You should be proud of your lawn. When you want your lawn to look its best, it’s a good idea to get an affordable lawn care company to come out and apply treatments to your lawn when they are needed. Getting natural fertilizers applied to your lawn can help it look better and be healthier. If you have a mower, you may want to mow the lawn yourself. If you don’t have much free time an affordable lawn company can take care of this task.
Taking care of your lawn is the only way to make sure it stays green. Lawns need regular fertilizer applied to keep them looking their best. The lawn may also need to be watered regularly, depending on how much rain your area gets. It’s helpful to have a service that can take on some of these tasks so that you don’t have to give up much of your free time.
Take the time to learn a little bit about lawn care. The care you need will depend on the type of grass that you have. Different types of grass will need different care, and it’s a good idea to be familiar with them.
Have you heard much about organic lawn care? Or maybe you assume that anything that grass is organic, so anything that makes grass grow better must be organic too, yeah? Err wrong answer. In truth, many lawns are composed of grass that originated in another environment. Since it wasn’t meant to thrive in your climate, in order to keep it lush and green, big box retailers push pesticides that kill the bugs that could hurt your lawn, or herbicides to kill the natural foliage. Herbicides and pesticides are poison. In fact, even the fertilizers used to make your unnatural lawn look like it’s supposed to are made in a laboratory and chemical-laden. We use something to the tune of 70 million pounds of chemicals like this every single year.
The impact of these unnatural chemicals being liberally spread on our Earth all for the sake of a green lawn is devastating. Studies show that somewhere between 60 and 70 million birds die every year because they were poisoned by gardening chemicals. And it’s not good for humans either — All of these unnatural pesticides and fertilizers seep through the soil and into our groundwater. We’re talking about the water that we drink. We don’t know the full extent that our self-poisoning has harmed us… but it ain’t pretty guys.
That being said, we love a green lawn as much as the next person. We just urge you to be responsible with your organic lawn care. We put together a few steps for achieving a naturally healthy lawn:
Three Steps for Organic Lawn Care
- Step One: Learn About Your Dirt
A lot of conventional lawn care products take a one-size-fits-all approach. Plants need nitrogen to grow, so if you heavily saturate your lawn in nitrogen it will appear to be healthy. In fact, it’s not healthy for your lawn, nor our planet, nor the human race. More than half of that nitrogen from commercial fertilizers ends up in our ground water supply. So let’s stop doing that, mmkay?
Instead, test your soil and learn what it lacks. Once you know this, you can amend what is lacking and avoiding throwing the delicate balance of Mother Nature out of whack. You can find a basic soil test at most lawn and garden stores. These tests will tell you the balance of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus in your lawn. Then, you’ll want to talk to a gardening specialist and determine (based on the specie of grass that you’re growing) what type of natural fertilizer helps your soil reach that ideal balance of nutrients that both helps your lawn thrive, and doesn’t do funky things to the planet Earth.
- Step 2: Plant grass that is native to your environment.
We’re going to let you in on a secret. When you plant a specie of grass that occurs naturally in your environment, it will thrive with minimal effort from you. Using native grasses means less watering. It means less fertilizing is necessary. It means the amount of sunlight and the temperatures that your area gets is well-suited for your grass to be happy as a clam (a happy clam that is). You know why? Because native grass flourishes in nature without your help. It’s going to do much better than if you use a type of grass that is introduced to your environment.
We don’t want to get conspiracy theory-ish on you, but when you connect the dots, you’ll notice the big box companies who push non-native grass on you are the same ones that sell you all the unnatural chemicals you need to make them survive. Hmmmm….
- Step 3: Put things that come from the Earth back in the Earth.
The planet has an incredible talent of drawing the nutrients it needs back out of the products it produces. When you compost, you are helping the planet in numerous ways:- You’re keeping produce and compostables out of landfills.
- You’re creating black gold that your lawn and garden will love you for.
- You’re saving the planet the chemicals you would be using instead (and heck, saving yourself some cash in the meantime).
If you’re interested in this, watch a quick YouTube vid or two on composting, and get started saving the planet, one apple core at a time.
Do you have questions about organic lawn care? Share below!
