Organic Lawn Care...Part 1

This is the first in a number of segments on organic lawn care. Written by my good friend Glenn.

Organic Lawn Care, A Basic Primer
Must do:
*Depending on types of grasses set your mower as high as it will go (3 to 4 inches for cool season blends).
*Water only when your grass shows signs of drought stress and then water deeply (put a cup in your sprinkler zone and make sure it gets at least an inch of water).

Optional:
*Fertilize with an organic fertilizer in the fall and spring. Either a good quality brand such as Ringer or Espoma or use protein feed meals such as canola meal or alfalfa pellets.
*How much topsoil do you have? See how deep a shovel will go into the soil. How deep can you dig a hole in one minute? If you have less than four inches of soil, you must add or build topsoil. Adding is quick and requires work, building is slow and requires work spread out over years.

This is a game of competition. You want to make things favourable for the grass and unfavourable for the weeds so the grass will choke out the weeds, naturally.

Organic lawn care concentrates on the growing of turf grass, not the killing of weeds.