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Sunday Lawn Care is a subscription lawn fertilizer program. They promise a natural lawn fertilization solution customized to your lawn and soil’s needs that is both kid and pet-safe. But you may be wondering if the cost for a subscription is worth it when compared to just buying and mixing everything yourself. Well, here’s my take:
Is Sunday Lawn Care Worth It? When compared to the cost and time of purchasing and spreading various mixes of fertilizers, Sunday Lawn Care is definitely worth it for a blend of natural lawn care ingredients that are specifically adjusted to your soil’s needs.
There are a ton of all-in-one solutions on the market for grass. The problem is, you can’t get optimal results just applying a “good for all” fertilizer.
Sure, there’s the big N-P-K: Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium. But then you get into iron and all of those other essential micronutrients that your lawn may need but not necessarily in a ratio that is equal to any other lawn. And those micronutrients do matter (source).
Regional differences and variances in the soil can play a big role in how effective a grass fertilization system is. So a little individualization is needed.
What Is Sunday Lawn Care?
The Sunday Lawn Care Program offers customized lawn fertilization solutions using unique blends of their natural ingredients based on the results of your specific soil tests.
I have never run across a personalized lawn care solution like this. It has always been my burden to evaluate my soil’s needs and ensure that I was including appropriate amounts of various micronutrients.
- Do I need to add more iron?
- Does this fertilizer include too much nitrogen?
- What about other nutrients that grass needs like magnesium, sulfur, calcium?
I know the process. I know how to do the calculations. But as much as I care about having a thriving, healthy lawn, I also have a life. And so, the idea of a customized lawn fertilizer dropping on my doorstep at scheduled intervals was pretty appealing.
When I came across Sunday Lawn Care and their promise to do the calculations for me, I became wildly excited by the opportunity to have a custom lawn care solution that met my lawn’s nutrient needs without me having to break out a calculator.
How Does The Subscription Work?
When you sign up for a subscription, Sunday will use your physical address to determine an initial regional soil analysis. They even capture your address with Google Maps and mark up your lawn to verify lawn size (and application amount needed). Sunday emailed me and had me verify that the mapping was correct.
You receive a lawn care subscription box with your initial application at the beginning of the season that includes your fertilizer and a hose spray connector that you will want to keep for future applications.
The hose spray connector screws on snuggly and has an on-off valve. You simply turn on the water and begin spraying. As you do, the solution mixes with water from the hose and sprays out in a fan pattern. Thoroughly cover the lawn until the bag is empty. Easy peasy.
Compared to traditional dry fertilizer that you apply with a spreader, this is a little more hands-on. You fan the spray back and forth applying a generous amount of the fertilizer as you go. I like that I’m watering the grass at the same time that I’m applying it.
I work backwards when doing this. I start at a back corner of the yard and work my way back, covering the area as I go. I think this is really a matter of personal preference though. Since it is made from natural ingredients, there’s really no reason you can’t work forwards and walk over the covered area.
One thing you do need to consider is whether or not a lawn hose will reach different parts of your yard. The system sprays a good 15 feet or so but you’ll need to be able to get to the areas you want to apply it.
The Soil Test
The box also includes a soil test kit: collection spoon, bag, and prepaid shipping box. I collected soil samples from about three areas in my yard.
Fill the bag to the fill line and seal it (it has a zip-lock style seal). Then you simply place it in the prepaid box and drop it in the mail.
It takes about three weeks to get your soil test completed. At that time you’ll receive an email notification and you can log into the Sunday website to view the results.
The Website Account Page
This is where you can also look to see when your next application will be arriving, check the tracking of your shipment, and view your lawn data.
The Lawn Data section shows regional soil makeup based on your location, seasonal growth patterns for grass, average temperatures, and rainfall.
Where the magic really happens though is in the soil test. That’s when you see how your specific soil differs from regional averages and the unique requirements that it has.
You get a simple overview with letter grading of key aspects of your soil including Fertility, Nutrients, and Soil Salt. It then gets into gritty details of exactly which aspects of your soil are lacking.
Your soil plan shows what focuses will be made in future applications to offset these deficiencies.
Does Sunday Lawn Care Work?
Yes, Sunday Lawn Care is very effective as a natural grass fertilizer. It contains natural ingredients that provide essential nutrients and micro-nutrients for your lawn.
I believe that the impact on a lawn as far as greening or reducing browning is probably on par with other common commercial offerings. Where I expect to really see the benefit is over time as I transition away from chemical solutions. I am now only applying ingredients that complement the natural microbial activity which is desperately needed in my clay soil lawn.
