My yard is in the midst of a long overdue landscape makeover. Since we moved into this house over two years ago, there’s been little time to plant. However, I’ve spent a great deal of time prepping the soil with leaf compost and lots of shredded mulch where appropriate. This explains why nothing is planted at the moment.
I think my friend Paul Tukey; founder of Safelawns.org would be pleased. This picture is a nice testament that you can have a lush lawn if you choose, without the need to douse it with synthetic fertilizers, weed and feed or anything else synthetic for that matter. The day I arrived I knew this lawn and garden’s chemical days were over. One of the first things I did was to reduce the size of the lawn to make way for more interesting and biodiverse plantings.
The small amount of grass remaining stays looking good with a few simple steps that anyone can do: First, I keep it mowed at the high end of the scale for my type of grass (fescue) at about 3 inches. This promotes deep roots and the taller blades help shade out and out-compete other more sun-loving weeds. I water deeply but infrequently, only about once a week at most. By having deep roots and conditioning the plants to seek their water source further into the soil, my lawn is naturally more drought tolerant.
To keep emerging weeds at bay, I used my favorite handheld weeding device, my trusty CobraHead. If it’s possible to actually look forward to weeding, this tool makes that job a lot more fun. Of all the hand tools I’ve used for weeding, none compare to this baby. It feels good in my hand, gets the deep tap-rooted weeds ALL the way out, and is the perfect precision cultivator too. I think I’ve found uses for it the inventor doesn’t even know about yet. I’m just glad I have this tool and if you don’t yet, you should look into getting one. It’s well worth the small investment!
For fertilizer around my house, compost is king. I use a lot of it and my lawn is very happy. Speaking of fertilizer, each fall and late winter I use corn gluten. It is primarily marketed as an organic pre-emergent but it happens to contain nitrogen as a natural component as well. And since I grass cycle, additional nitrogen is added back into the soil every time I mow. It’s a great feeling knowing that I’m feeding my soil with earth and family –friendly nutrients and getting such great sustainable results in my lawn and garden too. JL