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Organic Lawn Care
By
Hans Dekker
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Organic lawn care doesn’t
mean you sit back and watch as weeds infiltrate your lawn
until dandelion lint covers your sidewalk. Nor does it
mean that you need to be out on hands and knees from
sunrise until sunset, hand-pulling crabgrass and invasive
weeds in order to have the lush green carpet of your
neighbors’ chemically treated lawns. What organic lawn
care does mean is that with a good lawn care plan and a
minimum of work, you can have an attractive addition to
your landscape that is safe for both your family and the
environment.
In organic lawn care, as in all organic gardening, the
foundation for building a great lawn is your soil. The
first step in planning a lawn is to find out what kind of
dirt is under your grass. A soil test, from your county
extension agent or other lawn care professional, tells you
whether it’s sand or clay based, nutrient rich or
nitrogen poor, acid or alkaline. From there, you can
decide how to improve (amend) it and choose the seed that
will give you more green for your colorful US dollar.
A basic rule of thumb in organic lawn care is that it’s
more important to feed the soil than to fertilize the
grass. Nutrient rich soil holds moisture, entices
beneficial insects, and maintains a healthy environment
for microorganisms that fight disease, deters pests and
parasites, and generally help keep your lawn growing and
green. Six to ten inches of good top soil is worth its
weight in green for your lawn!
A mulching mower solves two problems in organic lawn care
with just a few swipes of its blades. First of all, when
mowing, always keep a high clip (2 ½ to 3 inches) unless
it’s your final mowing in the fall. Short grass
clippings and especially fine mulch from a mulching mower
will fall in between the cut blades of grass and reach the
soil where they quickly decay, adding nitrogen and other
nutrients to your soil. Because grass is very efficient in
its use of nitrogen, composting your lawn with grass
clippings can radically cut down on your fertilization
needs. Grass clippings alone can contribute up to two
pounds of the two to six pounds per 1000 square feet that
your lawn needs to stay healthy.
During dry seasons, an organic lawn care basic is to water
your lawn infrequently but deeply. Deep watering forces
grass roots down while over-watering allows them to remain
near the top. Deeply rooted lawns better compete with
invasive weeds.
In addition to helping your lawn retain moisture, annual
lawn aeration is one organic lawn care method of giving
easy growing room to roots and provides circulation for
the colonies of critters that tend your soil. The best
time to aerate your lawn is in the spring. Not only will
spring aeration break up the compaction of frost and snow
accumulated during winter, spring rains also help aeration
clumps decay quickly, further enriching your topsoil.
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