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2005 Spring Lawn Care

Joe Mooney (now retired) kept the grass at Fenway just three quarters of an inch long, an impressive feat. He needed weekly fertilizer applications and regular pesticide treatments because the lawn at Fenway Park was kept as short as turf can be kept and still survive.

I, on the other hand, use no chemicals, and my lawn is perfect, too. Well ... it seems just fine to me. Joe wouldn't approve. It has dandelions and other green things that aren't grass - he'd call them weeds - and I mow it with the deck all the way up, keeping it at about three and a half inches, a good healthy height for grass. And I have no dead spots, no snow mold, no noticeable grub damage.

A lawn is made of millions of little plants, each trying to turn sunshine into food. The shorter the lawn, the less food each plant can make, and the more susceptible each is to drought and disease. They're all competing with each other, trying to get water and minerals. Joe, of course, also provided plenty of water, which I never have to do.

If your lawn, like Fenway Park, has been dependent on chemical fertilizers, fungicides, weed killers and the like, you may wish to consider another approach.

Start with your attitude. Say to yourself three times every Saturday morning, "If it's green and I can mow it, it's lawn." Or try proclaiming to your spouse, "You don't have to kill everything that's not Kentucky Blue Grass". Or perhaps, "Chemicals designed to kill living beings probably aren't good for me, my kids or my pets."

So what can you do? According to Paul Sachs, organic lawn expert and the owner of North Country Organics in Bradford, Vermont, you can first perform this simple test. Get a screw driver with a six inch shaft, and try to insert it into your lawn. You should be able to push it in, using moderate force, up to the hilt. If you can't, your lawn is compacted and needs help.

The simplest form of help is to spread half an inch of mature compost on the lawn. Mature compost is light, fluffy, and odor free. It's available from garden centers in bulk or bag, and some local farmers sell it, too.

Spreading compost will introduce new microorganisms and provide food for them. It will also attract earthworms, nature's rototillers. But it's labor intensive. It's most easily done with a shovel, broadcasting it from a wheelbarrow.

If your lawn fails the screw driver test and you wish to take drastic action, the next step is to rent a core-aerator machine. This is an engine-powered machine that will punch little holes in the lawn to loosen up compacted soils and to allow compost or fertilizer to get down to the roots of the grass. In small areas, you can aerate with a pitchfork.

Overseeding thin lawn with a quick germinating perennial ryegrass at this time of year will help to shade out annual crabgrass, keeping it from getting established. That works well in conjunction with aeration.

Paul Sachs explained that a good healthy lawn will rarely suffer from pests and diseases. Providing compost, some organic fertilizer such as ProGro (my fertilizer of choice) and maintaining the lawn at three and a half inches should allow the grass plants to thrive.

Japanese beetle grubs are the bane of lawn lovers. They eat the roots and attract animals: skunks that dig up your lawn, and moles that burrow in it. Paul Sachs said that applications of milky spore will reduce or eliminate those grubs, but explained that it takes 4-7 years to be fully effective. And it's not inexpensive.

Milky spore is a bacterium that kills Japanese beetle grubs, but not other kinds of grubs (which can be controlled with applications of beneficial nematodes). Milky spore won't hurt earthworms, and is harmless to people and pets, and is fine for organic gardeners.

Milky spore will also reduce your Japanese beetle population, as their grubs develop in your lawn. But, Sachs told me, an adult beetle can fly up to two miles, so it's not a cure for the Japanese beetle problem in your roses.

Lawns kept short may look good to your eye, but the plants get stressed out, particularly during times of drought. A stressed plant is susceptible to pests and diseases. So you apply chemicals to kill a pest, which kills beneficial organisms in your lawn, making it even more susceptible to the next pest. So you need more chemicals. And so on. I don't need to have Fenway Park quality lawn. I'd rather have a safe, chemical-free one.

Henry Homeyer is the author of "Notes from the Garden: Reflections and Observations of an Organic Gardener." Write him at P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, N.H. 03746; send e-mail to gardening.guy@valley.net; his Web site is gardening-guy.com.