Keeping Your Lawn Green - While Being Green
We may all think it is diffcult enough to maintain a lush, gorgeous lawn that your neighbors and visitors will envy, adding the "Organic Factor" just drives some folks over the edge!
In the last few years, though, there have been tremendous advances in the development of organic fertilizers for use on lawns. With the advances have come declines, in the prices. For the longest time, going organic in the garden meant you were among the fewest people looking for these products, so the price was high. Now, thanks to the focus being put on the environment, many more people are using organic products, more companies are producing them, and the prices have come down.
The most important thing to do, before anything else, is a soil test. This will let you know what type of deficiency there is, if any, and you can then decide what you will do to correct it.
(continued below)
|
We've long used lime in the garden and on lawns to correct pH levels, and compost when planting, bone meal and blood meal, too. Since they've been around so long, we forget that they are organic.
Now, though, there are blended formulas of fertilizer available on the market such as ProStart and Nature's Turf. There are blends made from a variety of organic ingredients such as seaweed, which helps build the resistant of grass to disease.
Just leaving the grass clippings on your lawn will help with the nitrogen, needed to keep the lawn green.
Products made from corn gluten meal will work well as a pre-emergent and control weeds.
As long as you monitor your lawn during the growing season, as you would normally, you may see that switching to an organic plan will not take away from the beautiful lush, green lawn you've gotten used to. It may even seem a bit greener!
© Barbara Frerichs
|
|
