21 organic lawn-care tips

Test your soil first; buy nutrients later

Never spend money on any fertilizer or soil amendment for your lawn or garden without first consulting the results of a soil test.

These diagnostic results, available from virtually all Agriculture Department Cooperative Extension offices across the U.S., will tell you exactly how much nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, lime, sulfur or other nutrients to add. Too much nitrogen and phosphorus can harm oceans, lakes and rivers and taint drinking water. Other excess nutrients can weaken and even kill grass and other plants.

The bottom line is to avoid guessing. That can be bad, for the environment, for your landscape and for your pocketbook.

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Consider high-calcium limestone

Although some soil in the West is inherently alkaline, meaning the pH is above 7, many gardeners in other parts of the country have acidic soil. They put pulverized, dolomitic limestone on their lawns each fall. You can recognize the product by the heavy, white 40-pound paper bags.

With acid rain increasing in much of the nation, that might seem like a good thing to do. If you're concerned about weeds, however, the dolomitic lime can be a problem.

In ideal lawn soil, the ratio of calcium to magnesium should be 7-to-1; in dolomitic limestone, the ratio of those two key nutrients is 3-to-2. The high level of magnesium compacts the soil and actually promotes weed growth.

A better source of calcium for lawns is high-calcium limestone. It's also a good idea to have a soil test, if you haven't recently, before putting down any limestone or soil additives; most Cooperative Extension offices still offer basic soil tests, or you can contact the Soil Foodweb laboratory in New York for a more comprehensive test.

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Grow the right grass

Although they look innocuous, not all grass plants are created equal.

Some grow tall, some short. Some grasses prefer full sun, while others tolerate shade, foot traffic or drought. Many newer grass varieties, known as cultivars, grow slower and resist disease, which reduces the need for pesticides, watering and mowing your lawn.

With up to 50 million acres of lawns nationwide, the less cutting and trimming, the better. Lawn mowers contribute as much as 10% of the nation's air pollution in the summer, not to mention all that noise pollution on an otherwise glorious summer day.

For a rundown on the best grasses for your area, check out seedland.com.

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Invite clover, Mother Nature's fertilizer factory

Once upon a time, before the advent of synthetic weedkillers for the lawn in the late 1940s, most American lawns contained white clover. Because no weed-control formula could be developed that left grass and clover but killed everything else, clover was lumped in with the weeds in subsequent marketing campaigns.

A scientist who helped develop 2,4-D, the most common synthetic herbicide, for the turfgrass industry was publicly apologetic because the new product had the unfortunate side effect of eliminating clover.

"The thought of white Dutch clover as a lawn weed will come as a distinct shock to old-time gardeners," R. Milton Carleton wrote in his 1957 book, "A New Way to Kill Weeds." "I can remember the day when lawn mixtures were judged for quality by the percentage of clover seed they contained. The higher this figure, the better the mixture."

Today's newfound emphasis on natural lawn care has folks taking a second look at clover as a primary lawn plant.

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Fertilize your lawn with kitchen and yard waste (aka compost)

Compost naturally provides the nutrients your lawn and garden need to grow and stay healthy. You can easily make your own from kitchen and yard waste.

If you're not sure your compost is up to snuff, you can test it. And if you aren't up for making your own, you can often find it from your town transfer station. Just be sure it isn't made with herbicide-laced grass or sewage sludge.

Need more details? You can find all you need to know about how to make and use compost, including how to make a "compost tea" that helps your lawn or garden absorb compost's nutrients fast.

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Listen to nature's messengers: Weeds

Ralph Waldo Emerson might have said it best: "What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered."

In a lawn or garden environment, most of us have a hard time seeing any virtues in any plants that are trying to compete with our grass or peas and carrots. Often, however, those weeds can be valuable in telling us something about the condition of the soil below.

Weeds are messengers that Mother Nature sends to teach us about the soil. We can kill the messenger, but it doesn't change the message. The weeds will always grow back unless we change the soil conditions. Here are a couple of examples:

• If you have excess plantain, you almost certainly have heavily compacted clay soil.
• If you have excess dandelions, your soil probably needs more calcium and less magnesium.

For a great rundown on this fascinating subject, look for a copy of Ehrenfried Pfeiffer's book "Weeds and What They Tell." It's long out of print but readily available online.

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Try a kinder, gentler approach to pests

You may have seen a television commercial where a woman makes the emphatic statement: "Bugs! I hate all bugs." Then the announcer espouses the virtues of a product that will kill a hundred or so insects on contact.

The reality, though, is that only a few insects do any real damage to our lawns and gardens. Killing all insects should never be the goal, especially given that the products used to destroy the insects often can endanger children, pets and the planet. Here are a few pointers for an alternative approach:

• Avoid synthetic fertilizers with high levels of nitrogen that push out a lot of growth quickly; insects see the bursts of growth as a buffet table and will attack the plants in greater numbers.
• A company called EcoSmart uses food-grade materials in its pesticides that are safe around pets and children.
• Many companies, including Gardens Alive, offer natural solutions such as beneficial nematodes for grub control or traps for apple maggots.

