{"id":53475,"date":"2026-10-06T06:37:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T06:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/?p=53475"},"modified":"2026-10-06T06:37:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T06:37:24","slug":"yard-work-fertilizer-calculations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/yard-work-fertilizer-calculations\/","title":{"rendered":"Yard work: fertilizer calculations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2>Self-tutoring about yard chores: the tutor mentions some mental math to decide application of fertilizer.<\/h2>\n<p>\nI fertilized the lawn about a week ago. Each time I do so, it just happens I use a different way to calculate how much to use.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe basic idea I had was to divide the yard by convenient rectangles, then multiply each pace by 1.25 to get a measurement that could be multiplied to arrive at the area.<\/p>\n<p>\nOne patch was 15&#215;17; multiplying each by 1.25, mentally, would be some labour. (I didn&#8217;t have a calculator on me.) However, 16&#215;16 would be easy.<\/p>\n<p>\nIt turns out that 17&#215;15 is one less than 16&#215;16, because (x+1)(x-1) = x<sup>2<\/sup>-1. Just let 16 be x. Therefore, I just went with 16&#215;16, which became 20&#215;20 after multiplying each by 1.25.<\/p>\n<p>\nCalculating the mass to use, from an area of 400, was facilitated with another trick, which I might mention next post.<\/p>\n<p>\nSource:<\/p>\n<p>Travers,K.J., Dalton,L.C., Brunner,V.F., Taylor,A.R. (1977). <em>Using Advanced Algebra.<\/em> Doubleday Canada Limited.<\/p>\nJack of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\">Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Self-tutoring about yard chores: the tutor mentions some mental math to decide application of fertilizer. I &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/yard-work-fertilizer-calculations\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Yard work: fertilizer calculations<\/span> Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1218],"tags":[4489,3687,625,4488],"class_list":["post-53475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yard-work","tag-difference-of-squares","tag-fertilizer","tag-lawn-care","tag-mental-math"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53475"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53480,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53475\/revisions\/53480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}