Jump starting Your Lawn Naturally

With Spring here and Summer around the corner, we all think about preparing and rejuvenating our lawns after the long winter. Here are some ideas on how to do this without using herbicides and pesticides, which have been linked to neurotoxicity, birth defects, cancer, organ damage and more.

1) Fertilize using cottonseed meal, dried poultry waste or commercial organic lawn food such as Concern or Espoma; most of the nitrogen in these sources is water insoluble, which means it gets released over time.

2) The amount and timing of watering is important; grass does better with deep watering at a frequency of three or four days in our desert climate.

3) Eliminate weeds by applying corn gluten meal (animal feed) at a rate of 20 lbs per 1000 square feet early in the season, before the soil reaches 55 deg F and in the late summer; the meal prevents crabgrass and other weeds from germinating.

4) Eradicate grubs by applying Milky spore, a bacteria that is poisonous only to grubs, at a rate of 4 oz per 1000 square feet during Spring or Summer.

5) Further enhance soil by using a spreader to apply approximately one quarter of an inch of finely screened compost.

Source: http://www.care2.com/greenliving, adapted from Organic Style magazine (Rodale Press, April 2004).