Organic lawn care 101: How to get a green lawn with ZERO harmful chemicals

Thinking about organic lawn care but don’t know where to start? Here’s your crash course on getting a natural, lush, green lawn that’s safe for pets, kids, and the environment.

Why Organic Lawn Care?

There’s growing concern among eco-conscious and health-conscious homeowners about the the chemicals being used to treat our lawns.

Traditional lawn fertilizers and pesticides pose significant risks to water quality AND our health. A large percentage of these chemicals are either known or possible carcinogens as defined by the EPA and many are banned or restricted in other countries.

Use of lawn chemicals has also been linked to a higher risk of cancer in pets like dogs.

It’s reported that pollinators — especially bees — may be susceptible to pesticides used in lawn care.

Finally, runoff from widespread use of fertilizer in agriculture has created a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where fish and other aquatic wildlife can’t survive.

That all seems really bad…but it doesn’t have to be this way. You can actually have a lush, green lawn AND keep you family, pets, and the environment safer by eliminating unneeded synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.

The difference between Organic and Synthetic lawn care

Traditional Synthetic Lawn Care

Traditional synthetic lawn care is sort of like junk food for your lawn. You treat your grass, it gets a rush of nutrients, and turns green quickly. The problem is it never treats the literal ROOT of the problem.

Because you’re not maintaining the quality of your soil, the grass becomes dependent on chemical fertilizers for nutrients. Over the long run, you’ll have green grass as long as you keep feeding it product, but no healthy soil or roots.

Shallow roots will require more frequent watering. Combine that with unhealthy soil and you’ll need more frequent use of herbicides to keep weeds from growing.

All this becomes a perpetual cycle dependent on products that are harmful to people, pets, and the environment.

Switching to organic lawn care

Organic lawn care is more like preventative health care or a balanced diet. It starts with healthy, nutrient rich soil which leads to an overall healthy lawn.

Because your grass is now getting its nutrients from the soil, it develops a deeper and healthier root system. Deeper roots require less frequent watering and your grass becomes more drought resistant.

Deeper roots and thicker grass naturally crowd out weeds, so there’s less need for herbicides.

Once you’ve established your healthy organic lawn, you’ll use less water, fertilizer, and labor to maintain it over the long run.

Creating a basic organic lawn care plan

Because we’re located in St. Louis, MO, we’ll provide a basic organic lawn care plan for the transitional climate zone we’re in. You can make adjustments based on your zone or grass type.

The general schedule will include 4 main organic fertilizer applications with some maintenance in between. We’ll provide more detail on specific seasonal lawn care tips and products below.

Our general lawn maintenance schedule

1. As soon as the ground thaws: soil test, correct for pH, rake dead spots, patch bare spots, first organic fertilizer application
2. Mid May: 2nd organic fertilizer application
3. July 4th: 3rd organic fertilizer application
4. Sept/Oct: 4th organic fertilizer application
5. Late October: core aerate and overseed

Now let’s get more specific:

Starting Your Lawn Right in the Spring

Soil Testing and lime

As soon as the ground thaws you should be testing your soil. At minimum you should test for pH. You’re looking for a pH around 6 (5.8 to 7.2 is typically acceptable).

If your soil is too acidic (lower in pH) nutrients won’t be readily available to your grass and fertilizers will be less effective. Many weeds and mosses thrive in acidic soil, so correcting your pH will also minimize weed growth and give your grass the best chance to thrive.

To correct a low pH, add lime (pulverized limestone) to your lawn.

Repair Winter Damage

Along with testing soil pH, you should rake any dead spots and patch any bare spots as soon as the soil thaws. Then go ahead and make your first fertilizer application following the instructions on the bag.

Organic Pre-Emergent Weed Control

Early in the season is also a good time for pre-emergent weed control. Our preferred organic product for this is corn gluten meal.

Corn gluten meal works as a natural pre-emergent herbicide by preventing seeds from forming roots after germination, effectively killing them.

Because of the way pre-emergents work, and because they have no effect on plants that already have roots, timing is really important.

If you’ve planted any new grass (like patching bare spots) you need to wait 4-6 weeks before applying corn gluten meal. If you’re planning to plant grass (like a fall overseed) you’ll want to wait 3 months after the last application of herbicide.

