Lawn care is more than keeping your yard green. It’s maintaining pH balance, keeping harmful insects and animals away, and a whole lot of sweat-soaked mowing. It’s weeding flower beds, hosing the grass, and making sure you’re using the right amount of fertilizer. But despite the hard work you put into keeping your lawn lush and healthy, it’s important not only to keep your lawn green, but to keep your lawn green.
Environmentally responsible lawn care these days is a necessity and current lawn care services aren’t exactly healthy. Pesticides and fungicides alone — 70 million pounds of which are sprayed in American lawns yearly — kill up to 90% of the earthworms as well as millions of birds.
Even your fertilizer has the potential to harm — while a healthy lawn prevents runoff, up to 60% of the nitrogen from your fertilizer has the possibility to end up in surface and groundwater, which is used in wells.
The good news is that there are perfectly organic ways to maintain a naturally healthy lawn with the use of environmentally responsible lawn care services. First off: try growing local with your grass. Like certain flowers can require higher maintenance and even die under certain climate conditions depending on where they’re planted, so can grass. Find a grass naturally adapted to your area!
Instead of using fertilizer, treat the natural soil in your yard. A test for the pH balance can tell you what nutrients it needs. If the acidity is too high, lime can help bring it down to a healthy 6.5 or 7.0. If the acidity isn’t enough, try adding sulfur. If the soil needs aeration, try cutting parts of your turfgrass to create spaces. That way the soil won’t be compacted and nutrient and airflow aren’t prevented.
Rather than mowing your lawn to keep it cropped short, try leaving it a little longer, between 2.5″ and 3.5″. The length can not only improve your lawn’s health, but is actually the length of when turfgrass is at its healthiest.
Last, but certainly not least — don’t overwater your lawn. During the summer, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, American lawns consume up to 60% of water. Yet grass plants are already up to 80% water themselves and a healthy lawn only needs an inch of water per week.
Organic lawn care not only keeps our environment, and us, safe from the harmful effects of pollution, but can help keep your lawn healthy the way it was meant to be.