LAWN CARE SIMPLIFIED - A Safe and Natural Approach

WEED CONTROL RECIPES

This section is for people who are looking for non-pesticide ways to get rid of existing weeds. This will be an open forum, meaning we'd like to hear from you if you have found something that works and are willing to share it with the gardening world.  In other posts we will talk about building up and balancing the soil and improving overall grass health as deterrents to weeds.  We want to limit this section to home remedies or natural products that have shown good results.

Here are a couple of recipes that have worked for us:

GROUND IVY RECIPE

Borax laundry powder contains the element boron, one of the minor plant nutrients.  Excessive boron is toxic to plants.  However, University of Iowa research found that Ground Ivy ( creeping charlie) is more sensitive to boron than northern turfgrasses.

By applying Borax at a rate that is toxic to Ground Ivy, but not strong enough to kill turfgrass, you can safely eliminate some of this invasive weed. You may also get some dieback on clover and a few other weeds.

Precautionary note.  Do not use a watering can to apply. Use a pump or hand sprayer only.    If your lawn turns yellow from the borax, water thoroughly to move the boron through the soil.  Do not treat again if the lawn is sensitive to the borax.

Recipe:

Mix 10 oz. (1 1/4^th cup) of Borax in 1 gallon of hot water in a hand pump sprayer. Shake or stir really well until completely dissolved.  Then mix in a tablespoon of dish soap.

Apply in the morning  before the ground ivy is baked from the heat. Or apply in the evening after sunset. Set your sprayer to a fine spray pattern.  Simply coat all visible Ground Ivy with your spray solution.  One gallon should cover up to 1000 sf.     Repeat the application in two weeks if the grass shows no sign of boron sensitivity (yellowing).

For small areas using a hand spray bottle, dissolve 5 teaspoons of Borax in a quart of water.  This will cover 25 square feet.

ALL-PURPOSE VEGETATION KILLER.   Caution – this will kill grass too!

Recipe:

Bring one gallon of white vinegar to a boil, add one cup of regular table salt and simmer until the salt dissolves. Cool the mixture. When cool, add 8 drops of liquid dish soap and mix or stir it in.

The easiest way to apply is to pour into a hand sprayer or pump sprayer and spray the leaves of undesirable plants.  You may have to repeat these applications once or twice a few days apart. Apply early in the day before the heat closes the pores of the plants. 

DO NOT use a sprayer if you are trying to kill weeds in a lawn or weeds that are nestled in between desirable plants. You'll kill the grass or plants too.  Instead, get a small paintbrush and paint the leaves of the unwanted plant with your solution. (This paintbrush idea will also work for those of you who want to use Round-up on weeds or undesirable grass types in the lawn).

Never pour this solution on garden or lawn areas.  The excessive salt could ruin the soil and prevent anything at all from growing.

Written by Stuart Franklin, President of Nature's Lawn & Garden, Inc.   All rights reserved.

Organic Agriculture Can Feed The World

If you are interested in safe and natural lawn care, chances are that you are also interested in Organic foods and how they are grown.  I've been growing vegetables organically since 1971 and it was that experience that led me to believe that lawns could be cared for organically too.

This link will take you to a great article I read in Acres USA ( North America's "Voice For Eco-Agricuture" ) a number of years ago.  With the costs of synthetic chemical fertilizers going through the roof, this article makes an even stronger case for Organic Agriculture today than it did in 2004.

http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/reprints/OrganicAgSaveWorld_Jan04.pdf

Support this blog by visiting our site at www.natureslawn.com

Stuart Franklin is president of Nature's Lawn & Garden, Inc. and author of the book Building A Healthy Lawn: A Safe and Natural Approach (Storey Publishing 1988) , available at amazon.com

Improving Clay Soil Under A Lawn

Clay soils create problems in both gardens and lawns. By definition, clay soils are compacted.  They stay soggy when wet, and turn rock hard when they dry out in the summer. When soils are "tight", necessary air, water and nutrients can not move through the soil. Disease occurs. Roots are stunted. Beneficial micro-organisms can't survive. Plants are stressed and weakened, while specific weeds are actually encouraged.

