Easy Chemical-Free Lawn

Creating a natural lawn is just as simple to care for as one that receives synthetic fertilizers. Once your organic lawn is established, it becomes both less time-consuming and more cost-effective. 🌱

Is your yard safe for your pets? 🐾

Is it a healthy place for your children to play?

Achieving a natural lawn can be done easily by following three key steps.

Many believe that merely switching from chemical fertilizers to organic options is sufficient, but additional lawn care practices are necessary to truly nurture natural grass.

In fact, you may not need to spend anything on natural fertilizers at all. By reducing or eliminating synthetic fertilizers, you can enhance the soil’s health while minimizing potential health risks to your family, pets, and the environment. 🌍

How to Have a Natural Lawn In Three Simple Steps

SOIL

The foundation of a thriving natural lawn lies in healthy organic soil, which requires less fertilization. Natural lawns generate their nutrients through beneficial bacteria, fungi, and other organisms within the soil ecosystem.

Using synthetic fertilizers interrupts this natural process and the benefits it provides. Healthy organic soil not only supplies your grass with nutrients but also enhances water retention and drainage while allowing fresh air to circulate and preventing compaction issues.

The problem is that you must keep applying fertilizers to maintain green grass. Sooner or later, having bad soil will catch up with you and cause various other lawn care issues. There is also constant exposure to harmful chemical lawn fertilizers to your family, pets, and environment.

A Natural Lawn Starts with Organic Soil

Healthy organic soil requires less fertilization. Natural lawns maintain levels of nutrients by producing them through bacteria, fungi, and other occupants of the soil food web. Synthetic fertilizers disrupt this natural, free resource and all the good it provides.

The benefits of healthy organic soil don’t end with supplying your grass with its natural fertilizer. It allows for water retention and drainage and enables fresh air to circulate in the soil. It also reduces compaction issues.

The perfect soil structure would be:

• 25% Air
• 15% Sand
• 15% Clay
• 5% Organic Matter
• 50% Silt

Using step fertilizers on your lawn disrupts natural soil structure.

To achieve optimal soil structure, aim for 25% air, 15% sand, 15% clay, 5% organic matter, and 50% silt. Conducting a soil test is an invaluable step for your natural lawn, requiring just gardening gloves and about 30 minutes of your time.

If you prefer not to send samples to a lab, home soil test kits are readily available. A soil test will reveal any nutrient deficiencies in your lawn, with an ideal pH level around 7. You might discover that your grass is already receiving more nutrients than it needs, saving you money on unnecessary fertilizers.

If you choose not to have a soil test performed at a lab, then home soil test kits are available.
A soil test will tell you what nutrients your natural lawn is lacking. Your pH should be right around 7. You can learn more about soil pH and how to adjust it here.

Organic matter content should be between 5% and 10%, which is crucial for a vibrant natural lawn. If your soil has a good population of earthworms, it’s likely rich in organic matter—these creatures are essential for your lawn’s success.

You can enhance organic matter through compost top dressing, organic fertilizers, leaving grass clippings on the lawn, or applying thin layers of autumn leaves.

You might be surprised that your grass is already receiving more nutrients than it needs and that you’ve been wasting money on fertilizer.

If you have a lot of earthworms in your soil, you probably have decent organic matter content. Earthworms in your soil are vital to your success.

Organic matter can be applied in many ways:

• Compost top dressing
• Organic fertilizers
• Not bagging grass clippings
• Mulching light layers of autumn leaves on the lawn

Does your lawn have issues yearly, no matter how hard you try to fix it? A soil test will give you the necessary answers instead of just guessing! It will save you money, time, and needless work.

CITATION :

---

---

A Natural Lawn Needs Proper Watering

Water

Grass needs water to grow and maintain a thick, green appearance. A natural lawn commands less water than chemically treated grass.

Naturally treated lawns will have soil full of biology (earthworms, bacteria, fungi, etc.) and their food (organic matter) to keep that biology thriving. With a healthy soil food web, water is retained yet drained efficiently. Air tunnels created by microbes, arthropods, and earthworms allow water to flow through the soil system, pushing out the stale air and enabling fresh air to circulate.

Maintaining a lawn naturally allows this process, whereas chemically treated grass disrupts this system. Synthetic fertilizers eventually hurt the soil structure and block water and roots from developing deeply.

Many debate how often and at what quantity a grass should be watered. A natural lawn should be watered once every week at 1 – 1 1/2 inches. That quantity should include rainfall. During periods of drought, a lawn can be watered every few days.

Of course, trying to convince someone who just paid a couple of thousand dollars on an irrigation system to do this is difficult. If you water the lawn once a week, you train the roots to grow deeper into the soil.

If the grass is watered every day, there is no reason for the roots to grow. If watered once a week, the roots will travel inches into the ground to get water. This is especially important during drought periods. The longer the roots, the more water and nutrient absorption.

Natural lawn care isn’t just about preventing chemicals in the environment. You can still have beautiful green grass without watering your lawn to impress the neighbors.
Water conservation is everyone’s responsibility.

A Natural Lawn Needs To be Properly Cut

Lawn Mowing

Unless you purchase an expensive riding lawn mower, cutting your grass can be a tedious job. Whether you mow grass in the spring when it’s wet or deal with summer heat, lawn mowing is a factor when planning your weekend.

Lawn mowing, though, is an essential step in natural lawn care. It is easier when you do not use step-program lawn fertilizers.

For most grass types, it is imperative to cut your lawn at 3 – 3 1/2 inches.

Reasons for mowing a lawn higher:

• Shades out potential weed seeds from germinating
• Cools soil – preventing less evaporation
• More grass-blade exposure – sunlight, water, and nutrient absorption

Mowing the lawn too short stunts root growth, and the grass loses its ability to withstand drought during the summer heat.

Lawnmower blades should be sharpened and balanced at least three times a year, more often if possible. Professional landscapers usually sharpen them almost every day, depending on their schedule. If the mower blades are dull, they’ll tear the grass instead of slicing it, leaving it frayed, and the natural lawn will appear to have a whitish cast, and it just doesn’t look right. It also leaves the grass vulnerable to disease and insect injury.

Natural lawn care depends on the height of your grass and how frequently you mow. Different grasses have different height requirements, but regardless of whether it’s cool or warm-season turf, the rule of thumb is the most you cut off a blade of grass at any one time is 1/3 of the blade length.

It can get tricky in the spring with all the rain. If you get behind schedule, which is easy, raise the blades until you reach the 1/3 inch rule and then mow again in a few days until you get back to the desired height.

I’m constantly asked if grass clippings should be bagged or left on the lawn. Leaving the grass clippings on the lawn provides 1 pound of nitrogen per 1000 square feet for that season. Yes, free fertilizer. The same stuff big corporations are charging you $40 a bag for. It also provides organic matter and food for bacteria in the soil.

• Grass clippings feed bacteria
• Mulched leaves feed fungi

Of course, you don’t want the clippings to clump up on the lawn so rake up or blow any heavy areas of clippings. A lot of commercial mowing companies cut the lawn more than once, mulching any heavy clippings. Make sure your lawn mowing service does this to avoid any dead grass spots. Mulching mowers definitely need a clean deck with the same mowing habits we discussed above.