04/27/13

The Benefits of Organic Lawn Fertilizers

Guest post by Philip Brown

Now-a-days, it is totally possible to care for your beautiful lawn organically. Organic lawn care is the practice of caring for your lawn and garden by using organic fertilizers. This becomes what is known as ‘sustainable’ lawn care. With environmental concerns for children, pets, and wildlife when trying to get rid of pests and weeds, there are beneficial ways to care for your lawn with organic lawn fertilizers. There are a few methods that one can try to maintain their lawn that are great for the environment:

  • Compost or compost tea:
    Reduces the need for chemical fertilization and encourages healthy soil that allows turf to resist lawn pests.
  • Lawn aeration:
    Helps in getting oxygen into the soil as soil gets depleted of nutrients and organic matter. It also helps reduce thatch and lessen soil compaction.
  • Rechargeable electric mulching mower:
    Reduces the need for fertilization. It is quiet and inexpensive and environmentally friendly. The mulch and compost can be used together and raked over the aerated lawn, which invigorates the turf and strengthens and rebuilds weakened structures.
  • Corn gluten meal:
    Beneficial in controlling stinkweed, black medick and shepherd’s purse. This is relatively new in organic lawn care.
  • Nematodes:
    These are microscopic parasites that destroy insect pests, which you can spray on the lawn to control the crane fly, June beetle or Japanese beetle.
Source: www.geograph.org.uk

Source: www.geograph.org.uk

There are many other organic fertilizers on the market that benefit lawn maintenance. Whether it is a small piece of personal land or a company or tourist attraction with lots of land to display and care for, caring for the lawn and maintaining it in ways that are beneficial to the environment and cost effective is great.

There are so many ways to care for one’s lawn. Just following these methods is a great and easy way to start caring for your lawn in an environmentally healthy way. Simple things, such as aeration and building compost, to use as organic fertilizer are the first steps. Having a rechargeable electric mulching mower to add grass clippings to the compost makes caring for the lawn and fertilizing it that much easier. Adding in things, like the corn gluten meal, to control weeds and nemotodes, as a natural insect control are also beneficial and eco-friendly. There are many advantages to organically taking care of your lawn, no matter what method you use.

Amgrow Organix Organic Fertilizer - photo by Doug Beckers

Amgrow Organix Organic Fertilizer – photo by Doug Beckers

About the Author: Philip Brown is a lover of green, healthy lawns. A former lawn care services professional, Philip now spends his time sharing what he knows with others and blogging about it at The Lawn Enthusiast.