Everyone wants a beautiful green lawn, but attaining it isn’t always an easy task. Even the healthiest lawns need regular care and maintenance to stay lush and green. Proper mowing, watering, fertilizing and weed and pest controls are all an important part of good lawn care, and they all have a major impact on your lawn’s year-round appearance.
With world-wide interest in green living principles over the last few years, green lawn care has become an important part of our lifestyle. With today’s environmental concerns for safe, organic materials and products, organic lawn care is now a safe, viable option to traditional lawn care.
Most over-the-counter fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides contain chemicals that pollute ground water, degrade soil and send toxic gases into the atmosphere. In addition, these chemicals pose numerous health hazards to people, pets and wildlife. Green lawn care promotes a healthier lifestyle for people and a natural defense system for lawns.
What Is Green Lawn Care?
Green lawn care, or organic lawn care, is simply a way of maintaining a green, healthy lawn without the use of harmful chemicals. Going green doesn’t mean you have to give up a well-maintained lawn or put more time and effort into keeping your lawn looking good. It just means planting the right type of grass that will thrive in your climate conditions, proper watering and chemical-free plant products.
Organic lawn care promotes a healthy lawn without the use of harmful chemicals. Since fungi and insects love to prey on unhealthy, weak lawns, a strong, healthy lawn is essential to weed, disease and insect control. This means that grass is well-nourished so it grows thickly above-ground and deeply below-ground. Where a conventional lawn defends itself from diseases and pests with chemical treatments, green lawn care promotes a lawn with its own natural defenses.
What Are The Benefits of Green Lawn Care?
Organic lawn care offers many benefits to your lawn. There are so many benefits—to the grass, to the soil, and to the people and pets in your household. It offers all of the advantages and benefits of traditional lawn care without the use of harmful chemicals. Take a look at 10 important benefits that green lawn care services provide:
1. Improves Soil Health
Organic lawn care will make the soil retain moisture longer, aerate the soil better, improve soil texture and enrich the soil with necessary nutrients that promote grass growth. Healthy soil supports healthy grass with the proper nutrients and adequate air and water. The structure of your soil plays an important role in producing strong plant roots for good growth and the amount of oxygen, water and nutrients that reach the grass. The soil must retain water long enough for your lawn to get what it needs, but it must also allow proper drainage so the roots get enough oxygen.
Unfortunately, many Northern NJ homes have poor soil that’s too acidic or too compacted to promote a healthy lawn. In older Bergen County neighborhoods, the lawn may have very compacted soil from years of lawn mowing, foot traffic, outdoor BBQ’s and kids and pets. In established neighborhoods, the soil may be very malnourished, but green lawn care can quickly improve the soil’s structure by adding organic nutrients.
2. Promotes Thicker Grass
Thick grass crowds out weeds. Aggressive weeds will take every opportunity to invade your lawn, crowding into any available bare spot in the lawn. However, even the most aggressive weeds like dandelions, foxtails and crabgrass need adequate space and sunlight to grow. A healthy, thick lawn deprives them of both and makes it difficult for weeds to grow. Note: A thick lawn needs to be left a little longer, about putting-green height. If you mow your lawn too short, especially in summer heat, you’re inviting weeds into the lawn.
3. Promotes Deep Root Systems
Organic lawn care treatments release important nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, very slowly, so the grass roots absorb essential nutrients slowly and in small doses. This results in a stronger, more stable root system that promotes healthy grass growth. Roots also stay more fibrous which helps to produce a better-looking turf.
Thick grass also needs deep roots to stay green and healthy. They allow the grass to reach water for a long time after rainfall or watering, which helps to protect the lawn from drought. Since grass and plants can only access soil nutrients as far away as their roots reach, a healthy, deep root system allows grass to access more nutrients and reduces the need for fertilizers. Unlike quick-release synthetic fertilizers that only provide mega-doses of nutrients near the soil’s surface, green lawn care encourages deep root systems that make it easier for your grass to reach essential nutrients.
4. Promotes Longer Grass Growth
Traditional over-the-counter fertilizers do promote healthy soil, but they work mostly on the top layers of soil and get washed away with excess rainfall or watering. Organic, green lawn care treatments penetrate deeper into the soil to encourage strong roots at a deep level in the soil. This allows grass roots to reach further for water and retain moisture much longer. Sustained moisture and deeper roots help your lawn to remain healthy and green longer throughout the year, even in cold Northern New Jersey winters.
5. Improves Grass Quality
Organic lawn care products and treatments not only makes the grass look lush, green and thick, they also strengthen your lawn’s natural defense systems that improve grass quality. When grass blades are strong and healthy, your lawn is less vulnerable to diseases, insects and pests. Plant diseases, usually caused by fungi, thrive on unhealthy grass that’s weak and malnourished. An unhealthy lawn is the perfect breeding ground for plant diseases that can destroy your yard and landscape in a quick time frame if not properly controlled.
6. Prevents Overfeeding and Burning
Overfeeding and burning are hazards that occur with chemical fertilizers that can’t occur with organic fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers can overload the grass with nutrients which is more harmful for your lawn. When too much fertilizer is dumped on your lawn at one time, your soil can’t absorb it properly. The result is often a lawn with burned-looking patches or brown spots where the grass is over-fertilized.
Green lawn care and organic fertilizers are made from all natural ingredients that are quickly and easily absorbed by the soil without any harsh effects on your lawn.
7. Promotes Natural Photosynthesis
Green lawn care products like organic lawn manure release carbon-dioxide which helps to instigate the natural photosynthesis process. Often, chemical fertilizers and lawn treatments interfere with natural photosynthesis by coating grass and plants with chemicals that are difficult to absorb.
Since organic products are chemical-free, they are absorbed faster and easier by grass, plants, shrubs and trees. Your lawn and plants recognize organic fertilizers and lawn treatments as a natural defense mechanism that they are familiar with to grow.
8. Reduces Water Contamination
According to studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), American homeowners dump more than 70 million tons of fertilizer and up to 90 million pounds of pesticides on their lawns each year.
The same studies show that 40 to 60 percent of the nitrogen found in fertilizers ends up in ground water, surface water or wells that provide drinking water to families around the country. These numbers are alarming and a good reason to switch to green lawn care for your family’s health and safety.
9. Safe For Humans and Pets
Organic lawn care is a safe alternative to chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Exposure to pesticides can cause a range of neurological health hazards such as loss of memory, loss of coordination, slowed responses to stimuli, impaired visual ability, altered mood and uncontrollable general behavior and slowed motor skills in adults and children.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency studies show that between 60 and 70 million birds die each year from pesticide poisoning and thousands of household pets are accidentally poisoned every year from lawn care chemicals.
10. Safe For The Environment
Unlike traditional over-the-counter lawn care treatments, green lawn care is completely safe for the environment. Organic fertilizers are made from totally natural products that are fully biodegradable and no harmful chemical residues are left behind to pollute our soil and water systems.
Organic lawn treatments do not destroy the microbes and other natural organisms that exist in the soil. They will not harm beneficial earthworms, fungi and other good bacteria that live in your soil and help to naturally promote healthy grass and plant growth.
If you currently use traditional methods of lawn care for your Northern NJ home, consider the many benefits of green lawn care. Talk to your professional landscape provider about switching to organic lawn care treatments that can improve your quality of life while keeping your lawn green, healthy and beautiful year-round.