Organic and Synthetic Lawn Care

Organic and Synthetic Lawn Care Compared

Some people think that synthetic lawn care is the only way to go if you want a lush, green, weed-free yard. They mistakenly assume that organic lawn care means you just let your yard go and don't do anything other than mowing and watering to take care of it. The truth is there are organic options for fertilizer and weed care that can keep your lawn as nice looking as it always was, but without the harsh chemicals.

Synthetic lawn care involves a lot of chemical treatments, from weed and feed at the beginning of the year to synthetic herbicides to control weeds around the sidewalk and pesticides to keep unwanted insects away. All of that may have left you with a beautiful carpet of green, but at a cost. Those chemicals aren't good for your children and pets or the insects and birds that are a vital part of your local ecosystem. And, by running off into streams, they are detrimental to drinking supplies and the health of creatures far removed from the application site.

Because organic lawn care involves no synthetic chemicals, you're actually building better soil and stronger grass as you use organic methods.

Organic Lawn Care Methods

Now that you understand the difference between synthetic and organic lawn care and why organic is the way to go, let's cover the basics of how you care for a lawn organically.

First of all, it is important to either start with great soil or to make working toward good soil your first priority. The most successful grass has really deep roots, so you need to have enough soil for your grass to root well.

The ideal is to have a good six inches of soil that you can dig down into. That will give your grass plenty of room to establish strong roots. If you don't have that kind of soil right now, consider getting some better soil dumped onto your yard, or simply add a heavy layer of compost at the end of the growing season each year until your soil is nice and thick.

Once you have good soil, it's really the maintenance that will keep your lawn looking great. And as long as the soil is in good shape, organic lawn care doesn't mean a lot of work.

In fact, most people who practice organic lawn care will tell you that you can get away with less work than people who maintain their lawns with synthetics have to do. The main reason for that is that you are going to leave your grass longer when you cut.

Grass should be left about three inches tall, which keeps the grass strong and allows it to shade out the weed plants. If you cut the grass short, the weeds will grow faster and your grass will be shaded by the weeds, which isn't the way to grow strong grass.

Organic lawns also tend to be watered less frequently. Doing this forces the grass to establish deeper roots, and deep roots have less competition with weeds. Water only when you start to see signs that the grass is drying out. The grass will curl slightly at the edges when it needs water. This happens right before it starts to turn yellow, so pay attention or you might have some serious rehabilitation on your hands.

The final piece of the puzzle is fertilizer. Applied in the spring and again in the fall, organic fertilizer strengthens the plant and puts essential nutrients in the soil. Stronger plants are better able to fight both weeds and diseases, and your new organic lawn will support more life that also improves the soil and makes it easier for your grass to thrive.