I'm trying to go organic on my lawn- help!

15 years ago

I have recently decided to fire my lawn service and go organic. For a multitude of reasons.

First, we have the crappiest grass ever. Our builder totally did a number on us and gave us Bermuda that was heavily overseeded with winter rye. So much that it nearly choked out the Bermuda underneath. Anyway, after 3 years of being in this house and 3 years of getting lawn treatments it doesn't look much better than in the beginning, AND we are inundated with poke salad! There are hundreds of sprigs of it popping up everywhere. I spent all morning pulling poke salad and other assorted weeds from my lawn and flower beds. You'd think after having a lawn service come out we wouldn't have to deal with this!

Secondly everytime he comes out he sprays his chemicals all over my dog! The dog loves the hose pipe and tries to bite the water every time we spray him down. So when the yard guy comes, Gus thinks it's a fun game to attack his sprayer like he does the hose pipe. I have told the guy to not spray our backyard, just do granules, but NO. Gus looks like a neon yellow highlighter after the guy leaves. I don't want to pay for Gus's chemo treatments later in life when he gets cancer from all the lawn chemicals that have been sprayed all down his throat. :o)

Thirdly, I watched this scary documentary about Monsanto and Roundup Ready corn and crops and I got all freaked out about our food and chemicals, etc etc etc. Dr. Oz even had the lady on his radio show the other day, so it's a legitimate documentary I guess. After much black helicopter conspiracy theory thoughts, I decided that it's just way too much for me to worry about all the corn in the world, so why not deal with what I actually CAN control--my yard.

So... I'm going to try to DIY it, and go organic. My plan of attack is to use Bill's Perfect Lawn Fertilizer from Spray-n-grow.com and either the AllDown or Burnout organic weed and grass killer to edge my flower beds and try to keep the bermuda from creeping in, along with spot-spraying the poke salad and other weeds. I'll also keep pulling them. :)

Do you think this is a good plan? Any other good advice on going organic?

Thanks!

Here is a link that might be useful: Bills Perfect Fertilizer from Spray n Grow

Comments (4)

john_trussville
15 years ago
OMG, what lawn service do you use? No REPUTABLE service company would treat a lawn area when & where there is a pet present, much less allow the pet to actually be sprayed during the treatment. If they're that irresponsible there's no way I could have any trust in them that they're doing the job in an effective manner for the lawn. And sorry but I must add, no RESPONSIBLE pet owner would allow this to happen to an animal. And to let it happen repeatedly is just plain cruel.
bcb77
Original Author
15 years ago
Wow.

Well, I wasn't exactly expecting to get flamed for posting that.

I'm not going to get into whether or not you consider me to be a RESPONSIBLE pet owner because I leave my two 80 lb labradors outside in my fenced in back yard while we are at work. This is a gardening forum, not a pet owner forum. Like I said, we've asked the guy to use granules and he apparently didn't get the message (or just didn't care). We even told him to NOT spray our backyard at all, but he never got that message either. So... bye bye lawn service.

The lawn company was Shelby Turf and Shrub.

