We go through a debate every few weeks at our house until my wife overrules my daughter and forces me to mow the lawn, including the areas we endeavor to keep "nice" and the outlying areas where I like to call it "naturalized." To my daughter all the non-grass plants that pop up are more flowers for her bouquets. Eventually, for my wife (and me), the weeds become a bit too much of a symbol of our independen ...

National Organic Lawn Expert to Visit Durango Town Will Screen Film A Chemical Reaction DURANGO, CO. — With Durango’s elected officials facing an upcoming vote on the Organically Managed Parks Ordinance, a group of local citizens has invited the nation’s leading expert on the subject to visit the city Aug. 20-21. Paul Tukey, founder of SafeLawns.org and author of the best-selling book, The Organic Lawn Care ...

[caption id="attachment_5477" align="alignleft" width="540"] This photo was sent to us from Jeff Borkowski of Massachusetts, where the lawn is watered daily — contributing to the massive population of crabgrass. Ironically, this stand of crabgrass in the North looks a lot like a healthy carpet of St. Augustine or centipede grass in the South. [/caption] By this week in August EVERY YEAR almost universal aff ...

[caption id="attachment_5462" align="alignleft" width="540"] The organic lawn makeover at Glenstone, a modern art museum in Potomac, Md., is showcased by Joe Lamp'l's Growing a Greener World on PBS.[/caption] Barely two years from the initial phone call for our consultative services, one of our primary clients — Glenstone — takes a bow today with the airing of an organic lawn care special on Growing A Green ...

[caption id="attachment_5382" align="alignleft" width="540"] This is the lawn at Glenstone two years after all synthetic fertilizers and pesticides were removed and replaced by composts and other natural products.[/caption] Little more than two years ago I received what seemed to be an innocuous phone call from a woman who asked me if I could come to Maryland to help with an organic lawn renovation. As a re ...

[caption id="attachment_5374" align="alignleft" width="540"] Yesterday a truck for a local organic lawn care company showed up to apply product to our neighbor's yard.[/caption] As I've noted here before, we moved to a new neighborhood last year. We have since cringed when lawn after lawn is sprayed with toxic pesticides to kill the weeds and sprinkler systems go off daily to keep the sidewalk and roadway s ...

With more than half the United States in a drought and much of the continent in warmer-than-normal conditions, the best advice for your lawn right now might be this: Ignore it. That's right. Ignore it. Don't mow. Don't water and don't fret. Sure, if you don't water the lawn it may turn brown, but that doesn't mean it's dying, it just means it's going dormant. Turning brown is a lawn's natural protection sys ...

Ontario Family Physicians Warn of Pesticide Dangers in Second Landmark Study (SAFELAWNS NOTE: This details the second report from the Ontario College of Family Physicians. The first, issued in 2004, was significantly instrumental in Quebec, Ontario and several other Canadian provinces banning the use of Roundup, weed 'n feed and other common lawn and garden weed and insect killers. Eight years later, the Co ...

With the rest of the world already caught on to the phenomenon known as "blogging," I finally got around to it on June 18, 2009. Why June 18? I have no recollection, really, about why I picked that day to launch what soon became a personal obsession. More than 1,000 SafeLawns posts later, most of them written by yours truly, I remain grateful that enough sponsoring partners and daily readers have conspired ...

[caption id="attachment_5305" align="alignleft" width="563" caption="At this golf course, where grass is fertilized and grown to the pond's edge, the water is eutrified by excess phosphorus load. "][/caption] WHEN IT COMES TO LAWNS, FEW STATES RIVAL CONNECTICUT for the amount of passion folks can muster. It’s the richest state in the nation per capita and all those folks with nice properties want to su ...