Lawn Care
Steve Bridges

Do you want to have the best looking lawn on the block? If you watch and listen to the ads on TV, all you need to do is add a fertilizer with an outrageously high nitrogen content and sit back and watch it grow. This will work for awhile, but in the long run your going to have problems with this simplistic approach to lawn care (especially if you have St. Augustine). There is a much better way. You can grow your lawn organically, just as you do with your vegetable and flower gardens. You will have healthier grass that will use much less water, have fewer insect and disease problems, and be weed-free. Here's how it works.

The concept of organically fertilizing your lawn is a simple one. Feed the soil and let the soil feed the grass! Nourish the soil to provide an environment in which healthy soil microorganisms can thrive. These beneficial soil microorganisms are what make the nutrients in the soil available to the grass. Without them you have a dead soil that quickly becomes compacted. A healthy soil consists of 25% air and 25% water. A compacted soil supplies neither. You can solve this problem.

The first and most important step in having a healthy lawn is to keep it aerated. The soil needs oxygen just as much as it needs water and nutrients. You can rent an aerator that you pull behind your riding lawn mower. This machine will pop plugs out of your lawn about the size of your little finger. You can leave them on the lawn to break down or you can rake them up if they bother you. If you don't have a riding lawn mower, you can buy an inexpensive tool that works well. It looks like a rake, but it has spikes that you drive into the soil by standing on it, like you would a shovel.

The next best thing you can do is to encourage the beneficial life of the soil. There are several ways to do this. You can supply nitrogen and a food source for the soil life by spreading a thin layer of compost over the yard. One yard of compost, spread ¼ of an inch thick, will cover 1200 square feet of your lawn. With larger lawns this can get quite expensive. If this is not an option, then use an organic pellitized fertilizer. You can spread this product with a push type or hand held fertilizer spreader. One bag will usually cover up to 4000 sq. ft. You will find that these fertilizers not only have sources of nitrogen, but many also contain the beneficial microorganisms themselves and the food sources that they need to thrive.

Another option to quickly green your grass up is to use a foliar spray. There are types that are specifically formulated for lawns. You can also use liquid seaweed. You will find this product in a concentrated form that you mix with water. Seaweed acts as a natural chelator. This means that the seaweed breaks down the nutrients that are already in your soil into a form that the grass use. Some seaweed comes fortified with iron for even quicker greening. A last word on weeds. Do not use the chemical fertilizers sold as weed and feed. We have had several customers who have lost big oak trees by using this product. You will find that if you build a healthy soil, your grass will grow thickly and choke out the weeds. Weeds like compacted soils that are low in nitrogen. Organically grown lawns do not have these problems. If you have a problem with sticker burs, you can use a product called corn gluten meal to treat these areas. Corn gluten meal is commonly used as a cattle feed. It works by not letting germinating seedlings grow past the seedling stage. An added benefit is that it is naturally high in nitrogen. So it kills the weed seedlings while fertilizing your grass!

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