Improving clay in garden beds is normally accomplished by tilling or mixing organic matter –such as compost, peat moss, cocoa shells etc...into the clay 4-12 inches deep or more. This process, if done right, can immediately improve soil aeration and drainage, and can help create humus over time as beneficial soil microbes break down the organic matter. *

But, if you have a lawn clay situation, there is no way to till in organic matter down deep without tilling up the lawn. The standard advice is to top dress the lawn with compost, leave the clippings, fertilize organically and wait... and wait... for all of that organic matter to eventually break down, convert to humus and help restructure the soil. The denser the clay, the longer it will take – often years.

The problem with dense clays, unlike sandy or loamy soils, is that they mostly consist of microscopic mineral particles that are very tightly bonded, with little to no air space between them. The microbes that break down organic matter need air to survive. The only air you'll have when working with lawn clay is going to be at the surface. So, the surface soil will improve first, and little by little the clay will change deeper - but only if the soil is bioactive.

A Thatch situation is a sure sign that your soil is not aerated and bio-active enough to break down organic matter.

A Faster Solution

Lawns growing in dense clays are often poor color, thin and weedy. Adding organic matter or compost to the top of such a lawn may eventually improve the lawn clay, but it takes a lot of patience. The whole process can be speeded up by creating temporary pores and channels in the clay with Aerify PLUS –Liquid Soil Aerator and Bioactivator. (Yes, we are promoting our product, but frankly, it is a real difference maker)

Aerify PLUS breaks apart clay bonds to create microscopic airspace deep into the clay. Each application can work deeper. It also helps generate and feed beneficial soil microbes of all types (including mycorrhizae) at the same time. It helps improve drainage in your lawn clay, encourages deeper rooting, frees up nutrients and water in the root zone and helps move organic matter deeper into the soil.

Once your lawn clay begins to open up, the soil becomes healthier and earthworms will start to appear in your soil in greater numbers. Earthworms will enhance and speed up the soil improvement process because they aerate the soil as the tunnel up and down. They also digest thatch and other organic matter in the soil and convert it into humus and rich, fertile castings.

If your lawn is growing in a poor clay soil, it will always be prone to the problems that come with clay -  compaction, poor drainage, fungus, moss, weeds, poor nutrient availability and color, root-stress and a host of other undesirable conditions.  Improve the clay and you will improve the lawn. It is as simple as that.

FYI, I treated my own lawn organically for many years and top dressed with compost as well. Though the top 4-5 inches eventually got pretty good, the clay underneath remained gray and sticky. After a few seasons of treating with Aerify PLUS, it was as if all the organics that I had put in the soil finally became were able to be utilized down deep where I wanted it to go.  My lawn clay soil became dark and crumbly more than 1½ feet deep- and earthworms abound. 

*See Working With Wet Clay Soils in the Garden

Stuart Franklin is President of Nature’s Lawn & Garden, Inc. (http://www.natureslawn.com) a lawn fertilizing company and on line Web Store , located in the Buffalo, NY area.  He is also the author of Building A Healthy Lawn:  A Safe and Natural Approach (Storey Publications 1988), available through Amazon.com

Copyrighted Materials. No part of this website, its design or any of the content may be used without the expressed permission of the author.

 

Spot Seeding - Make your own Grass Patch

Make Your Own Grass Patch

Before stores started selling grass patching products in a bag, groundskeepers at golf courses made up their own mixture and used it to fill in divots and bare spots. I do the same thing for my own yard and so do many landscapers. It is very quick and easy to make and use, and it allows you to put in exactly the type of seed that you want to use.  Plus, it is way less expensive than the products sold in stores or on infomercials.

Here is all you need to do.   Put in a bushel or two of garden soil into a wheel barrow. Thoroughly mix in an equivalent amount of sphagnum peat moss (the
brown peat that comes in bales).     You want to end up with a spongy, crumbly, water-holding mixture, much like a potting soil.  In fact, you could use bagged potting soil instead of this mixture if you don’t have the other ingredients at hand.

