Green lawns: It doesn’t mean a lot of weeds
By Annie Getsinger

A “green” lawn doesn’t mean the same thing it used to.

In an age of growing environmental concerns, the idea of a healthy lawn seems to be changing. Organic lawn care experts agree that an environmentally friendly lawn does not mean “doing nothing,” nor does it mean a yard full of weeds.

Dave “The Gardening Guru” Daehnke, a former landscape company owner and current executive director of the Montclair Foundation and Van Vleck House and Gardens in Montclair, N.J., runs a Web site at thegardeningguru.com. The site includes an organic lawn care manual.

A software engineer by day, Paul Wheaton, a certified master gardener and permaculture designer based out of Seattle Wash., maintains a Web site called “Organic Lawn Care for the Cheap and Lazy,” at richsoil.com/lawn-care.jsp.

Rachel Rosenberg is executive director of the Illinois Safer Pest Control Project, at spcpweb.org, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating people about and reducing the use of pesticides and to promoting safe options. Rosenberg also owned a Chicago organic lawn care company for three years.

Here are some tips from these experts:

n Rethink perfection. Endure the presence of a few weeds. Some plants, such as clover, are nitrogen-fixing and draw nitrogen from the air into the soil. Don’t go crazy spraying a herbicide across the entire lawn for one or two dandelions when they can be removed by hand.

n Read the warning labels and material safety data sheets on fertilizers and pesticides. Understand the potential dangers of chemically produced lawn care products.

n “You are killing the good and the bad with those chemicals,” Rosenberg said of chemical herbicides, insecticides and fungicides. She added that when beneficial plants and creatures die, a lawn becomes vulnerable to the stresses of drought and pests.

n Mix grass types in order to prevent a monoculture, or a lawn of all one grass, which could be devastated by fungi or pests.

n To prevent snow mold, a grayish flattened area appearing in a lawn after snow melts, cut the lawn shorter just before winter. To eliminate it, take a steel rake to the area to aerate it.

n Daehnke recommended corn gluten meal, a leftover sugar from corn processing, as a safe, organic fertilizer and weed control agent for garden beds and turf.

n Use a truly organic fertilizer. A good way to make sure, Daehnke said, is finding one with a low nitrogen number, which is the first number on a fertilizer label, below 10. If transitioning from chemical to organic, apply the organic fertilizer before quitting the chemical treatments.

n “Mow high” is Wheaton’s mantra. Most experts advised leaving grass between 2½ to 4 inches during the warmer months. Cut slightly lower in the fall and before winter, Daehnke said. High grass shades the ground to reduce water loss, aids photosynthesis and shades out many weeds.

n Experts advised top-dressing the lawn with compost and mulching a layer of leaves to add organic matter to the soil. Understand that you’re feeding the soil, from which the grass derives its nutrients.

n Healthy lawns require around an inch of water once a week. This can be measured by putting a clean, empty tuna can in the sprinkling area and stopping when it’s full. Water in the morning to discourage fungi and pests from invading wet grass at night.

Annie Getsinger is a reporter for the Herald & Review in Decatur, Ill., agetsinger@herald-review.com.