If you need help identifying insects, one of the best online field guides is from Texas A&M University. Or look for a good insect-identification book.

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Grass clippings versus thatch: Keep one, not the other

No matter what anyone tells you, thatch and clippings on your lawn are not one and the same, and clippings do not cause thatch.

Grass clippings, the portion of the mown grass, are about 90% water, so they begin to decompose almost immediately after hitting the ground. Left in place, clippings return nutrients to the soil.

Lawn thatch, on the other hand, is the dead grass and root tissue between the green vegetation and the soil surface. In layers of a half-inch or thicker, thatch blocks water, air and nutrients from reaching the roots and provides a nesting place for insects and disease.

Many grass varieties in a traditional synthetic lawn-care system tend to build thatch layers quickly. Excessive nitrogen pushes out excessive top growth, but it limits life in the soil and therefore slows decomposition of roots even more. The process of dethatching, either with a bamboo rake or a power machine, removes the thatch, which can then be gathered and composted.

Some thatch is common and acceptable in all lawns, but too much must be removed. The good news is that natural lawn systems that add life into the soil will rarely have issues with excessive thatch.

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Reduce your watering by 70% to 100%

Lawns are water guzzlers, requiring about an inch of water per week during the growing season to remain green and vibrant. Many arid regions don't get anywhere near that much average rainfall, and many municipalities have restrictions on how much water you can apply. To conserve water and get the best results for all of your plants, remember these tips:

1. Water in the morning.
2. Water deeply and infrequently.
3. Use an automatic shut-off to control watering when you're away from home.
4. Use organic fertilizers and soil amendments.
5. Choose the right plant for the right place.

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Beat back bare spots

If you see areas of your lawn with little or no grass, and you're just hoping that grass somehow fills in, you most likely will sadly disappointed. Often, weeds beat grass to the bare spots. Other plants — such as dandelions, plantain, chickweed, crabgrass and quackgrass — set seeds that can persist in the soil and germinate when the conditions are right.

Because we mow our lawns constantly, we often don't let grass go to seed, and it doesn't have a competitive chance. The only way grass can fill in a bare area is through the spreading of underground roots known as rhizomes or via over-the-ground runners known as stolons.

To help your grass compete, you should always keep grass seed on a dark shelf in the potting shed or another cool, dry area. When a bare area appears, spread some seed, cover it with a thin layer of compost and keep the seed moist until a few weeks after it germinates. Actively growing grass will outcompete the weeds and help give you that lush green carpet you may admire.

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To rehabilitate, aerate

To achieve healthy plants the natural way, without synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides, you must have healthy, living soil. The organisms in the soil need to drink, breathe, eat, digest and excrete and, to do so efficiently, must have plenty of air pockets in the soil.

Often, with excess foot traffic, mowing or applications of chemical products, soil becomes compacted and needs help. That's where mechanical aeration comes in.

By cutting "cores" out of the soil with a specialized machine or hand tool, you'll leave behind holes through which air, water and fertilizer can enter. The surface of your lawn may look more like Swiss cheese for a few days, but the long-term benefits can be great.

If your soil is compacted — excess weeds such as plantain can be a tell-tale sign — aeration may be necessary. Renting a core aerator from a local equipment supply store is usually the best option other than hiring to get the job done. Fall is the best time.

If the task sounds daunting, though, the good news is that tending your lawn organically, with natural fertilizers, will allow your soil to self-aerate. Renting the machine will never be necessary; the earthworms and microorganisms will do the job for you.

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Mow wisely for a greener lawn

Follow these pointers for a greener lawn:

1. Fertilizer your grass by letting grass clippings fall on the lawn.
2. Keep your blades sharp to improve fuel efficiency.
3. Never cut more than one-third off the length of your grass, and avoid cutting it too short at any time.
4. Don't mow unless there's rain in the short-term forecast.
5. Use an electric or human-powered mower to cut down on air pollution.

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Know your organic fertilizer

Question: When does a fertilizer that delivers fewer nutrients and bypasses the plant completely do a better job than one that delivers a megadose right to the plant?

Answer: When the fertilizer is organic.

When it comes to lawn fertilization, the greenest grass comes from healthy soil, and healthy soil comes from organic fertilizers.

Learn the three questions to ask before fertilizing your lawn and then go pick up the best organic fertilizer for your conditions.