Next, mix enough grass seed so you get plenty of seed in every handful -15 to 20 per sq. inch is ideal. If you have some starter fertilizer around put a cup or two in the batch. This is not critical if your soil is fairly healthy and regular fertilized. You can always fertilize after the grass up.  We recommend All-In-One for Lawns if you like using liquid fertilizers.

it would be helpful, but probably not critical, if before seeding you could scratch up any bare soil  with a stiff rake, garden weasel or some other tool. If there is thickly matted dead grass or Thatch, you would have to remove that first.

Simply top the bare and thin spots on the lawn with this mixture and water. Keep it moist until the new seed is well established. Before the seed sprouts make sure you hit it with either our Aerify PLUS  (especially if you have Clay soil) or Nature’s Magic. They both contain trace nutrients that will stimulate faster rooting and will generate beneficial root
fungi called mycorrhizae (my-core-rhy'-zee)

Note: If you are filling in deeper ruts or holes, don’t fill them with your home-made grass patch and waste it that way. Grass seeds deeper than 1/2 to 3/4 inches will have a hard time sprouting. Use regular soil to fill the holes or ruts, tamp it down lightly and only put your home-made grass patch on the
very top.

 

Stuart Franklin
President    Nature's Lawn & Garden, Inc
All rights reserved

All About Thatch

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Contrary to what most people believe, thatch is not simply grass clippings that aren't decomposing. Clippings can add to a thatch problem once the problem exists, but generally, clippings are very beneficial to the lawn when you have a healthy, bioactive soil. They decompose and recycle in as little as two weeks and help provide nutrients and organic matter.

Thatch is actually a matted layer - of roots, stems, blades, runners and clippings - that forms on top of the soil. You might describe it as a lawn that is growing into itself rather than into the soil. If you try to poke your finger through your lawn and into the soil, and find that there is a matted, vegetative barrier of about 1/2 inch thick or more, you have a real thatch condition. I've seen thatch as thick as 3 inches.

Here is a diagram that represents thatch building up on a lawn.

 

Another way that thatch can form is what I call "instant thatch" .  It occurs when you lay sod on top of the soil and the sod does not  root quickly.

 

This happens when the soil below the newly installed sod is dry and you don't water heavily enough to get through the sod to saturate the soil.

The water stays in the sod and that's where the roots stay too.

In some cases you get "instant thatch"  because the soil underneath it is more like a rock hard subsoil, and nothing can penetrate it.

 

 

 

 

 

The Problems With Thatch

Thatch is undesirable for many reasons, a major one being that the roots of your grass are up in the thatch, and only barely in the soil (see the drawing below).  This is not a healthy state and it makes the grass highly susceptible to insects, drought, and winter-kill.  If the grass is not anchored in the soil,  winter frost or ice could actually lift the thatch right out of the soil. When you have thatch,  you have a weaker lawn. It is only a matter of time before something kills it off.

A matted thatch layer will act like a sponge to absorb the rain or your watering.  This wet matted layer promotes disease.  If the thatch is thick, and the water isn't heavy enough, it might not even get through the thatch into the soil. The soil eventually dries out, and the grass roots will have to grow into the thatch layer itself-where there is some moisture-instead of into the dry soil. And this will only add more to the thatch layer. And it gets worse from there.

 

 

One way to help get water through the thatch layer and into the soil, is to  put on some dish soap before watering or before a rain. This will help thin out the water allowing faster penetration.  2 or 3 oz. per 1000 sf should do the trick.

You could also put on a light application of Aerify or Aerify PLUS , before watering. You should test to see how deep your water is penetrating by cutting into the soil with a spade and looking to see if the soil underneath the thatch is moist or not.

 

The only time when thatch may be desirable is when the grass is growing over tree roots near the surface. In this case, there is hardly any soil so the grass is doing what it can to survive.

Why Thatch Forms

There can be a few reasons for thatch forming on lawns aside from the poor sodding situation as mentioned above. But in general, a thatch condition  indicates that there is something wrong with your soil. It is either preventing the grass from rooting (compaction or clay) or it is not bioactive or healthy enough to promote the decomposition of dead organic matter. Your soil should be teeming with microlife instead of "dead", or sterile. If you've been to our website at www.natureslawn.com you know that soil improvement is our main focus.

