Lawn Fertilizer Delivered

Oftentimes when I’m working with our team I see feedback coming from some new Lawn Care Nuts asking why our fertilizer is so expensive. A bag of granular fertilizer costs $54.99 delivered and that can cause some sticker shock sometimes.

In this post I’m going to break it down for you in raw cost dollars and show you that actually, getting fertilizer delivered from my small warehouse directly to your door is CHEAPER than driving to Home Depot or Lowes. Plus it’s MUCH more convenient to buy online.

But it will still be helpful to you even if you buy at your local farm store or Site One. Being armed with facts is what can inform a good decision no matter where you buy!

This is just the first in a series that I’m starting and will be running over the next two weeks. Even though the season is ending, your education doesn’t have to. Soak up all you can so you can make better decisions for your 2022 lawn season.

Baselines

To keep this first post super simple, let’s just assume that ALL of the fertilizers below will turn your lawn green and can be used here in the fall. This allows us to start on a level playing field and we will purely just look at price alone.

We will go deeper and look at nutrient “pounds on the ground” in the next post but for now, we are keeping it simple.

Ready?

Yard Mastery Granular Lawn Fertilizers

Yard Mastery Fertilizers are all 45lbs, cover 15,000 sq ft and cost $54.99 including shipping.

Warm Season folks are applying 7-0-20 Stress Blend right now in the app.
Cool Season folks are applying 24-0-6 Flagship right now in the app.

Cost: $54.99 (includes shipping)

Coverage: 15,000 sq ft

Cost per 1,000: $3.67
($54.99/15 = $3.67)

Application Cost for 5,000 sq ft lawn: $18.35
Application Cost for a 10,000 sq ft lawn: $36.70
Application Cost for an acre lawn (43,500 sq ft): $159.65

So you can choose any of the Yard Mastery ferts and if you have a 5,000 sq ft lawn, it will cost you about $18 for each application and you’ll get 3 applications from 1 bag. Not too bad right?

Fun Note: I recently got a hold of an entire year of TruGreen service invoices from one of our members. His lawn is 4,000 sq ft and each of his applications cost $39 to have TruGreen service. Some of the apps included weed control, others did not, FYI.

Store Bought Granular Fertilizers

Let’s look at some other fertilizers you can find at the store. Once again remember, we are just looking at purely price here, not what’s in these ferts nutrient wise.

ProCare Milorganite Clone

This ProCare Natural Fertilizer is what I call a “Milorganite Clone.” It’s a biosolid fertilizer that is baked and treated in a similar way as Milo, but just comes from a different treatment plant somewhere in the country. Since Milo is always sold out these days, many companies have attempted to enter the marketplace to grab up some of the demand.

This is a good one to look at because the up front cost seems very low at only $13.98. But look at what you find when you get just a little more data.

Cost: $13.98
Coverage: 2,500 sq ft

Cost per 1,000: $5.59
($13.98/2.5 = $5.59)

Application Cost for 5,000 sq ft lawn: $27.95
Application Cost for a 10,000 sq ft lawn: $55.90
Application Cost for an acre lawn (43,500 sq ft): $243.17

Remember, the Yard Mastery ferts are delivered right to your door and cost $18.35 per application for a 5,000 sq ft lawn. This Lowes Milo Clone is $27.95 for a lawn of the same size!

Scotts Turf Builder Fall Lawn Food

Scotts is tried and true. You can find it everywhere and it works, but how cheap is it? This bag here will save you the sticker shock because it’s only $19.48 but when we look deeper into the numbers, we find that things are actually quite a bit different.

Cost: $19.48
Coverage: 5,000 sq ft

Cost per 1,000: $3.89
($19.48/5 = $3.89)

Application Cost for 5,000 sq ft lawn: $19.48
Application Cost for a 10,000 sq ft lawn: $38.90
Application Cost for an acre lawn (43,500 sq ft): $169.22

This one is quite a bit closer to the price of the Yard Mastery fertilizers, but it’s still more expensive and you have to go to the store and get it. And that can cause another issue.

What if you get all the way to Lowes or Home Depot and the shelves are mostly empty? What if the only thing left are a few broken open greasy bags? We’ve all been there - the pallet gets wet and is left out there for you to slog through.

Plus, when you leave your house to buy fertilizer from a big box store, you are limited to the 3 or 4 choices they have and that’s it. When you shop online, you have many more choices and as we have shown, at least with the Yard Mastery fertilizers, it’s actually cheaper overall to get them delivered! (and they smell like success!)

In the next post we will go a little deeper and look at the “pounds on the ground” and see if that changes any of this math for you and your strategy.

New Mower Blade
Looking for something fun to watch? Check out this cool new mower blade I found!