|
Drought Alert:
Keep Lawns Green by Going Organic
The median strips have gone to straw and the baseball diamonds have lost their shimmer of green. Weeds thrive where grass once flourished and topsoil blows away with the slightest breeze. The scene is the same everywhere across most of America these days with the nation gripped in one of the most severe early summer droughts in history.
“It’s the worst we’ve ever seen at this time of year,” said reporter Joe Robinson of the Los Angeles Times, who called the SafeLawns offices in Maine last week looking for lawn care solutions for his readers.
He, like many callers and emailers, was skeptical that anything could be done to save the nation’s 30 million some odd acres of grass.
The answer, quite simply, is to go organic in your lawn management. By adding organic materials to the soil rather than chemical fertilizers, your soil will act like a sponge and hold onto the water that Mother Nature or the sprinkler does supply. I refer people to the collection of organic lawn care videos on the SafeLawns.org web site that we filmed last year. Some were shot in Texas, where the daily temperatures were about 108 and much of the state was on water restrictions; all the organic lawns were still green.
“We have hundreds of lawns on the organic program and they all stay green pretty much year round,” said Michael Bosco, founder of SoilsAlive of Dallas. “Proper watering and mowing are really important, but the biggest thing is the application of organic fertilizers and soil amendments in place of the synthetic chemical fertilizers.”
Here is a review of pointers for maintaining an organic and drought-tolerant lawn:
- Use composts and organic fertilizers;
- Leave grass clippings on the grass to help the soil retention of moisture
- Apply a nutrient packed “compost tea” that you can “brew” yourself; instructions are included on the SafeLawns.org web site;
- Use water saving sprinklers and timers and water deeply and infrequently so the roots of the grass learn to grow down into the soil to find water;
- Never mow your grass lower than three 3 inches, except for Bermudagrass, bentgrass and seashore paspalum, which should be mowed at 2 inches or less;
- Avoid synthetic fertilizers, which draw water away from plants;
- Grow drought-tolerant grass varieties;
- Apply organic “wetting agents,” which allow the soil to fully absorb the water;
- Dethatch the lawn if decaying roots and stems are overly abundant;
- Aerate the lawn if the soil feels overly compacted;
- Allow clover to grow, which is drought tolerant and feeds soil naturally;
- Maintain the proper pH in your soil;
- Avoid mowing the lawn if no rain is predicted;
- Keep the mower blade sharp.
|
