Organic Lawn Care Products and Methods for a Truly Green Lawn

Here's a short guide to organic lawn care products which will help keep your organic lawn in tip top shape.

It would be nice to think you can leave your lawn to its own devices and let nature take its course. But a lawn is a relatively artificial environment which needs cultivation and care for best results. Lawns need to have their fertility levels replenished, especially if you are aiming to have an attractive green lawn which is a pleasure to see - and sit upon!

Dry conditions, very wet conditions, icy winters and wear and tear from foot traffic will all take their toll.

You can keep your lawn in fine fettle by by adding natural home made fertilisers such as comfrey tea or composted kitchen waste. Click here to see details of homemade approaches to organic lawn care products and methods. Read on for information about commercial solutions to lawn care.

Sometimes you may feel the need for an additional boost, or a quicker route to a glorious green lawn. There are also other things you can do to help your lawn stay green and lush. See the bottom of the page for other maintenance tips.

Here are a few commercial organic lawn care products which will help you keep the upper hand.

A specialised organic lawn care product such as Nature's Turf 8-1-9 fertiliser is worth applying if your lawn is struggling.

A fifty pound bag will treat a lawn area up to 16,000 sq feet, depending upon the rate of application. It helps restore biological activity so it's best used in the spring. It's low in phosphorus which means that it will not encourage weed growth in your lawn.

There are also special lawn fertilisers for autumn use. Try Natural Gardening's Autumn Lawn fertiliser which is designed to help stimulate root growth. It contains rapeseed and prairie meal, kelp meal, lignite, rock phosphate and mined sulphate of potash. These are all natural and organic products and suitable for use by vegetarians, too. From the Natural Gardening website:

"The ingredient lists of many commercially available products read like the contents of a slaughterhouse: - blood meal, meat and bone meal, feather meal, fish meal, hoof and horn meal and various animal manures. The increasing concerns associated with some of these materials e.g. BSE, Foot and Mouth, Salmonella and E.coli infections has lead Thomas & Fontaine Ltd to develop the Natural Gardening range of organic fertilisers based upon plant materials."

Organic lawn care products

Seaweed extract is a valuable tonic which can benefit your lawn. Seaweed is very rich in micro-nutrients and trace elements. The alginic acid found in seaweed also helps conserve moisture in the soil - a useful fact, given that some many of us are struggling with watering bans and drier summers. It also helps with crumb structure in the soil. Seaweed extracts can temporarily deplete the nitrogen in the soil - this is because the seaweed takes up available nitrogen in the process of breakdown. However, in the long term there is a net gain in nitrogen. The moral of this tale is: don't add seaweed extract the week before your lawn plays host to a wedding party and expect it to be looking its best! Seaweed can take as much as 15 weeks to create noticeable benefits for your lawn.

You can counteract this temporary effect by adding a more instant nitrogenous lawn feed at the same time.

In Britain, you can buy seaweed extract under the trade name "Maxicrop" which is available in most good garden centres or you can buy calcified seaweed from Chase Organics. It's not really practical for most of us to harvest our own seaweed. If you do, you need to have a method of removing excess salt before using it!

6X Lawn Feed is a good organic lawn care product which is based on animal manure and is specially formulated for lawns.

Dry fertilisers such as "Fish, Blood and Bone" can be used on your lawn. With dry fertilisers, even the organic ones there is an increased risk of leaf scorch. You can't just move grass leaves out of the way! The best advice is to use dried products very sparingly and preferably water them in immediately.

Use all fertilisers when the ground is already moist - you will have a better take up and less risk of scorching.

Other dry organic fertilisers include bone meal, dried blood and hoof and horn. There are also vegetarian alternatives available. In view of the animal care disasters of recent years you may feel more confident about safety (and ethics) using these products, even if you are not vegetarian. Of course the animal products are sterilised effectively.

Pelleted chicken manure is probably too strong for most lawn use. If you consider it, crush the pellets in some water and apply plenty of extra water to make sure that the manure is well distributed. Chicken manure from factory farms is pelleted - so this is perhaps not the most ethical source of fertility for your garden.

