I visited a local reader and when he mentioned that he used worm castings on his lawn I asked for more info, please. So he wrote to tell me exactly what he puts on his good-looking lawn:
- "WOW pre-emergence weed control" – this is basically 100% corn gluten with a slow nitrogen release, and I apply it with a hand-cranked hand-held spreader when the forsythia bloom each spring.
- "100% Pure Earthworm castings" – again, I apply it with a hand-crank, hand-held spreader about a month after I’ve put down the corn gluten.
- "Gardener’s Gold Premium compost" – goes down at the same time as the worm castings. (About every three years or so I’ll pick up a small 10-lb. bag of fish emulsion and I’ll mix that into the compost before I spread it onto the lawn).
Then he concluded: "And that’s it; that’s all I do for lawn care – I don’t apply anything else during the year. As I think I told you, I use no chemicals in this garden at all. I do mulch the fall leaves into the lawn with a mulching mower. I hand-weed throughout the growing season when/if necessary (and that’s pretty rare – the corn gluten really does suppress the weeds). I also keep my lawn high – I let it grow to 5 inches or so and then cut it down to three and a half inches – that keeps the sun off of the soil and helps discourage weed germination as well. In the hottest part of summer, if we’ve had no rain for 10 days I’ll give it a half inch of water via a sprinkler.
"I’m continuously mystified by the far more complex and expensive lawns regimens that I read and hear about."
And can I just say, his garden looks maaarvelous, and in no small part because he avoids a huge swath of lawn like the one you see here. His garden is mostly borders, and they’re filled primarily with conifers. The model of the sustainable garden looks good every day of the year, and costs the gardener very little in time or money.
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Susan,
Enjoyed this article. If we get our grass to grow we’ll now know what to do. Actually we planted lots of white clover with the grass because it attracts lots of butterflies and is drought tolerant.
We have to keep a runway of lawn for the sighthound’s gallops, and all other measures (organic and not-so) have failed to produce a healthy lawn; The Eric Solution it is!
Susan – Reading this just now, and realizing that you were talking about me and my garden made me laugh, because, well, I just finished eliminating what little lawn I had left! I felt my evergreens and the vertical canopy of green they provide was now sufficiently grown such that they carry adequate “green” visual interest in the garden without also needing the horizontal ground of green, i.e. the lawn, as an anchor. So ironically I’m now competely lawn free – my latest garden redesign has been to spend this past winter converting all my grass pathways over to pine bark mulch, which looks great and left me with just the 16 by 26 foot oval of lawn, so I decided to eliminate that as well by reducing that space down to a 16 foot pine bark mulch circle, in the center of which I’ve placed a large pedimented ornamental urn (27″ wide, 20″ tall) surrounded by adirondack chairs, and planted in the urn will be a miniature garden which can be enjoyed close up while sitting in the chairs – it’s a garden-within-a-garden concept modeled after asian garden techniques espoused by my grandmother and inspired after a recent visits to Innisfree Garden and the Hammond Stroll Gardens in upstate New York . At the moment it’s still a work in progress (a bit of a mess, really) as I’m still busy planting it all in, but once it’s done in a month or two I’ll have you over to see it. By the way, my rhododendrons took a nasty beating this year on those very cold nights with the brutal, drying winds – they look beastly! I’m doing daily hydration therapy (root soaking and leaf misting) on those rhodies to try and revive them and prevent as much leaf drop and branch loss as possible – it’s always something! – - Eric
Instead of using chemicals, try regular white vinegar. Vinegar can help get rid of such weeds. Once they’ve matured, the vinegar will kill the exposed plant, but won’t kill the root. The best natural way of getting rid of dandelions, crab grass and other weeds that show up in lawns is to remove them manually. Soap-based products, in liquid spray form, can also be effective in spot-treating some weeds such as bindweed.
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