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Seed or sod? 3 considerations

Anyone considering renovating or installing a new lawn will invariably face the dilemma of planting grass seed versus laying down sod. If money were no object, we'd probably all put down sod, which is fully grown grass that gives us a nearly instant lawn. Seeding a lawn from scratch can take several months to fully fill in, and any number of environmental challenges — wind, pelting rain, sweltering heat, a drought — can make new lawns difficult. As for value, seed is still usually the best bet; initial costs of sodded lawns make them 10 to 20 times more costly than seed. Here are some cost variables to consider, however:

1. Avoid covering the seed with straw, which can be $7 or more per bale. A thin layer of compost is a better option.
2. Determine your water cost. Seeded lawns typically take up to three times more water than sodded lawns to get established.
3. Buy your sod direct from the grower, especially if you have a big job. The local garden center marks up the cost of the sod, but many growers will sell to consumers who purchase a certain minimum amount. If you're interested in finding sod for your climate, visit turfgrasssod.org.

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Enjoy the lawn, but skip the grass

At SafeLawns.org, we are always getting questions about why grass won't grow well in certain areas. In tightly packed neighborhoods, the strip of soil between two houses is often particularly difficult because it doesn't get enough sun. Likewise, the strip of soil next to the driveway is usually a tough place to grow grass because foot or tire traffic always compacts the soil, or it is scraped back in the winter by the snowplow.

The answer, in many cases, is to avoid growing grass and instead, plant an alternative ground cover. Some plants love full shade; others will do OK in compacted soils. Often, your visitors will be less inclined to walk in certain areas where plants other than grass are growing. Several U.S. companies now specialize in alternative ground-cover plants. Here are two of the best: jeeperscreepers.info and stepables.com.

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Beware of the 'perfect' lawn

Most Americans don't read directions. The next time you shop for products containing weed- and insect-killer and fungicides for your lawn, check the label. Most those products will say "caution," "warning" or
"danger and keep out of the reach of children."

"I believe, in time, the products we use around our lawns and gardens will be proven to be among the greatest health risks to our children," says Dr. Alan Greene of DrGreene.com.

According to a study by Yale University health-care professionals, children who live in homes where lawn and garden pesticides are used are up to four times more likely to develop leukemia, brain cancer and soft-tissue sarcoma.

The good news is that transitioning your lawns and gardens to organic care will remove these risks from your landscape. At SafeLawns.org, you'll find nearly 30 how-to videos that provide a step-by-step guide to the process.

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Take a tip from our neighbors to the north

Remember "Just say no"? That Reagan-era antidrug-campaign slogan has been adopted by a new movement to get our lawns and gardens off drugs in the form of excess fertilizers and pesticides that can affect human, animal and planetary health.

Canada and Connecticut have passed laws that just say no to Weed-n-Feed, Roundup, Sevin and dozens of other products sold in much of the U.S. Home Depot's 266 Canadian stores have removed all synthetic pesticides from their shelves, and the company president says the retailer wanted "to be friends of the environment" in doing so. While all those products are still sold in the U.S., Connecticut has taken the bold step of removing them from the grounds of all elementary and middle schools.

"We have to, at a minimum, protect our children from the risks associated with these products," says state Sen. Ed Meyer, a Democrat who sponsored the Connecticut bill.

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Learn how your town can ban pesticides

When a young mother named Pat Beckett took exception to ubiquitous yellow-and-white signs that stated "Danger: Keep Off the Grass," she asked questions. She soon found a willing accomplice in professional greenhouse grower Chip Osborne, who suspected that overexposure to chemical pesticides had killed two of his dogs. Through the efforts of Beckett, Osborne and the town's board of health, Marblehead, Mass., a decade ago became the first town to ban lawn and garden pesticides on public property.

Today, dozens of communities have passed bans similar to Marblehead's Living Lawn demonstration project. The Toxics Use Reduction Institute reviewed how Marblehead did it and how yours can, too.

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Keep your lawn safe for games

Lawn games may be the oldest sports. Playing on the lawn, it would seem, is an almost primal passion that dates to the beginning of civilization.

Sir Flinders Petrie, a British archaeologist, reportedly unearthed the tomb of an Egyptian child and discovered various rounded objects, which he assumed were used in a primitive game of lawn bowling that we now know as bocce. We can't think of a better reason to have a lawn in the first place, or a better reason to grow the grass organically, without products that could harm backyard athletes of all ages.

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Manage expectations

When folks in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., wanted to build another golf course on the island paradise, others said not here, not now. A compromise resulted in construction of Vineyard Golf Club, perhaps the most environmentally sensitive golf course built in the United States. Every aspect of the course is managed organically, from the tees to the fairways, not to mention the greens. In 2008, the greenskeeper, Jeff Carlson, earned an environmental-stewardship award from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America.

Asked for a tip that homeowners could apply to their own backyard fairways, Carlson says: "It's all about managing expectations. People need to understand that those perfect, weed-free fairways they see on television are not possible in their backyards. Even the best golf courses in the nation have imperfections, and your lawn will, too.

"If you go organic, and you should, then you can have a nice lawn — a very nice lawn. Just don't expect it to be perfect."

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