Organic Landscaping: How to Grow a Lush Lawn the Natural Way

A lush green lawn dramatically transforms your home. Besides serving as an ideal space for outdoor entertainment and recreation, lawns generate oxygen while absorbing carbon dioxide and keeps the temperature cooler in hot summers. However, maintaining conventional lawns is a costly affair. Synthetic lawn fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides are indeed more expensive than their natural alternatives. These chemicals also adversely affect the environment and pose serious hazards to wildlife, pets, and children. Considering this, why not switch to organic landscaping and lawn care?

An organic lawn – cultivated and maintained with organic materials and natural processes – can not only make you feel good but also is low-maintenance. And if you’re thinking this switch is going to be tough, well…it’s not!

Here we’ll offer you a guide on how to grow a natural lawn that’s green, safe, and healthy. But before that, let’s have a look at the key benefits that the organic lawn care can offer you.

We’ve described these benefits in detail in one of our previous posts, which you can read here.

Organic Landscaping Tips to Grow a Natural Lawn

1. Conduct a Soil Test

The first step to attaining an organic lawn is strengthening weakened soil, which requires a soil test. Testing the soil can help you find the nutrients that are lacking and think about the amendments necessary.
For example, calcium-deficient soil can be given a gypsum top-dressing, and magnesium-deficient soil might need the mineral langbeinite.
To conduct a soil test, you need to obtain soil samples from several areas of your lawn and send them to a lab for analysis. You can contact university extension offices and local nurseries to ask if they do soil tests.

2. Do Composting

Irrespective of the soil test results, add essential organic matter to your soil by spreading half-inch of compost over your lawn. Compost treatment is the basis of organic lawn care. Compost improves the structure of soil, especially in sand-heavy or clay soil. It’s rich in beneficial organisms like nematodes, fungi, algae, and bacteria that promote healthy soil.

Go for compost made from decomposed organic plant material, like what you find on the forest floor. Such compost is often available at nurseries, or you can collect waste from your own yard in a backyard bin and create your own compost.

3. Apply Organic Fertilizers

Give an occasional boost to your lawn in the growing season by applying organic fertilizers, which you can find at most garden centers. Organic fertilizers consist of natural ingredients like feather meal that offers nitrogen, bone meal that provides phosphorus, and seaweed that contains potassium to the soil.

Contrary to conventional fertilizers that give an instant, heavy dosage of synthetic nitrogen along with potassium and phosphorus, which your lawn can binge on, organic fertilizers offer a diet of nutrients, which are released slowly and are more beneficial.

Your lawn can crowd out weeds more easily when the grass is thicker. After treating your soil with fertilizer, overseed your lawn with suitable turfgrass. For homeowners at or around Bettendorf in Quad Cities, the turf experts and landscape designers at All American Turf Beauty can offer you recommendations about grass types for your Bettendorf lawns.

You need to select a seed mix that’s suitable for your climate, moisture needs, and sun/shade conditions. And ensure that it’s well-blended with the existing lawn.

Water your lawn daily until you find new grass growth.

4. Choose ‘Greener’ Grass

Overseeding your lawn, or completely replacing the grass, with organic or native grass seed can make your lawn more sustainable.

Organic lawn seeds are grown without the use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers. Native turf grass seeds – another green option – are the ones compatible with the average rainfall and soil conditions of their region. These grass seeds have a higher resistance to diseases and need less water compared to non-natives (like St. Augustine grass from Africa and Kentucky bluegrass from Europe).

5. Go for Organic Lawn Weed Control

Well, it should be kept in mind that making the shift to natural lawn care might not lead to overnight disappearance of weeds. You might have to deal with some weeds for one or two years at least as the grass and soil become strong enough to control weeds naturally.

An effective weed prevention method is spreading corn gluten meal during spring on your lawn. It’s an organic weed preventive. However, avoid spreading it at the time of overseeding as it prevents all seeds from germinating, including grass. Although corn gluten meal is about 65% as effective as chemical herbicides, weed infestations can still be significantly reduced with it.

The presence of weeds in lawns indicate specific soil problems. For example, crabgrass can indicate soil compaction as it usually grows in high traffic areas like along walkways or driveways. To address the root of the problem, aerate the region where it grows rather than using pesticides.

Some weeds are even helpful for your lawn. For example, clover – a common broadleaf weed – acts as a natural fertilizer factory, which converts nitrogen in the air into a form digestible by your soil.

Enjoy the Rewards of a Natural Lawn with Organic Lawn Care Service!

