[Villages Kahuna]

I've gotten a couple of unsolicited, strong recommendations from local landscape designers/nurseries regarding the FertiGator lawn fertilizer and pest control service. Their cost seems to be about the same as Massey. But from looking at some of the homes they service, the results of their organic fertilization (as opposed to the strong chemicals used by other services) appear superior. Other homeowners seem to agree as they say they service over 1,500 homes in this area.

Does anyone here use FertiGator? Comments?

[JohnN]

how much does Fertigator run?

[Villages Kahuna]

After the one-time purchase of the unit that introduces the fertilizer into your irrigation system ($100 to $250 based on the length of the contract you sign), not substantially different from what Massey charges for the same services. In fact, it's almost exactly the same as Massey charges.

One apparent difference is that FertiGator is more "hands on", with more frequent visits, inspections, spot weed-killing and tweaking of the fertilizer mix than other services. They claim to design "your" fertilizer mix and rate based on your lawn, plants and trees.

FertiGator begins the whole process by replacing some of your irrigation emitters to make sure that both irrigation and fertilization is being applied at the same rate all over. (Original irrigation installation is done with all 3 GPM emitters. Then when they are set for either a quarter-, half- or full arc of watering coverage, the actual amount of water being applied can vary by as much as 400%, depending on the arc of coverage that each emitter is set.) Of course, the fine-tuning of the emitters to equalize the amount of water being applied tends to reduce your water bill--by as much as 1/3 they claim.