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Bed Spread is Here!
Effective, Safe and Easy
© 1997, 1998 Streamline Publications
The latest in Albright's lineup
of innovative products is Bed Spread, a germination-supporting,
easy-spreading, low-cost top dressing. There are good reasons to use top
dressings, and Bed Spread not only gives you all of them, it defies
comparison with traditional dressings such as peat moss. This new product is
pelletized, which makes it easy and accurate to spread in an even layer using
simple fertilizer spreaders.
Just Plain Bedder
Bed Spread is all natural, 100
percent recycled green waste with an inherently high level of purity. The
pelletizing process, using heat and compression, neutralizes plant pathogens and
99 percent of weed seed that may be present. This purity, essential to healthy
plants, also translates into worker safety. Manufacturing destroys many human
disease pathogens too, and pelletizing eliminates airborne particles that can
cause respiratory and other health problems. Traditional top dressing methods rely
on wire screen devices to break up clumps and hand shoveling or special
equipment to broadcast the material. This results in uneven application, lots of
dust in the air, and unequal seedling emergence over the area. Composted top dressings can be of
suspect quality and their rate of breakdown is unpredictable. They contain weed
seed, bacteria and animal manure that can pose a threat to worker health.
The Particulars Once the Bed Spread pellets are
distributed and watered, they decompress, spreading out many times their
original size, blanketing the seed bed and immediately protecting the seed while
promoting germination. Bed Spread is the perfect
topping, giving you none of the problems but all the advantages of other seed
toppings. Bed Spread reduces seed loss due to:
- birds
- drying of tender seed leaf
- nutrient leaching
- heat stress
- over watering
- erosion of seed bed.
Benefits include:
- no need for special equipment
- reduced labor
- uniform spreading
- less fertilizer needed
- no imported weeds
- no surface trash
- less water to establish
- adheres to the soil
- no muddy shoes.
Bed Spread is entirely organic
protein for a quick breakdown and has many characteristics of fertilizers that
release nitrogen to the soil. Seedbed toppings protect seed from
drying out by interrupting the capillary action that draws water to the surface
where it can evaporate. The topping should allow water to pass down from above
but stop water moving upward (by capillary action) at the level of the new seed.
Bed Spread works on this principle and does it far better than the
competition. Evenness of particle size and the cohesive blanket protects and
nurtures every seed to the same degree.
Check with
Albright for answers that
make sense for your clients.