The organic approach can help you get a lawn that’s lush, healthy, and beautiful, as well as good to the environment! Natural lawns are more cost-effective and require less water than their chemically treated alternatives, and all you need is some patience to be successful on the path of organic landscaping. They are completely safe for your kids and pets.

All American Turf Beauty can help you get that beautiful lawn you’ve always wanted, in the organic way! Based in Iowa, our lawn care & organic landscaping company offers quality pet-friendly lawn care and natural lawn care at Bettendorf in Quad Cities and nearby areas. Being one of the top-notch organic weed control companies and natural lawn care companies in Bettendorf, we can significantly improve your lawn’s health and beauty with our modern organics landscaping strategies!

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Unbelievably Easy Ways to Figure Out your Summer Gardening

It’s true that the warm summer sun brings new ideas for summer gardening, but you need to be careful about the season’s brutal sun rays. Good preparation is required for your garden and lawn to survive the effects of a hot Iowa summer. Follow these tips for building a green garden and lawn in the warmer months.

Make a list of heat-tolerant garden plants

When you grow a summer garden, the first thing to do is make a list of hearty summer plants. Think of the temperature range in your area and choose plants that thrive in those temperatures. Warm season crops germinate at 50 to 90 degree F and cool-season crops germinate at 40 to 80 degree F.

Tip: Peppers and tomatoes are some of the toughest summer vegetables. They thrive well during the summers!

Feed your lawn in late spring/early summer

You can have a green lawn in summer if you feed your lawn with the right fertilizers during late spring. The fertilizers strengthen every blade of the grass making them resilient to summer conditions. Choosing the right fertilizer can be tough. Consult our lawn care experts in Davenport in the Quad Cities for a better understanding of fertilizers.

Tip: Mix lawn food with water maximizer to drive water into dry soils. This combination will build strong roots, ensuring a green lawn during harsh summer months.

Summer gardening essential: take care of growing plants

Losing your flowers and buds as a consequence of plants drying out in summer is common. You need to be extra careful about the budding plants especially if you’re growing them in containers. During hot weather, water your plants twice a week and add a good dose of mulch.

Tip: Moist soil helps protect the roots on warmer days. A golden rule of summer irrigation is to use an irrigation hose with a gentle flow of water to keep the soil surface moist. For protecting the roots, you should water till the soil is moist up to 4 inches down under.

Toughen your lawn to make it a weed-free zone

The list for summer lawn care tips will be incomplete without a mention of the weeds. Weeds are nothing but trouble. They take away nutrients and water from the grass and fight for their existence. The more weeds your lawn has, the greater the chances of pest infestation and lawn diseases.

Tip: Use pre-emergent herbicides in the early spring to create a barrier around dormant seeds in the lawn. This will stop weeds from sprouting in the first place. The post-emergent herbicides can be used for spot treatment throughout the summer.

Create a shady spot for your garden plants

Imagine standing under the scorching sun during summer months. Your plants will feel the same if they are exposed to excessive sunlight. As part of your summer gardening plan, don’t forget to create shady spots for your plants. Use lightweight shades in light colors, which reflect light instead of absorbing it.

Tip: Keep the protective shade 3 to 4 feet away from the plants for maximum airflow. Use PVC to create a flexible temporary shade, which can be removed once the temperature cools down.

Mow your lawn properly

To take care of your lawn in the summer heat, follow the correct mowing technique. Taller blades of grass develop deeper root systems. They also create shady spots, which mean you don’t need to water the lawn frequently. When you cut grass in the summer, the lawn mower blades should be kept high.

Tip: Grass that is cut too short can result in the sun reaching the roots and burning them in the process. Also, don’t mow the lawn with a dull blade lawnmower, it will harm the growth of the grass.

Add some mulch to your gardens

Cover your gardens with thick mulch to protect the soil from the sun and retain nutrients and moisture as required in the warmer days.

Tip: When you mow, leave the grass clippings on the lawn. They are a good source of nutrients for your gardens.

Get your lawn soil tested

Conduct a soil test if your lawn is not growing the way it should. The soil may lack essential nutrients or there might be a PH imbalance.

Tip: For healthy root development, aerating the soil is a must. This will increase the airflow into the soil stimulating the growth of the roots. Aeration also loosens the soil allowing nutrients to reach further in the soil.

Maintaining a healthy lawn in summer becomes much easier if you are helped by our experts at All American Turf Beauty Inc who have specialized in lawn care in Davenport. They know the weather, the soil, the type of grass you can grow, and most importantly, the lawns in Iowa. You know who to contact if summer lawn care feels unmanageable.

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