curlydoglover & others: organic yard care

TarHeels&Rebels

While I greatly dislike being told I'm wrong when what I'm doing does work, I had never considered organic yard care even though I use an all-natural housekeeping service, sleep on an organic mattress and recycle in a town that doesn't realize that that there beer can can be turned into sumpin' else.

The sites you linked to were pretty cluttery and, well, militant.  These sites might be of more use to people on here looking for how-tos.

http://www.richsoil.com/lawn-care.jsp

http://www.planetnatural.com/site/lawn-care-guide.html

I thought this organic vs ChemLawn article was enlightening: http://www.planetnatural.com/site/xdpy/kb/lawn-fertilizers.html

Corn gluten meal as a weed pre-emergent for established lawns: http://www.eartheasy.com/article_corn_gluten.htm

And this is the route I'll probably go: as simple as Scott's and about the same price: http://www.firebellylawncare.com/

curlydoglover

I actually did link to the first one you posted here. 

The jury is actually still out on CGM and how effective it is.  We've tried it with mixed results.  You have to apply it at a specific soil temperature or it doesn't work, and even then it's hit or miss as to whether it gets all the weeds, since different weed seeds germinate at different temps.  It doesn't control crabgrass at all.

I use the Rodale Organic Gardening book as my primary source.  They've got a lot of decent information in there on how to maintain a lawn organically.

Scotts seems to work because you keep using it.  That's the thing.  It sort of traps you into it.  If a person misses a treatment and the grass tries to grow under it's own power, it can't because it's so shallowly rooted and overdrugged on fertilizer, so it ens up looking like crap.  So people think "Gosh, this looks awful if I don't keep using these chemicals."

We've spent the last 4 years trying to rehabilitate our lawn/soil that was destroyed after 10 years of the Scotts program.  I can say this with confidence, since it was my sister and BIL's - when we bought the house, they told us what we'd been doing.  We had the soil tested - the pH was a disaster, there were practically no nutrients in the soil, and the weeds were taking over regardless.  The soil was so nitrogen deficient that our dog's urine actually served as a FERTILIZER - those were the best parts of the lawn, where he peed.

It's not been easy - it's fairly labor intensive and time consuming trying to build up soil without ripping the grass out and starting over (not an option with 3/4 acre) - but we're finally getting the sort of soil and turf that's actually healthy (of course, now we have dog pee burn spots, but that's another story).

There actually was a great article two years ago or something in Golf Digest about how many of the country's top golf courses are going to a more organic approach to lawn care.  I'll have to see if I can dig it up (hahaha).

Edited for grammar. The baby is eating my brain.

nitaw

Curly -

I find all of this fascinating, seriously. How did you renovate your yard? Did you add more topsoil/compost mix to certain areas in the yard and overtime the grass just grows over it?

I know that the soil under my lawn is crap. I know it's crap because I've had to add soil to my flower beds and under the beds it's hard, heavy compacted clay. I'm in a wonderful new subdivision, so you already know the builders spent no time putting good quality soil under it. I have to fight like the dickens to keep weeds from my neighbors yards from encroaching on mine.

My DH broke down this year and we now have TruGreen coming out to spray the lawn. I'm not a happy camper because I felt that we could do it ourseleves without the added cost and less chemicals. But, I lost that battle.

curlydoglover

Well, we cried a lot the first year. LOL

Let's see.  I will say, up front, we weren't 100% organic. We took a balanced approach.  With a smaller yard we might have gone whole-hog organic but not with the amount of lawn we have.

The big thing, I think, was the mowing high and watering deep.  That really helped choke out a lot of the less invasive sort of weeds.

We tried CGM the first year for weed control.  It helped, but it wasn't 100% effective.  We did spot-treat some weeds with Round-Up.  Or hand-dug them if they were sporadic enough.

That fall we applied pulverized lime to increase the soil pH.  Soil tests showed that this was the only application we really needed.  The more important thing was to get nutrients back in the soil.

We thatched the 2nd year in the spring. By hand, which was stupid - we're renting a machine next time.  After thatching, we applied an organic fertilizer.  We continued with spot-treating weeds with Round-Up.

Last year we aerated and applied... I'd have to check the label, but it was basically a sort of compost/soil ammender.  We continued with spot-treating weeds with Round-Up.  In the fall we applied an organic fertilizer and over-seeded the lawn.

This year I believe we're going to overseed and aerate again.

I can go on but I need to rush home to make it for the soil delivery!  I'll try and post more later.