Lush, green, barefoot grass in a beautiful, weed-free lawn, free of imperfections......
That's the goal, or so we are told.
Lawns are guzzlers of resources. From the copious amounts of water required, to the gasoline burned maintaining them, to the piles of chemicals (mostly petrochemical in origin) used to feed and weed them, nothing burns resources quite like a lawn.
Most likely, your lawn is not perfect anyway..... keeping a lawn perfect, weed and disease free, and lush and verdant...... it's not something everyone enjoys. Feeding the lawn properly is especially time and resource intensive.
Those bags of chemical fertilizers you buy at your local big box store are kind of like a the sugar rush a kid gets from junk food, only for your lawn. They are very concentrated and very water-soluble. This means not only are they absorbed super fast (sometimes too fast), but they are also prone to either run-off in heavy rain, or run through the soil after a few waterings. Worse, they kill biodiversity in your soil, making it harder for your soil communities of good organisms to do their thing. If used improperly, they can severely burn plants both from overfeeding, and dramatic pH swing. In our area, many fertilizers use some sort of ammonia compound as the primary source of nitrogen, which lawns use most heavily. This ammonia can react with our highly alkaline soils in unexpected ways. Sometimes, this nitrogen simply turns into a gaseous form, and evaporates right out of the soil.
Commercial weed-killers are, in our opinion, unsafe for most homes. Children, pets, adults of childbearing age, asthmatics, and really, most other folks, should not be in regular contact with weed-killers. These chemicals are all decidedly unsafe for any sort of regular exposure. If your kids ever plan to play on the grass, if you are going to mow the grass, if you have pets that live indoors but venture out, avoid weedkillers, weed and feed products, etc.. Is it really worth the exposure to these chemicals, simply to avoid pulling a few weeds? If you do spray for weeds, try spot-spraying only individual weeds, or difficult areas. Less is better.
Organic lawn nutrients have several advantages in our mineral soils. They help build soil structure, they are less soluble in water (and this less likely to run off or through), they release more gradually, so they feed longer, and spike the pH and nutrient levels less traumatically. They feed the soil microorganisms, which in turn helps better feed your grass. Best of all, they produce long-lasting, beautiful, verdant green results, a lawn that gets stronger and better over time.
When you think about it, organic is the easy, safe, and smart choice for lawns. Contact us today for a lawn assessment. Our "Sustainable Green" lawn program is very affordable, and is the best choice for a safe, green, sustainable lawn.
