Organic Lawn Care Tips

For most home lawns, organic lawn care need not be complicated or difficult. Organic fertilisers such as Dynamic Lifter or Seamungus are fine for lawns. These fertilisers tend not to be high in nitrogen so may not be sufficient to sustain a high-use lawn or one which is mown often. These lawns may need additional feeding with a fertiliser high in nitrogen which may be homemade aged poultry manure or an occasional top up with a high nitrogen inorganic fertiliser.

Homemade compost, worm castings or bagged compost can be very effective when spread lightly on lawns as a fertiliser and soil conditioner.

Organic lawn care tends to focus on continual soil improvement and ensuring soil health. Granular fertilisers such as Terralift TX Trace 3-6-2 20kg set a benchmark for organically derived nutrition and root-zone support.

Products, such as Terralift, focus very much on creating healthy soils which can provide all of the required plant nutrients (major and minor nutrients as well as required trace elements), buffer pH and toxic imbalances, and provide microorganisms that will ensure long term and permanent improvements to the soil. They do contain some inorganic fertilisers which help them to provide enough nitrogen to feed a heavy use lawn.

Many lawn weeds can take hold in stressed lawns with bare patches, which often correlates to compact and nutrient deficient soils.

Many weeds, including Nutgrass, grow in heavy, calcium deficient soils.

Others such as Clover can fix nitrogen and will be able to dominate in nitrogen impoverished lawns. Improving soil quality and health will favour the turf grass to out-compete weeds in the lawn, greatly reducing the need to treat weeds.

Correct mowing will also assist to reduce weeds in the lawn without the need for herbicides.

Do not mow the lawn so short that it becomes scalped, as this will not allow sufficient green grass blade for the lawn to recover before the weeds take hold.

Grass grows well with the top trimmed a little regularly, however, these conditions do not suit weeds. Regular mowing will prevent the weeds from getting too tall and also prevent them from seeding and spreading.

Where weeds have been able to seed in the lawn, Earthlife offers an organic product called “Weedless”. It is a natural compost enzyme that prevents seeds from germinating while causing no harm to living plants or to soil organisms. It is perfectly safe to spray on lawns without needing to exclude children or dogs. This product is ideal for spraying on Bindii that has gone to seed.

With greatly improved soil health and stronger lawn grass, pests and diseases will have less impact. Most pests are more likely to attack lawns with soft sweet growth caused by the overuse of high nitrogen fertilisers. Using balanced fertilisers with a wide range of plant nutrients reduces the likelihood of such soft sweet growth.

Avoiding compaction and improving drainage will also assist to ensure that lawns are less susceptible to pests and in particular fungal diseases (see picture).

Using fertilisers that are biologically activated (such as Terralift that contains good soil microbes) will increase the presence of beneficial microorganisms which are able to attack problematic fungi and diseases and improve overall soil health.

This can be achieved with any of the biologically active fertilisers, or with garden tonics such as seaweed sprays, or homemade compost, compost tea or worm juice from a backyard worm farm.

Whilst pests are less likely to attack a healthy lawn, no lawn is completely immune. Regular checks will help identify a problem while it is small and easy to treat.

One of the most common lawn pests is lawn grubs like Armyworms. An early sign of these can be bare patches which quickly spread or the foraging activities of Magpies or Kookaburras on the lawn.

Pouring a bucket of very soapy water over the affected patch of lawn will be very effective at killing the grubs, but will also kill earthworms, so should be followed up a few days later with a garden tonic as mentioned above. If it is over a large area, some worm castings spread thinly over the area will re-introduce worms quickly, in addition to aiding the grass to recover.

Organic lawn care can easily result in a lawn that is as neat and beautiful as one which is cared for using non-organic means.

The focus on soil health and enrichment can often lead to far superior results and a much stronger lawn than one which relies only on feeding the lawn grass without consideration to soil health. Such a lawn can be easy to manage and able to be kept weed and pest free without the need for chemical treatments.

Terralift Activate N 18-1-4+2Mg 20kg

Terralift Activate K 8-0-16+1Mg 20kg