Organic Lawn Care

One of the interesting things about gardening is how all kinds of things are related and we really don’t think about them as such. The First Thing To Understand About What To Control Here’s a simple way to remember what’s eating your lawn or garden. Voles eat vegetables (or grass or things green) They leave the pathways in your ...

Lawn rolling must be hormonal. Every spring, just about this time, some mysterious hormone hits the male of the species and the urge to “do lawn work” strikes. Personally, I try to resist this urge whenever possible but from the looks of the lawns in the surrounding area, many of you are simply not able ...

The very first fall lawn care step starts in September when the nights cool off. We want to thicken up our turf for next spring and a fall sowing of grass seed will do exactly that. It doesn’t matter how good or bad your lawn is, if you apply this grass seed, the lawn will thicken ...

Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) are a curious plant in that humans have deliberately spread its cultivation around the world. You see, this plant has been historically considered one of the most edible of plants in the vegetable gardens. The Celts ate it and introduced it to the Roman legions when Caesar invaded the north. AngloSaxons and the ...

Chinch bugs (a lot of folks spell it as cinch bugs but they’re wrong) are one of the more common of grass pests but luckily they aren’t usually something that has to be controlled. Mother Nature does a pretty good job of controlling them. Signs Of Chinch Bugs You’ll find them on grass blades sucking sap and a ...

Unless you live in the deep South, grass clippings should be left on the lawn where they are cut. Why The growing tips of plants use more nitrogen than the rest of the plants so these growing tips contain a significant amount of nitrogen By leaving them to decompose on the lawn, that nitrogen will be made available to the other ...

Crabgrass is one of the most commonly named lawn weeds in North America and if you watch the ads in the spring for chemical lawns, you might think this grass and dandelions are the major threats to our way of life. It’s an Annual Grass The first thing to understand is that this is primarily an annual grass that sets seed ...

The first steps in growing an organic lawn means understanding four simple techniques. Luckily, these are easily described and easily accomplished. Step one: make the lawn thick. Every fall, you’re going to add two to 6 pounds of grass seed per thousand square feet of lawn. If your lawn is lush and green now, then 2 pounds is ...

Just about midsummer, we start to see moss on lawns and the plaintive cry goes up, “How do we stop it?” How do we create that moss free lawn? The first thing to understand is that moss is not going to survive in a healthy lawn. The existence of moss is a symptom the lawn is ...

Help! I’ve got lots of mushrooms on the lawn. What do I do? Let’s understand the basics. The Basics We’ll most often see mushrooms after heavy rains as the above-ground portion of a larger growth underground. They are associated with two distinct causes. Cause One The first is the less-common fungal problem called “fairy ring”. This is a circular pattern ...

Let’s look realistically at a few lawn alternatives. And note – the term is realistically. This article isn’t going to be pushing a politically correct version of gardening but rather giving you some of the data you require to make an informed decision about what works (or doesn’t work) in your garden and landscaping. What I’m ...

Lawn dog damage appears more regularly in the spring than at any other time of year. In short, dog urine and feces are wrecking lawns leaving lots of round brown patches on your lawn when the snow disappears. Nitrogen The main problem we’re dealing with is the over-abundance of nitrogen in the animal waste. This happens because ...

I get asked about corn gluten quite often, so this article will describe it’s uses. Before I do that though, there are several ways you can control weeds on lawns and I’ve written an entire series of articles about the need for a broad program of fertility and management of the organic lawn to effectively control ...

Creeping Charlie is another obnoxious lawn weed. Beginning gardeners often mistake this violet colored flower spreading into the grass as an attractive little plant. It is attractive (the variegated variety is sold in garden centers to the unwary as a rock garden plant) but it is also a major lawn weed. Raking A good raking will remove quite ...