Soil compaction, clay, and poor pH (too acidic or alkaline), will all discourage bioactivity. And if you've used a lot of conventional lawn fertilizers that are high in chlorides or salts, or you've used excessive pesticides. you may have killed off a lot of beneficial soil micro-life yourself. 

    FYI: Lack of earthworms is an indicator of a bad soil. In fact, you'll rarely see thatch where earthworms are abundant because along with being great soil aerators, they are one of nature's best thatch digesters.

 
THE SOLUTION

You can not handle a real thatch condition with a dethatching machine or power rake. You would end up ripping out the lawn. These machines will take care of surface issues like dead or matted grass, clippings and debris - and you can have bushels of that stuff with some grass types.  But as far as getting out the real thatch, the interwoven mat, it would barely scratch the surface of it.

The real solution to thatch, and the best way to prevent it, is to improve your soil so it is aerated and bioactive enough to get the thatch to decompose. When you do this, the thatch - which is part Organic Matter, will gradually begin to break down from the bottom (where it is in contact with the soil) up. It will turn into rich, dark humus. It can take a couple of years to fully break up the thatch, but it will happen.

 

Here are some other factors and tips to help you get rid of thatch through decomposition:

1. You need to keep the soil moist underneath the thatch layer. When it dries out, decomposition ceases. Less frequent, heavy waterings are best. If you water too often and keep the whole thatch layer moist all the time, you are asking for trouble with fungus. Also, you want to encourage the roots to go down into the soil for water and not stay in a wet thatch layer.

2. Collect your clippings until the thatch problem is handled.  They will only add to the thatch.

3. Test the pH and add Lime as needed.  If your soil is Acidic it could dramatically slow down or even prevent thatch decomposition. Over-liming will also cause the same problems.

4. Increase thatch degrading bioactivity. You can do this by improving your soil quality with compost or simple compost teas (soak compost in a bucket of water for a day and spray the liquid over the lawn).  You can treat the thatch with a Biological Dethatcher.  It contains specific microbes and enzymes designed to generate and accelerate thatch decomposition.

5. Improve soil aeration. Thatch-degrading microbes, and most beneficial soil microbes need air to survive. Compacted or heavy clay soils suppress the micro-life in the soil. Improving aeration is a must if you want to increase the soil bioactivity. Visit our website for more information on better ways to increase aeration.

6. Your lawn will need regular fertilizing because soil microorganisms need nitrogen to decompose thatch. You want to avoid any fertilizers that contain muriate of potash (potassium chloride) because chlorides can be harmful to soil life. Straight organic granular fertilizers may not be the best choice here because unless they are water soluble, they will sit on top of the thatch layer and be very slow to break down and release their nutrients. After all, a lot of the thatch is already organic matter that isn't breaking down fast enough.
7. Liquid fertilizers may be the best idea when thatch exists.  They will go right through to the soil when watered in, and won't get stuck in the thatch   Monthly or twice monthly applications of a salt and chlorine free liquid fertilizer will provide more available nitrogen and therefore will promote faster thatch decomposition. Our our 16-4-8 Fertilizer or All-In-One for LAWNS (which contains some dethatching microbes and Aerify PLUS) would both work.

 

written by Stuart Franklin - Author of
Building A Healthy Lawn: A Safe and Natural Approach

President of Nature's Lawn & Garden, Inc   Copyrighted Material. All rights reserved.

Why All-In-One for Lawns is Superior to Any Liquid Fertilizer

In case you haven’t heard, we here at Nature’s Lawn and Garden have put out a new product. It’s called All-In-One for Lawns and not to brag, but it’s pretty much the ultimate solution to a natural, healthy lawn. That means it’s superior to any liquid fertilizer on the market. Why? Because it is a liquid fertilizer—but so much more!

Basically what we’ve done here is combined all of our best lawn care products into one. As a result, you get a complete lawn care kit in a single bottle. By using this one product, you can:

• Fertilize
• Bio-activate
• Dethatch
• Aerate

All the while you’ll be improving the organic matter and root development in your lawn. Does your current liquid fertilizer give you all of that? No way!

