Weed Control & Lawn Care Tips Introduction

Looking for lawn care tips? -- Try an organic regiment for a long lasting, easy to maintain, safe lawn.

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Lawn and garden care doesn't have to get the best of you!

Did you know lawns have many environmental benefits? For example, turf saves energy by staying 30 to 40 degrees cooler than bare soil and 50 or more degrees cooler than streets, helping keep homes cool. Grass also produces oxygen where a 50 x 50 foot patch of lawn produces enough for a family of four. One acre of lawn can soak up 100 pounds of sulfur dioxide each year. And a 10,000 square-foot lawn can prevent erosion by sopping up as much as 6,000 gallons of rainwater during a rainstorm.

Though lawns play a positive enviornmental role by moderating temperatures and purifying air, there is no substitute for grass as a major aesthetic component of almost any home, and as a recreational surface.

The goal of any lawn care maintenance is to improve the durability of your lawn so it produces greener, thicker grass to enhance appearance, which is achieved through weed control and by developing stronger root systems that are better able to withstand heat and drought.

Proper fertilization helps provide the foundation for a thick, healthy turf that looks better and is able to resist insects, disease and provides weed control. An effective fertilizer is more than having the right balance of nutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Also important are forms of nutrients that nourish and promote sustained growth. The slow and continuous release of nitrogen is especially important because it helps build stronger root systems and limits surge growth associated with some fertilizers.

A beautiful lawn does not come without some effort, and the type of soil you have will determine the amount of effort needed. For instance when raising trees and shrubs, sandy or a gravel base soil is ideal, and landscape plants like well drained soil. A lawn on the other hand is different. Lawn grasses grow constantly throughout the growing season, and need an ample supply of both nutrients and water.

But concerns are rising that those lush, weed-free lawns represent an environmental hazard. The problem isn't the lawns themselves, which benefit the environment in many ways. It's the way they encourage overuse of everything from fertilizer and pesticides to water. Applying twice as much fertilizer or insecticide is not going to get results that are twice as good. Such practices are coming under increasing scrutiny, not only from environmentalists but also from lawn-industry companies, which are keeping a wary eye on the rapidly growing, organic lawn movement.

Many homeowners are trading traditional chemical-based pesticides and fertilizers for an organic route, which in some areas may include a combination of gypsum, "compost tea" with yucca extracts and sugar, humate shale, and a combination fish-emulsion and seaweed spray. These homeowners using organic methods are finding they are able to obtain great lawns and weed control without spending a fortune and without poisoning their kids and pets.

Homeowners, professional landscape managers, along with a growing number of other turf growers, prove that ecologically benign lawn care works. They are acheiving lovely and green lawns that require less work and expense.

Synthetic fertilizers provide an instant supply of water-soluble nutrients that typically accelerate growth beyond a healthy rate, leach into the ground water, burn up precious humus and kill off beneficial soil organisms by eliminating their roles. Natural fertilizers, on the other hand, improve and enhance soil by stimulating micro- and macro-organisms while at the same time providing a slow, long-lasting but steady supply of nutrients. Well maintained turf and organic fetilizers also provide natural weed control.