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Add Beauty To Your Home With Climbing Roses
Colorful climbing roses can add a dramatic effect to your home. They're nice because you can wind them around a trellis, a column, or even let them climb up the side of your...read more on organic gardening
Organic Garden Fertilizer is Good for Plants and the Environment
Why use organic garden fertilizers? It's common sense. Organic garden fertilizer is good fertilizer -- good for your plants, good for you, and good for the environment.
...read more on organic gardening
Grow Your Own SIMPLE Tea Garden
Materials Needed 1 decorative clay or metal planter 1 package of clay pellets (approx. 30 pellets) 3 packets of organic tea leaves seeds (YOUR CHOICE) Grow-rich or...read more on organic gardening
Hydroponic Equipment
The word "hydroponics" was derived from the Greek word hydro, which means "water," and ponos, which means "labor." It is a technique of gardening that involves growing plants...read more on organic gardening
Maintaining Your Roses
While it is true that you will spend more time on rose
maintenance than most other plants, the care you give them
during the growing season can be done easily while...read more on organic gardening
Be An Exhibitionist How to Show Your Roses
Now that you have a rose garden you are proud of, it's time to take the next step and let others see the beauty of your roses. Rose shows and exhibits are exciting events...read more on organic gardening
California Organic Fertilizers High in Nutrients
In answer to the growing problems of the environment today, more and more farmers have turned to organic farming as the solution to producing top quality and chemical-free...read more on organic gardening
Control Those Weeds the Easy Way
Unfortunately, weed seeds are very quick to germinate. In fact,
weed seeds only need to be within an inch of the soil surface to
sprout. It doesn't take long before they...read more on organic gardening
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Organic lawn care doesn’t mean you sit back and watch as weeds infiltrate your lawn until dandelion lint covers your sidewalk. Nor does it mean that you need to be out on hands and knees from sunrise until sunset, hand-pulling crabgrass and invasive weeds in order to have the lush green carpet of your neighbors’ chemically treated lawns. What organic lawn care does mean is that with a good lawn care plan and a minimum of work, you can have an attractive addition to your landscape that is safe for both your family and the environment.
In organic lawn care, as in all organic gardening, the foundation for building a great lawn is your soil. The first step in planning a lawn is to find out what kind of dirt is under your grass. A soil test, from your county extension agent or other lawn care professional, tells you whether it’s sand or clay based, nutrient rich or nitrogen poor, acid or alkaline. From there, you can decide how to improve (amend) it and choose the seed that will give you more green for your colorful US dollar.
A basic rule of thumb in organic lawn care is that it’s more important to feed the soil than to fertilize the grass. Nutrient rich soil holds moisture, entices beneficial insects, and maintains a healthy environment for microorganisms that fight disease, deters pests and parasites, and generally help keep your lawn growing and green. Six to ten inches of good top soil is worth its weight in green for your lawn!
A mulching mower solves two problems in organic lawn care with just a few swipes of its blades. First of all, when mowing, always keep a high clip (2 ½ to 3 inches) unless it’s your final mowing in the fall. Short grass clippings and especially fine mulch from a mulching mower will fall in between the cut blades of grass and reach the soil where they quickly decay, adding nitrogen and other nutrients to your soil. Because grass is very efficient in its use of nitrogen, composting your lawn with grass clippings can radically cut down on your fertilization needs. Grass clippings alone can contribute up to two pounds of the two to six pounds per 1000 square feet that your lawn needs to stay healthy.
During dry seasons, an organic lawn care basic is to water your lawn infrequently but deeply. Deep watering forces grass roots down while over-watering allows them to remain near the top. Deeply rooted lawns better compete with invasive weeds.
In addition to helping your lawn retain moisture, annual lawn aeration is one organic lawn care method of giving easy growing room to roots and provides circulation for the colonies of critters that tend your soil. The best time to aerate your lawn is in the spring. Not only will spring aeration break up the compaction of frost and snow accumulated during winter, spring rains also help aeration clumps decay quickly, further enriching your topsoil.
About the Author
Hans is the owner and one of the editors of The Lawn Mower Guide a Collection of Articles about Lawn Mowers and Lawn Care
Written by:
Hans Dekker
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