THE ORGANIC LAWN
By Al Krautter
It is important that you turn your whole yard to an organic approach because having only portions of your yard organic doesn’t work. My biggest fear is that many organic gardeners follow organic practices in their perennial beds, vegetable beds, shrub borders and flower beds but leave the care of their lawns to their landscapers who in most cases follow a chemical approach. The typical lush manicured suburban lawn has become a toxic dump creating huge health problems. These are health problems that are not noticed immediately but creep up on us often with devastating and debilitating results.
The blame must go not only to the landscapers who applies these products but to the homeowners who allow them to be applied. As a homeowner, you need to have a stern conversation with the person caring for your lawn. You need to stress the importance that you place on having a chemical free lawn and you need to have proof that your gardener is applying organic products.
Unfortunately I have had some bad experiences with gardeners that I have recommended who said they would follow an organic approach but didn’t. Chemical fertilizers are cheaper and the gardener feels the customer will never know the difference so the temptation is to use the cheaper product and make more money. Unfortunately the only way to make sure you are applying the proper products on your lawn is to buy them yourself and then you can get your gardener to apply the right products. This of course is a generality and there are truly dedicated organic gardeners who would never apply anything toxic to your lawn but unfortunatelyth3ey are far and few in-between.
The organic approach on lawns requires patience, understanding, and a clear plan worked out by both the homeowner and the homeowner’s gardener. It is an educational issue.
The organic lawn will eventually become a better lawn than a chemically treated lawn. But it requires patience, perseverance, and understanding of the goals you are trying to achieve. Initially it will cost more money as you try to build up your soil, develop a food web and employ practices that will create a sustainable system to deal with your lawn problems.
Once sustainable measures have been taken and a robust food web becomes active the cost will be less and the lawn will be more beautiful. We recommend to cut the lawn at 3 1/2″ height and leave the grass clippings on the lawn, Water twice a week applying a ½” each time, Constantly apply grass seed to crowd out weeds, apply compost and compost tea to build up the microbial activity in the soil, keep your ph close to 7, add mineral rock dust and add Corn Gluten for pre–emergent crabgrass and weed control and feed your lawn regularly with an organic lawn fertilizer.
The more chemical fertilizers that are dumped on our lawns to make it lush and green the more microbes are being killed. The weaker our food web becomes the weaker our lawn becomes. A lush green chemically treated lawn is very susceptible to insect and disease invasion. Many home owners engage in daily watering of their lawns which develop superficial instead of deep roots. . The weakened plants become prone to insect and fungus problems. Lawn weeds become more prevalent and homeowners become more upset.
To fix the problems the hired gardeners go to quick fixes and apply more fungicides, insecticides and weed killers. These toxins are killing the life in the soil and build up toxin strains of microbes which result in lawn disease problems. The health of your children, pets and yourself is put at risk. The organic lawn is a superior lawn both for your health and the health of your grass. Remember that the overuse of chemical products can lead to dead soil. And dead soil is difficult to grow anything in. So beware how you treat the precious life in your soil. Let the microbes work for you day and night. They are a gardener’s best friend.
You will never achieve an organic lawn unless you are strongly for it yourself. As soon as you confront your gardener for not having a beautiful lawn he will go to the quick fixes. The quick fixes are more chemical fertilizers, more insecticides, more fungicides and more weed killers. All of these poisons will kill your food web and lead to a lush but weak lawn. A lawn that will be prone to problems in the future. It will lead to a lawn that is not healthy for you, your children and your pets to live on. It will lead to a weekend root system prone to insect diseases and weed invasion which requires more toxic chemicals to fix the problem.
It is time to make sure you follow an organic approach. If left up to your gardener most will follow the traditional chemical approach. For them it is easier and cheaper. For you it is more costly. The health of your children, pets and family are at stake. I have proven with my own lawn that an organic lawn is a more beautiful lawn and in the end will become a more economical lawn. It does require more patience, perseverance and more initial costs but in the end the results is a net win.
