Question of the Week: Is it safe to use an organic fertilizer?
Welcome to this week’s installment of the BayBlog Question
of the Week! Each week we'll take a question submitted through the Chesapeake Bay Program
website and answer it here for all to read.
This week’s question comes from Tom: I recently purchased a
house on the Potomac near the Chesapeake Bay
and I want to fertilize the lawn this fall. Is it safe to use an
organic fertilizer?
Fertilizing your lawn in the fall rather than in the spring
is a great step toward protecting the Bay. Many people believe the spring is
the best time to fertilize, but heavy seasonal rainfall can actually wash fertilizers
off your lawn and carry them into your local creek or stream. This polluted
runoff, which contains nitrogen and phosphorus, fuels the growth of algae in
the Chesapeake Bay. Algae blooms are harmful
to fish, crabs, oysters and other species that call the Bay home.
Organic fertilizers are a safer choice to use on your lawn
because they tend to release nutrients more slowly than regular fertilizers,
thus reducing the pollution that could run off your lawn. A variety of organic
fertilizers are available, made from all sorts of natural materials. Check out The Organic
Gardener for more information.
One of the easiest ways to naturally fertilize your lawn is to
recycle your grass clippings and compost the leaves that fall from your trees
this time of year.
- After
mowing your lawn, instead of bagging up the clippings, leave them on the
grass. The clippings will slowly break down and release up to half of your
lawn’s nitrogen needs.
- In
autumn, as leaves cover your yard in a blanket of reds and oranges, consider
mulching them with a lawn mower instead of raking and bagging them. Using
leaves as a natural mulch for your lawn and garden will not only reduce
nutrient pollution from fertilizer, but will cut back on the waste
generated from lawn and leaf bags.
Visit our Help
the Bay in Your Backyard page for more tips on how to fertilize your lawn
for a healthy Bay.
Do you have a question about the Chesapeake Bay? Ask us and we might choose it for our Question of the Week!
Chesapeake Stories: A look back with Arthur Tuers
For high-quality video, watch on Vimeo.
At 79 years old, Arthur Tuers has been fishing, crabbing and
boating on the Chesapeake Bay for quite some time. He began working at
McNasby's Oyster Company in Annapolis at the youthful age of 10. In his time, he has seen the
harvest of oysters plummet and noticed dramatic changes in crabbing, the clarity of the water and amount of pollution in the Bay. Like the rest of us, Art hopes for a restored Bay; but like few of us, he knows what it was like when you could "see your toenails" in five feet of water.
This is the first video in a new series called "Chesapeake Stories," where we explore the people, history and culture of the Chesapeake Bay region. If you have an idea for a Chesapeake story, contact us.
Question of the Week: The effect of storms on the Bay's health
Welcome to the latest installment of the BayBlog Question of
the Week! Each week we take a question submitted through the Chesapeake Bay Program
website and answer it here for all to read.
This week’s question is one a lot of people have been asking
in recent days: With the nor’easter from Hurricane Ida blowing through the region,
high winds, flooding and stormwater are on everyone’s minds. So what effect
does a storm like this November nor’easter have on the Chesapeake
Bay?
The amount of rain that falls on the Bay watershed has a
direct effect on river flow, which is the volume of fresh water that flows into
the Chesapeake
from its tributaries. Typically, fresh water makes up about half of the Bay’s
entire volume. When large amounts of rain fall in the region, such as during
this nor’easter, it can tip the balance of fresh and salty water in the Bay.
A major issue associated with more rainfall is an increase
in stormwater runoff, which carries dirt, trash, nutrients and other pollutants
from our roads, lawns and parking lots into the Bay and its local waterways. Once
in the water, this pollution can fuel the growth of algae blooms and harm
underwater life, including crabs, oysters and bay grasses.
We’re already seeing the effects of this storm in Virginia, where
officials have implemented a temporary ban
on shellfish harvesting. The fear is that clams, oysters and scallops could
become contaminated due to human and animal waste being washed into the Bay
from tidal flooding.
High tides and flooding are certainly of concern to those
who live by the Bay’s shores, but large storms like this have an effect on
every stream, creek and river throughout the region. You can do your part to
minimize the impact of storms and eliminate as much pollution as possible by
picking up litter on the ground and covering bare spots in your yard to reduce
erosion.
For more information about how weather affects the Bay and
its watershed, check out our weather page.
Do you have a question about the Chesapeake
Bay? Please send
it to us through our web comment form. Your question might be chosen for
our next BayBlog Question of the Week!
Question of the Week: How do vehicles affect water pollution?
Welcome to this week’s installment of the BayBlog Question
of the Week! Each week we'll take a question submitted through the Chesapeake Bay Program
website and answer it here for all to read.
This week’s question comes from Roshni, who asked, “How does
water become polluted when automobiles are used for transportation?”
The most important thing to understand is that almost
everything we do as residents of the Bay watershed has an effect on the Chesapeake in the long
run. With the movement of people from city centers to more suburban areas, we
have had to rely more on traveling by car, which has led to the creation of
more hardened “impervious” surfaces such as highways and parking lots.
Transportation and the roads, parking lots and driveways
that facilitate it account for 55 to 75 percent of all paving in cities and
towns. These lands used to be forested, and when they are paved over, there are
fewer habitats for wildlife and fewer filters for Bay-bound pollution. Transportation
infrastructure has also caused the land across the Bay watershed to become more
fragmented over the past few decades, making it even harder for animals to find
habitat or complete their migration routes. (Learn more about forest fragmentation.)
The act of driving vehicles also emits pollution into our
air. The pollution from these emissions eventually falls back to the earth and
is transported by runoff and groundwater into streams and rivers.
Stormwater runoff is a massive problem due to the
ever-increasing amount of paved surfaces in the Bay watershed. Instead of rainwater
being filtered and absorbed into the ground, it simply runs off hardened areas
into nearby streams and rivers, eventually carrying the pollution into the Chesapeake Bay. In fact, stormwater runoff is the fastest
growing pollutant to the Bay.
Remember, everything we do affects the Chesapeake
Bay, beginning with your local creek or stream. But every little
change helps! So help the Bay by starting a carpool with your coworkers or using
public transportation to lessen the number of cars on the road and the amount
of pollution being released into the air during your commute.
Do you have a question about the Chesapeake Bay? Please send it to us through our web comment form. Your question might be chosen for our next BayBlog Question of the Week!