ECOLOGICAL LAWN CARE

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If you can't stand dandelions and other tough weeds, your simpliest weapon is handpulling or cutting. Timing is crucial: You must cut the plant roots in spring when the food reserves are lowest. This technique works even better with plantain and other broadleaved weeds.

Defoliation also works. Shearing off the leaves with a sharp hoe each time they come out is effective. While impractical for large lawns, it is certainly feasible for smaller ones. (Of course, you might rather cultivate an appreciation for the dandelion's beauty in flower and its good summer color.)

Safer's Sharpshooter is a new broad spectrum herbicide which breaks down very quickly and is nontoxic to humans. But it is toxic to your grass plants, so use this herbicide very carefully.

Warm-season grasses such as Bermuda grass and zoysia are generally excellent at choking out weeds (as is bluegrass in the North). However, these are dormant during the cooler months of late fall, winter and early spring. At these times, weeds can get a foothold in your lawn. To prevent this, try overseedling with some of the improved perennial ryegrasses and fine-bladed fescues in the fall, just as the warmseason grasses are going dormant.

There you have it: a lawn you can let your children and pets play on without concern. A lawn that won't leave toxins for future generations. A lawn that requires less work and expense but still looks lovely and green. Perhaps it's the beauty and simplicity of ecological turf management that at synthetic lawn managers can't accept. But as the word spreads, we will all come to see the virtues of ecological lawn care. As Peter Luff of Sagamore-Hampton Golf Club put it, " we do not have the right to Toxify even the smallest share of the environment for the sake of a game."

Michael Talbot is a landscape specialist at Boston Urban Gardeners.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SCOTT MACNEILL

Turf Choices

One vital key to organic lawn care is using improved turf varieties. Be sure to use a blend of these grasses to provide more diversity and balance in your lawn. For more information on varieties, consult your Cooperative Extension Service, a local professional lawn-supply company or the Lawn Institute, P.O. Box 108 Pleasant Hill, TN 38578.

Cool-Season Grasses

These grow well in northern regions during the cool-season months of spring and fall. (By the way, the transition band between cool- and warm-season lawn areas begins on the Virginia coast, cuts through the Carolina mountains, moves north across Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Kansas, dips down into New Mexico and Arizona and then ends in California, where it follows the mountains up to the Bay Area. Along this band, use cool-season grasses in mountainous or cooler areas and warmseason cultivars in low-lying, hot areas.)

Bluegrasses:

Bluegrass (Poa pratensis) forms a dark green, fine-textured lawn, but does not like excessive heat or drought. Susceptible to insect and disease pests, it is considered a high-maintenance grass. Most lawn mixes should contain only 10 to 30% bluegrass.

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