Maintaining Your Lawn in the Spring

As you’re maintaining your organic lawn in the spring, there’s a few tips you’ll want to keep in mind for best results:

• Mow tall and often – You should never cut more than 1/3 off the total height of your grass. Taller grass is healthier, drought resistant, crowds out weeds, and protects soil.
• Keep your blades sharp – a dull mower blade will beat your grass rather than cut it. This makes it more prone to disease.
• Leave the clippings – mulch the grass clippings or leave them on your lawn–never bag. Your soil will benefit from the organic material. It’s basically free compost with no extra work.
• Be careful with your trimmer – cutting too short or scalping your lawn with a string trimmer makes that area more susceptible to weeds, pests, and disease
• Edge vertically or make sure to use an edger on sidewalks instead of a string trimmer. Bare spots near the edges of your lawn are an invitation for weeds just like bare spots in the middle of your grass.

Summer Lawn Tips

For summer, there’s not much to do differently. Continue mowing your grass tall and often.

The weather will get hotter and drier, so proper watering will become very important.

How to water your organic lawn in the summer

Rather than watering often, you’ll want to water less frequently but more deeply. Frequent watering just promotes shallow root growth, and shallow roots dry out quickly in hot weather.

Why does this work? You’re basically training your lawn’s root system to go deep down for water — deeper than weeds can go. Keeping the top 2-3 inches of soil dry will choke out weeds, while the grass is getting it’s moisture from 6 inches or deeper in the soil.

You should be watering every 7-10 days, and you can use a shovel or trowel to see how deeply the soil is saturated. You’re looking for moisture at a depth of around 6 inches.

Finish Your Lawn Strong in the Fall

Fall is the time for the final organic fertilizer application. It’s also a great time to aerate and overseed your lawn.

For your final mow of the year, you’ll want to cut your grass shorter to avoid fungus or mold growth during the winter, but don’t do this all at once. Gradually mow shorter each week during October until you reach a height of around 2 inches.

Make sure to remove leaves weekly in the fall to prevent suffocating or inviting disease to your lawn. If the leaves and lawn are dry, you can mulch them instead and have the added benefit of more organic material for your soil.

What Natural Lawn Care Products Should I use?

You’re probably wondering what organic lawn care products to use for the plans above. The following are some of our favorites: Most of these are readily available for the average person at your local home improvement store.

Organic Lawn Fertilizers

Ringer Lawn Restore by Safer Brand

Ringer lawn restore is a slow release plant-based organic fertilizer that can generally be found locally at an Ace Hardware of Home Depot.

You can use it all year long, and it won’t burn your lawn.

Many people like Lawn Restore as a Milorganite alternative because it doesn’t contain manure.

Milorganite

This is an interesting one…Milorganite might be one of the most popular organic fertilizers.

It’s certainly one of the oldest fertilizers on the market and is manufactured by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.

So wait, is Milorganite poop?

No, but it’s made from the microbes that eat the poop. The microbes consume all the “organic material” from the city of Milwaukee. Next they’re dried in a kiln, tested for 20 safety parameters, then packaged as granules and shipped all over the U.S.A.

Because a finite amount is produced, some years there’s a shortage of Milorganite. You should be able to find it at your typical home improvement store, and we’ve even seen some stores like Menard’s private label their own “generic” version.

Organic Weed Control

Typically, synthetic weed control is where you find the nastiest chemical herbicides and pesticides that cause the most safety concerns. Fortunately, there are organic and natural solutions for weed control.

It should also be noted that the best way to prevent weeds is simply to have healthy soil and a healthy lawn. If your lawn needs a little help though, try some of the following solutions:

Pre-Emergent Weed Control

Pre-emergent weed control is when you prevent weed seeds from germinating and forming roots, effectively killing them. As mentioned above, corn gluten meal is an effective pre-emergent herbicide.

Selective Weed Control

Selective weed control usually targets certain species of plants that have already grown without harming the grass in your lawn.

Many organic and natural selective weed killers like Branch Creek Weed Shield use clove oil as an active ingredient.

General Weed Killer

Unlike selective weed killers, general weed killers get rid of everything, including your grass.

Once of the most popular ways to kill weeds in this manner is with a homebrew solution made with 1 gallon white vinegar, 1 cup salt, and 1 tbsp dish soap.

Mechanical Weed Removal

This one’s simple — just pull the weeds. Even though it doesn’t sound appealing, physically pulling up weeds before they go to seed will reduce the amount of weeds over the long term.

How Can ZeroLawn Help You?

Hopefully we’ve given you enough info to help you get started on your own organic lawn plan for this year.

If you have questions, leave them in the comments. We’ll do our best to answer or point you in the right direction.

If you want to save time and live in our service areas around St. Louis, we would love to be your provider for organic, people and pet safe lawn care.