How to grow a guilt-free, Earth-friendly patch of grass

By DAVID BARE
Media General News Service
Published: April 23, 2008

You mow it, spray it, fertilize it, weed it, water it, plug it, rake it, thatch it and edge it — the lawn, that is, that endless glutton of time and energy and usurper of weekends. You feel guilty if it is in poor shape, and you feel guilty again if you use the water, chemicals and energy necessary to sustain it.

Paul Tukey, author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual, has put a lot of effort into changing that. Tukey is a co-host and executive producer at HGTV, the publisher of People, Places and Plants magazine and was named 2006 Communicator of the Year by the American Horticultural Society. He is also national spokesman for Safelawns.org, a group dedicated to “creating a broad-based coalition of non- and for-profit organizations committed to educating society about the benefits of environmentally responsible lawn care and gardening, and effect a quantum change in consumer and industry behavior.”

His thorough treatment of the subject leaves no stone unturned in the quest for a beautiful and environmentally friendly lawn. Like any other organic gardening discipline, his depends on a healthy soil to feed the lawn. To be sure, this is not the quick and easy way to a green front yard. It involves the gradual buildup to a balanced soil through the addition of compost and other organic amendments. Tukey explores building an organic lawn from the bottom up as well as assessing and improving the lawn you have. He refers to the process as getting your lawn off drugs.

I asked Tukey in an email interview if the points he elaborates on in his book could be synthesized into a few important steps. He noted five points that are crucial.

Test: Homeowners should obtain and follow a soil test and make sure that soil is deep enough, preferably 6 inches. Think of that soil as alive. “Dirt is what you track into your house. The material that grows your lawn, the soil, is alive with organisms large and small. Nurturing that life through the proper use of natural materials such as compost and organic fertilizers will lead to a successful natural lawn.”

Mow: Mowing properly by keeping your mower blades sharp and mowing at the proper height is another important point. Most grasses should not be mowed below 2.5 inches, excepting Bermuda grass and seashore paspalum. “Recycling your grass clippings by leaving them on the lawn will provide approximately half of your lawn’s fertilizer needs for the season”

Choose: Choosing the right grass is another factor. “The most common lawn grasses in North America, Kentucky bluegrass and Bermuda grass, also need the most water and fertilizer to grow well,” Tukey said. “Most cool-season grasses can be blended into your existing lawn; in the South, some grasses don’t blend well, so it will be more important to identify your existing grass and attempt to match it — or start over.” Tukey recommends turf-type, tall fescues for yards receiving full sun and chewing-red fescues for shade.

Water: Watering deeply in the morning so that the surface water on the lawn has a chance to dry out during the day is the final point. It is important to water deeply so that roots will be encouraged to reach well into the soil for moisture.

Give it time: Tukey explained that when making the transition from a lawn treated with synthetic chemicals to one treated solely with organics, the gradual build-up of soil life can take more than a year. Chemically treated lawns are practically devoid of soil life in terms of worms and microorganisms responsible for converting organic matter to the plant food necessary for sustaining grass. Chemical fertilizers are feeding the plants, organics are feeding the soil. “When soil organisms consume the organic fertilizers, that’s when plants begin to green up,” Tukey said. “If there are no organisms in the soil, green-up is slow to occur.

Applying liquid composts and fertilizers drenches the organisms down into the roots and will hasten the transition to an organic lawn. In a nutshell, a transitioning lawn may look worse before it looks better, but it will be safer immediately”

The points in Tukey’s book are aimed to reduce cost and maintenance over time as you build a sustainable soil life. Initially, both cost and input are higher, but as you build toward the third year of an organic lawn-care program, you can look forward to less mowing, less watering, eliminating the need for a soil test for a few years, and eliminating dethatching and aerating. Soil microorganisms will have taken care of that issue.

The environmental consequences of maintaining a lawn through synthetic chemicals are well documented. What once was a suburban status symbol is now beginning to have a different meaning. I asked Tukey if he thought that the lawn was going to become a thing of the past due to water restrictions, fertilizer runoff, and other environmental issues.

“What my colleague calls ‘the Gucci lawn’ will become a thing of the past,” Tukey said. “In some neighborhoods, the ultra-green, weed-free lawn is seen as a scourge due to all the environmental degradation it represents. Many people think going organic is going ugly, and it doesn’t have to be. The points in my book show people how to have a decent-looking lawn without the toxic chemicals.”

Tukey and Safelawns.org are writing the message very large on what is probably the most visible lawn in North America. They have plowed up the National Mall in Washington with a chisel plow and worked in hundreds of yards of compost, soil amendments and organic fertilizers. The area has been fenced until now so that the grass could develop a healthy sustainable root system that can endure the kind of traffic the National Mall can deliver. The fence was due to come down in late March. Tukey said the roots are nearly a foot deep.

And Tukey is beginning to see the objectives in Safelawns.org mission statement be realized. “There are currently 12 states with some form of legislation limiting chemical fertilizers in place; the entire province of Quebec in Canada has said Just Say No to lawn chemicals, so the change is happening. I’ve personally visited and lectured in 37 states thus far and each year the audiences are larger and more enthusiastic in most areas.”

David Bare is a staff preorter for Media General’s Winston-Salem Journal.