ECOLOGICAL LAWN CARE

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These professional landscape managers-along with a growing number of other turf growers-prove that ecologically benign lawn care works. Like any organic gardener, each started from the ground up, which is to say, the soil. The basis of a healthy lawn is healthy soil. It is the one great truth of vegetative growth. So, if you are dissatisfied with the way your lawn looks now, start there. If the soil is compacted, infertile or poorly drained, it simply will not grow a healthy lawn without regular infusions of chemicals.

Also, look at the grasses themselves. If your lawn is more than half weeds (and this is unacceptable to you), then you should consider a complete lawn reconstruction. If the lawn grasses are older varieties of bluegrass, ryegrass and fescue or older, warm-season varieties of Bermuda grass, zoysia or saint augustine grass, they may not have the vigor and inherent resistance to pests to thrive without chemical treatments.

For a reconstruction, rent a sod cutter--a machine that literally slices off the existing weeds and inadequate grasses. Afterwards, build up the soil with lots of organic material: leaf mold, compost, peat moss, green manures, etc. Test the soil's pH, and, if necessary, adjust to between 6.5 and 7.0, the range best suited for most grasses.

Then take advantage of the new grass varieties available. They require lower levels of care, provide much greater resistance to pests (and even weeds) and look better, too. With a little extra effort and a few more dollars, you can easily find these improved grasses and introduce them into your lawn.

Again, because nothing does well in poor soil, a complete reconstruction is really the best first step. If you cannot afford the work involved, you're left with having to overseed a poor-soil lawn. Even in this case, however, you will need to do some important prep work to have any chance of success.

First, aerate the soil. This will improve drainage and let oxygen, water and nutrients move through the soil. You could do this by simply walking your lawn with a pitchfork and stabbing it every few inches (always aerate when the soil is moist but not soggy). That opens up drainage channels, but it also compacts their sides and takes much time and effort.

Rental companies usually stock two types of power aerating machines: spikers and corers. A spiker works like the Pitchfork, only it's much faster and easier to use. A corer actually removes cores of compacted soil, which are then raked up and composted. Corers are more effective at aerating a lawn and also provide openings for topdressed fertilizer.

Top-dressing is one of the two best ways to add organic material to a lawn. (Leaving clippings on the lawn is the other.) Don't use coarse compost; it could smother the lawn. instead, broadcast finely shredded compost, composted manure or composted sewage sludge over the site with a rotary or manure spreader. One word of caution: Milorganite, the most popular composted sludge, is a great lawn fertilizer; however, it may contain small amounts of toxic heavy metals. Should any lawn treated with large amounts of Milorganite (or some other heavy-metal contaminated sludge) ever be converted into a vegetable garden, the heavy metals could be taken up into the crops.

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