For vegetarian options, see the information about seaweed products, above.

Here are a few ways to enhance vigour and fertility in your lawn without using bought natural organic lawn care products.

Bokashi

Bokashi compost juice or tea is the liquid which is created during the composting process. Every few days you drain off the liquid. It is a rich, yeasty brew which stimulates bio activity in the soil. If you are already using a bokashi composter, then this is a free by-product. Use it diluted on your lawn and garden.

Bokashi composting is an easy and fun way to compost virtually all your kitchen waste. If you haven't come across these marvellous devices, read about them here: Bokashi Kitchen Composters This is a fantastic way to get first rate soil improver from your kitchen waste as well as a powerful soil stimulant which can be used almost anytime.

Comfrey tea and nettle tea

You can make comfrey tea very simply by placing a small sack of comfrey leaves into a tub of water. The proportions are about 14 lbs to 20 gallons of water but as long as you dilute the liquid feed down enough the exact proportions are not too crucial. Leave it for 3 - 6 weeks. It will smell vile so keep it away from the kitchen door! Dilute the resulting liquid until it is a thin tea colour and water it onto your lawn - or anywhere. It is very rich in nitrogen and potassium - but not so rich in phosphorus, so it is ideal as an occasional lawn feed. In fact, it is richer than farmyard manure.

Read more about using and growing comfrey here.

Nettle tea can be used in exactly the same way and has the added advantage that the nettles are coming on strong a little earlier in the year than comfrey.

Organic lawn care products and methods:

Lawns benefit from aeration, especially if drainage is a problem. You can aerate your lawn by wearing spiked clogs and walking about. You can also achieve the same effect with a fork.

Put the fork tines into the earth at regular intervals. The best depth is about 6 inches (15cms). Work carefully across the area in an orderly way. For best results brush in sharp sand immediately. This stops the holes from filling back up with soil.

You will stimulate growth by periodically removing "thatch". For this you need a spring tine rake which does the job without significantly damaging the grass root. You are aiming to remove the thatch of dead grass and moss which can significantly reduce drainage and light. This is best done twice a year, autumn and springtime.

Add fertility to your lawn in autumn by top-dressing it with soil, sand and compost in a 3/2/1 ratio. This fills in bumps and hollows and gives everywhere else a boost. Sieve the soil and compost first to remove stones and woody bits. Mix everything well and spread the top-dressing around the lawn with the back of a rake. Don't over do it; the aim is not to submerge the grass.

Picture: Dogs can damage your lawn. Pick up any foulings regularly

Lawn worm casts are full of valuable nutrients, so spread them over the soil before mowing to share the wealth! This stops weed seeds from benefiting from them too much.

Get rid of weeds by pulling them individually. You can buy a specialist tool for the job which helps with deep rooted weeds such as dandelions. A small pinch of salt in the centre of each offending plant will also do the job, rather more slowly.

Mowing tips

For a lush lawn you need to adapt your cutting techniques to your local conditions. It also depends upon what you require of your lawn. The more often you mow it, the finer will be the qualities of the grasses present. Coarser grasses take over if you don't mow often enough.

In dry places, or dry times of the year you need to mow far less often so that the grass to some extent becomes its own shade. Longer grass suffers less quickly during drought conditions. Set your blades higher when the weather is adverse - too hot, or too dry.

Lawns which are in shade will grow more slowly and need less frequent cutting. The ground may be far damper, so a higher cut is more desirable as it will cause less damage.

In dry weather leave the grass box off when you cut. The left mowings will to some extent protect your lawn from the sun and help retain moisture.

Mowing frequency: about once a week is a good frequency for most lawns in the summer growing season. Less often is "greener" if you have a petrol mower as you are saving fuel. Leave the grass box off for a free fertiliser if you don't mind the inconvenience of clumps of dead grass mowings on your lawn.

Picture, right: lawns in shade will need cutting less often

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