Where can you get your hands on a bottle (or a case!) of this magical lawn solution? Natureslawn.com. Check it out today!

Avoiding Premature Cultivation: Working With Wet Clay Soils in the Garden

One of the biggest mistakes gardeners make is trying to "work" (till up, cultivate or hoe) their high clay content garden soil before it is dry enough. When you do this, the soil structure is broken down and you end up with rock-hard crusts or clumps when the soil dries.

After a long winter of snow and rain, clay beds are swelled with water and free clay particles float to the top and bond with eachother. As the clay dries out further, a hard crust forms, which eventually starts cracking, like you can see in the photo on the left. This can happen even if there is a lot of compost or organic matter in the soil.

To get the beds ready for planting, most gardeners will till or turn over their soil, perhaps mixing in more compost or fertilizer, or organic material. But if you do this before the soil has dried out enough, you are going to run into problems.

The picture below shows a bed a week after it was turned over with a shovel and left to sit and dry out.

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What has happened is that instead of the loose and crumbly structure you were expecting, the surface is now covered by hard and crusty lumps of clay- some 2" and larger. The reason this happens that the wet clay had not dried out enough, so water is still filling spaces where air would be if the clay was drier. So the clay, being too wet and sticky will not crumble apart. It splits into clumps instead, and some of these clumps end up one on top of the soil.  As these clumps dry out they become extremely hard.

Many gardeners have experienced the disappointment of having their soil look worse after turning it over than it did beforehand.  It happens all over the country on all types of clay soils.  But, I believe that
Northern gardeners, who need to wait all winter and much of the spring for their cold and wet soils to dry out, are probably more guilty of "premature cultivation" than their southern counterparts. I admit, there were many springs where I jumped the gun.

So, how do you tell when your soil is ready to be worked? It's simple. Take a handful of soil and squeeze it in your hands into a ball. Then try to break it apart between your fingers, and see if it separates easily. I like to compare it to the feel of a handful of moist raisins that will clump together when squeezed, but will break apart with a quick rub of the fingers. If your soil stays rubbery and doesn't crumble, it is still too wet to work.

Eventually your clay soil will dry out deep enough to work. It may be very late into the spring before that occurs. However,since the top inch or two of soil will warm up and dry out faster than the deeper areas, you can usually do some seeding or shallow planting a few weeks earlier. If you do plan to till, make sure the soil has dried all the way down to the depth that you plan to dig down to.

Salvaging a bad situation.  Sometimes, for whatever reason,  you just can't wait long enough for all or part of the garden to dry out before cultivating it.  If you do till or dig up a wet soil, there is one thing you can do that will probably prevent the hard crusting on top: After cultivating, smooth out the soil and cover it with a layer of mulch about 1/2 -1 inch thick or more.  Use anything that will keep the clay from drying too fast on top. Shredded bark, leaves, straw, pine needles, compost or even peat moss will do.

Improving Clay Soils.  When you have improved your clay soil it will drain faster and will warm up earlier in the spring. That means it will be workable earlier in the year. There are many things you can do to improve  clay soils, including raising the beds (to allow for better drainage) and, especially, adding lots of organic matter. Organic matter is critical. Without it, there is no humus.  By adding organic matter and improving aeration as well, you will  create an environment that allows beneficial soil life to start working to restructure the soil and form valuable humus. 

Clay soil is a big problem all over the country and handling clay is one of the reasons we started our Web Store.  Customers from every corner of the US and Canada can improve clay and compacted soil with our Aerify PLUS , Nature's Magic and other soil conditioning products. These are real difference makers that help make everything else you are doing for the soil work a lot better.

Soil improvement is my favorite topic because whether it is a lawn or a garden,  it all begins with the soil.  

Stuart Franklin is President of Nature’s Lawn & Garden, Inc. (http://www.natureslawn.com) a lawn fertilizing company and on line Web Store , located in the Buffalo, NY area.  He is also the author of Building A Healthy Lawn:  A Safe and Natural Approach (Storey Publications 1988). A few copies are still available.

 

Copyrighted Materials. No part of this website, its design or any of the content may be used without the expressed permission of the author.