Lawn care

bellewife1028

Please help me convince my husband NOT to use fertilizers and pesticides in our yard!!!! I have been telling him this for years, but he is not convinced, and he believes that fertilizing the yard 2 times a year will not harm and will get rid of weeds and help the grass grow.

Are there other alternatives besides composting that we could use? I have visited Safelawns.org and tried to find info but it seems to all be in the book, The Organic Lawn Care Manuel, which I have not read.

Thanks!

Alisha_A

Well sure, if he was the only one in the world using fertilizer twice a year, it really wouldn't be a big deal. But he isn't. He's one of so many, and it all adds up. A LOT. The excess nitrogen and phosphorus are washed into our waterways, and choke out the plant and animal life.  And a lot of fertilizers are very toxic so they have additional harmful affects on local animals.

And its really not necessary! Get - or make - some compost tea. If you can't buy compost tea easily, its also very easy to make, and is even better for your lawn's health than fertilizer.

And pesticides/herbicides are very harmful! A dog living in a home using 2,4-D herbicides (banned in many places but NOT the US), is up to two times as likely to develop lymphoma, which is essentially fatal. Just one application of a 2, 4-D product increased a dog's cancer risk by 1/3.

http://www.pesticide.org/hhg/herbicidesNHL.html

http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/3/3/233.abstract

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/04/us/lawn-herbicide-called-cancer-risk-for-dogs.html?pagewanted=1

Metabolites of herbicides are found in children's urine. "Children whose families reported pesticide use in their gardens had significantly higher concentrations".

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:Po998y51yKwJ:www.aenews.wsu.edu/Feb02AENews/Fenske/FenskePDF.pdf+metabolites+kids+urine+lawn&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjK0T9hGhZ-zLlFHQ4ezJ2VihB__4_-LKuavHxIMw-xzxGticaYynhkYThHktNJ5DlylehYzO0lxmM82smXxRE85aJ9IxIhFcoJPGIt26ompHip3-AgIY1BLmtDtB2jTqBPmroa&sig=AHIEtbR_Rmcm1bKrdvAcb7FE_H0i3ayw0A

There are a lot of ways to care for your lawn naturally. Using a mulching mower helps suppress weeds. Don't cut your lawn too short. Just keeping it healthy helps. You can use corn gluten (??) when the lawn isn't germinating but the weeds are - I think curlydoglover has tried this.

 

Adb6283

Couple good articles:

http://www.thegreenguide.com/buying-guide/fertilizers

http://www.thegreenguide.com/home-garden/garden/easy-organic-lawn-care

http://www.thegreenguide.com/home-garden/garden/greener-gardening-supplies

bellewife1028

Thanks both of you! I will save all of these articles, start reading them and forward them to DH as well!

Big T (aka Mr.P)

Not all fertilizers are created equal.  Scotts makes a hippy friendly "organic" fertilizer that can be used instead if the funky chemical ones.

Here's what you do:

Early March - De-thatch, seed, lightly fertilize with hippy friendly stuff and then cover with steer manure compost (can be found at OSH, Home Depot, Lowes, etc for ~$1.00).  You want to apply the manure with a Peat Moss spreader which you can rent from a tool rental company.

Mid Oct - vigorously rake lawn, seed, fertilize (hippy friendly), then compost.

This will keep your lawn healthy and happy