The days of the fertilized, over-manicured, pesticide-sprayed lawn may be numbered. Native plants, “low-mow” grasses, and gardens are slowly gaining ground.
NATURAL FERTILIZER
Homemade compost-enriched water can be sprayed directly on grass. Made from rotted organic material, it’s sometimes called compost tea.
To create your own, put aged manure in a porous bag and sink the bag into a bucket of water. Stir the bag around every day for at least a week.
When it’s ready, apply the brew with a pump sprayer or backpack sprayer. Some people use a siphon hose attachment to draw the tea into a garden hose attached to a sprinkler.
More info/video:
www.safelawns.org
Lawns, according to research compiled from satellite images and aerial photography, are America’s largest irrigated crop, covering 40 million acres. Keeping all this grass green, mowed, and weed-free requires amazing amounts of water, energy, and chemicals. It also washes excess nitrogen into our waterways, choking them with algae and harming aquatic ecosystems.
If that’s how you keep your lawn green, well, then perhaps it’s time for a second look. Lawns give us a place to play and buffer us from a hard, paved world. Not everyone is willing or inclined to tear up every inch of turf, but many are interested in reducing maintenance and saving water. For some, the first step may be to maintain their current lawn area but reduce its impact on the environment. This is not so hard to do. It requires some changes in three main areas: mowing, watering, and nourishing our fields of green.
Grass Infatuation
The wild meadow was tamed in 1830, when Edwin Budding invented the lawn mower in England. Later, in America, the grand parks in cities gave working people the chance to experience a lawn. By the time our soldiers marched home from World War II and occupied the suburbs, synthetic fertilizers and herbicides such as 2,4-D were helping create the chemically dependent, monoculture lawns we know today.
Then, in 1967, came a pivotal event in lawn history: The Masters Tournament broadcast its first golf game in living color from Augusta, Ga.
Americans watching their new color televisions saw the greenest greens they’d ever seen, and they wanted the same thing in their front yards.
Folks in the lawn-care industry still call it the Augusta syndrome, says Paul Tukey, author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual and founder of
SafeLawns.org. Because we remain mesmerized by the Augusta syndrome, Tukey and other experts preach more responsible ways to a green lawn.
Two-Stroke Blues
A noisy, two-cylinder, gas-powered lawn mower produces many times the air pollutants of an automobile. If you really want to maintain a lawn, why not reduce the need for power mowing? First, plant a slow growing species that’s easy to cut. Next, trade up to a human-powered push mower. Many people tend to mow too much—or at the wrong time—doing more harm than good.
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