I’ve covered this in detail previously and will go over it briefly later in this article but the bottom line is this: a healthy soil that is alive with microbial activity will yield a thriving lawn.
Is Sunday Lawn Care Legit?
Sunday Lawn Care is a quality product produced by a reputable company out of Boulder, Colorado. Sunday’s Chief Science Officer is Frank Rossi who holds a Ph.D. in turf science and maintains professional grounds including Yankee Stadium. So yes, they are legit.
In fact, Dr. Rossi is a professor of Turfgrass Science at Cornell University and has been published in an impressive number of professional turfgrass journals (source).
What About A Guarantee?
Sunday Lawn Care comes with a no-nonsense money-back guarantee that other companies could take lessons from. They will refund your money if you are not completely satisfied. No contingencies, no small print that you need bifocals to read. They are clearly very confident in their product and how it stands up to the competition.
A Truly Natural Lawn Care Fertilizer
What initially attracted me to Sunday’s product was the fact that it is derived from natural ingredients. I had clay soil and one of the issues with it is that clay soil holds onto chemicals like pesticides and herbicides.
Over time, these chemicals can build up and inhibit the growth of beneficial organisms like earthworms and microbes (source). Those organisms are the secret sauce that really makes your soil alive.
I needed a way to provide essential nutrients to my lawn without souring the soil that it was growing in. A lawn can only be as healthy as the soil below it.
This led me on search that eventually brought me to Sunday’s natural lawn fertilizer.
Sunday Lawn Care Ingredients include:
- Soy Protein
- Iron
- Seaweed
- Molasses
- Potassium
- Phosphorus
- Salicylic Acid
- Potassium Acetate
- Micronutrients
Some of these ingredients caught me off guard and have sent me down a rabbit hole of Google searches. As it turns out, though, each has a specific benefit for a lawn. I read through several studies covering these ingredients and was reassured by the science.
I suspect that the blend of these unique ingredients are designed to provide a synergistic benefit, sort of like how the ratios of N-P-K each play a role in basic grass management.
Pet and Kid Safe Lawn Fertilizer
One of the benefits of going natural with your lawn care is that you get away from the potentially harmful chemicals that your children and pets could be exposed to. This is especially true of toxic chemicals that are used to kill or prevent insects or weeds (source).
Sunday really takes pride in the fact that its products are kid and pet-friendly. They simply recommend waiting until the lawn is dry, then let ’em loose!
As I’ve grown older I’ve begun to take things like this more seriously. I’ve put my old body through its fair share of abuse over the years but I try to be careful with the small ones that I’m responsible for. Knowing that I’m using natural products that are safe for my kids and pets is a welcome reassurance.
Is Sunday Lawn Care Expensive?
The cost of Sunday Lawn Care is comparable to other fertilizers when considering a season’s worth of applications, purchasing different products to address nutritional deficiencies, and the time invested in soil analysis and ratio calculations.
Sunday simplifies all of this with a customized lawn care plan specific to your lawn’s needs.
Think about a season of lawn care. You are applying fertilizer two to four times per year depending on your region and obsessiveness over your lawn. If you are doing a soil test, you are also purchasing additional nitrogen, iron, or whatever your soil is deficient in.
When you add all of this up, add in the time spent studying your soil analysis and then mixing everything in the proper ratios to meet your lawn’s needs, having a premixed solution that is customized for your lawn and delivered to your door on a set schedule makes the Sunday lawn care program very cost comparable.
I can’t give you an exact cost because it depends on your yard size but you can get that amount quickly by walking through Sunday’s lawn needs calculation process. It’s pretty simple after you enter your address and only takes a couple of minutes.
Thoughts After One Year of Use
When the time came to renew my subscription to Sunday following my first full year of use, I had no reservations. Every application has arrived at my doorstep within the planned timeframe outlined on Sunday’s account page.
I no longer have to plan to fertilize, remember the right time to do it, or spend time looking up which application mixtures are appropriate for that time of the season in my region. Sunday Lawn Care takes care of all of that. When it shows up at my door, I know it’s time to fertilize and I know that I have the right application for that season.
One less thing for me to worry about in an otherwise busy life. That alone makes Sunday Lawn Care worth it.
Conclusion
The Sunday Lawn Care Plan is an innovative solution to the problem we face of applying harmful chemicals to our grass year after year. Natural ingredients, customized to your lawn’s needs based on a soil analysis is a unique offering that can’t really be compared to prepacked one-size-fits-all fertilizers.
The ability to provide your lawn with essential nutrients in a pet and kid-friendly solution is an incredibly appealing alternative. For now and the foreseeable future, Sunday Lawn Care is the only fertilizer that I’m using.
