Lawns Are Gardens: Notes for Rhode Island Lawn-Gardeners

Have you mowed yet? Are you dreading the reemergence of those weeds, wishing your lawn looked better this year? Do you worry about the lawn chemicals and how they may affect your children or pets (or you, for that matter)? From every side we're hearing about organic or sustainable gardening practices, yet many of us are in patterns of routinely attacking the lawn's problems with chemicals. And after having the lawn overrun by the truly ugly crabgrass plant and successfully beating it back with fertilizers in bags or bottles, it seems like a good idea to continue with what works.

HOWEVER, as Paul Tukey points out in The Organic Lawn Care Manual, this is a "lawn on steroids," and all sorts of other problems arise from relying on fertilizers alone to deal with the weeds and insects that make a lovely lawn challenging to maintain.

The Organic Lawn Care Manual gives a 12-step plan for transitioning to a natural system over three years. I like the way the book takes gardeners (our lawns are made up of thousands and thousands of plants, and so lawns are a sort of a garden) where they are and clearly explains the whys and hows to get a beautiful, natural lawn, and all with less work and stress over time.

Here are the 12 steps for the first year of transitioning from chemical fertilizers and pesticides (p. 106):

• Test your soil
• Aerate & dethatch
• Weeds are telling you about the actual condition of your soil. Learn what they're saying and "apply appropriate amendments to alter soil conditions as needed." This is key! When you fix the underlying problems, you're making it easier for the grass to thrive on its own.
• Spread a little compost over the lawn yearly, or more frequently
• Spray a "compost tea" 3 times a year. [I have never done this, but this is the year I'm going to learn about this - stay tuned!]
• Mow high...
• Don't rake up the grass clippings - they return nitrogen to the soil.
• ONLY water deeply - the lawn needs 1"/week of water. [Also, either water or don't water during the dry summer months - don't tease it by watering for a couple of weeks and then not watering for two weeks or so. The lawn will go dormant and survive if you don't water it, OR it will stay green if you water deeply once or twice a week.]
• Overseed with the right kind of grass - now, in the spring. you want the "warm-season grasses."
• Add white clover to the lawn for nitrogen fixing. There's a whole story about why clover has been eliminated from lawns - I think it was zapped by the weed-killers, but it is really a very good plant to have in a natural lawn. Lawn service company employees may try to talk you out of keeping the clover, but look into this before you go along with them.
• If the soil test says you need nitrogen, add nitrogen. Nitrogen is the biggie to remember for lawns, HOWEVER:
• Also pay attention to calcium. Calcium levels "should be seven times higher than magnesium levels."

Sounds like some work, and if you have a lot of weeds, it may be a lot more work at first. But remember, you are on a 3-year project to change over from synthetic products to natural noninvasive management of your lawn-garden. Paul Tukey says (page 107):

I'll be honest. The results you'll receive are almost directly related to the effort you put forth, and the initial work required to transition to organics may be greater than you've done in the past. You'll have to dig, pull, or spray weeds (with a natural herbicide) individually. You'll have to water as needed, not on a preset timing. Depending on your sources and how many soil amendments you can make or acquire for free, you may have to expend slightly more effort to put down natural fertilizers, and they may cost as much as 25 to 50 percent more than their synthetic counterparts. Remember, though, with a natural lawn care system, you're creating an annuity....

The Organic Lawn Care Manual has a wealth of practical, straightforward information on lawn care, and I'm going to follow its advice this season. I'll keep you posted!