Anyway, anyone else able to give me advice on the organic stuff?
Thanks
Related Discussions
Starting new lawn - is it really this cheap/easy to go organic?
Q
Comments (23)
any comments? response about the corn meal issue? (i've looked it up everywhere on the net and it's very confusing, especially given that some places seem to lump them together or confuse the terms.) Sounds good. For your first year, if you want to fertilize more often, do so. No less than what you suggest, but more is not a problem. Corn meal is a slight to moderate anti-fungal (but shouldn't be avoided because of that). Cracked corn is pretty much the same, but not so dusty. Either does fine as a very mild fertilizer. I can't get corn meal but can sometimes get cracked corn (oddly enough, not as often as you'd think here in corn country). It's quite inexpensive. Corn GLUTEN meal is fine, powdery, and kind of yellowy-orangey. To my eye, more orange, but others describe it as yellow. Whichever. That's a strong fertilizer (the strongest nitrogen-supplying grain one I can think of at 9-0-0) and reportedly something of a pre-emergent. It's moderately to very expensive, comparatively. CGM (Corn Gluten Meal) seems to have pre-emergent capabilities at higher usages, but others here can describe that better. I've never used it. Another option that you might be able to find is soybean meal. It's fairly strong (7-1-2 or so), fairly inexpensive, and doesn't have any pre-emergent capabilities that I've ever heard about. Any of the bean meals (like coffee grounds) are great, though.
...See More
Trying to go organic, BUT ...........
Q
Comments (3)
He said he had been cutting grass his whole life and knew how to do it! I used to tell people that if they wanted to start an organic program they would have to forget everything they thought they knew and start learning all over again. Well, he was raised in the humid south and cutting the grass that short here, where the humidity is nonexistant, will just make us have to water the grass even more. Only centipede and bermuda should be mowed low in the south. He probably had a deeply ingrained fungus problem. Check out this link. It's a video about growing clover in your turf, but check out the guy's ankle deep grass. He'll tell you why he does it. (sorry about the advertising at the beginning but if you wait, it's worth it).
...See More
I'm trying to post my first tablescape ever & need help!
Q
Comments (4)
Cindee, I don't have a photobucket account so I use tinypic.com I right click on a picture in my easy share album. Then choose edit. Once that picture comes up, go to image and click on that, from the drop down menu, choose stretch and skew. I use 45% 45% and hit enter, Then I go to my file menu and choose save as and save it in My Documents with an appropriate name. When you are trying to post here, minimize this screen, then go to google and type in "Tinypic.com" Once it comes up, go to browse and then go to your documents and choose the picture you saved. Click on the name of the picture. Tinypic will ask you to type in 2 words to load your picture. Once you have done that, choose the top address line, click on that and choose copy, then click on this site that you have minimized, and right click and choose paste. You can keep going back and forth between the sites to add more pictures to your post. It sounds more complicated than it is, and believe me, if I could learn how to do it, anybody can. I am not computer savvy in any way! Hope that helps, Candy
...See More
Lawn needs some help, thinking about going organic
Q
Comments (13)
OK. Last Wednesday I added topsoil with a bit of compost mixed in to the area around the concrete slab in the last photo, graded, lightly tamped/walked on it, seeded with 50/50 Blue/Rye mix from Lesco, lightly raked it in, sprinkled a thin layer of compost on top (1/4" or so), and have been keeping it watered (morning and evening with the hose the first few days, and then mother nature has been watering for me since then). I also applied 18-24-6 starter fertilizer yesterday. No sign of germination yet, hopefully something soon. The seed was leftover from a 10lb bag I bought last fall, hopefully it's still good? It was kept dry in the garage over the winter. I also discovered that the township recycling center sells compost for $20/yard, so I got 5 yards to topdress with. I've got about 1,500 sq ft done so far. I've just been filling a wheelbarrow, dumping it in a few piles spaced apart (the easy part), then spreading them around with the back side of a bow rake. Once it's spread into a nice thin layer that is mostly on top of the grass I just run the backside of the rake back and forth at a very shallow angle to work it down between the blades, until you can barely tell it's there. Seems to work OK, although the compost does have some small bits of sticks/mulch in it that tend to not want to fall down between the blades very easily, and it can be somewhat clumpy so I spend a good bit of time breaking up clumps larger than 3/4" or so. Although, I suppose that if core aeration plugs disintegrate on their own after a few weeks, no reason clumps of compost shouldn't do the same, yes? Anyway, I'll be keeping at it as time/weather permits -- wife says the pile in the driveway has to be gone before Memorial Day :-) As I mentioned before, the back yard has quite a bit of moss in it, which I presume I should remove before topdressing back there. What's the best solution for that; just remove it manually with a rake (plastic shrub rake, metal tine leaf rake?) or by hand? Better to do it when the lawn is wet or dry? Oh, dchall -- your question re: the dirt below the window in the last photo. There's a fairly steep hill along that side of the house (right side of the photo) from front to back since the yard is level with the first floor in front and with the basement in back because of the walk-out, and there's a planting bed along the entire side of the house down that hill, which is what you're seeing below the window. Halfway down the hill in the bed there's a concrete slab where the AC compressor used to be (before the PO moved the furnace to the other side of the basement and moved the AC outdoor unit with it); you can see that empty slab in the photo as well. Anyway, I don't think there's any drainage issue here; it would be impossible to not have dirt up against the wall, and it is all sloped gently away from the house perpendicular to the wall, as well as very steeply down the hill towards the back yard. Unless I'm completely missing something...
...See More
john_trussville
15 years ago
I don't get it. Now you seem to be claiming that you shouldn't be faulted in any way since this all happened when your dogs were left in the backyard while you were at work. Yet in your first post you described the "fun game" Gus plays attacking the lawn co. sprayer similar to the way he does a hose pipe, as if you witnessed him turning into a "neon yellow highlighter" yourself. Which is it?

Either way, it should have NEVER happened. Shelby Turf & Shrub was at fault for doing it the first time whether you were at home or not...and should be held responsible. But please tell me how you can possibly not feel guilty and not consider yourself at fault for allowing it to continue numerous times ("everytime he comes out")?

I'm sorry if you're feeling "flamed", but whether intentional or not I don't much care for the somewhat whimsical way (with a smiley face, even?) in which you told of your poor dog being repeatedly exposed to potentially harmfull lawn chemicals.
Believe it or not, I'm a pretty easy going guy but I really don't care if this a gardening forum or a pet owner's forum, I can't stand hearing about animal abuse WHEREVER it rears its ugly head. Would you have allowed a child to be sprayed down? Or is it ok as long as it's just a dog that can be put down before you have to incur expensive vet bills? Give me a break!
rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
15 years ago
I reacted the very same way that you did, John.

But, anyway, bcb77. Going organic is a great idea, as long as you understand that you have to begin taking care of the SOIL system. Healthy lawns have a vital soil/root system. It's not about substituting one batch of chemicals for another.

Did you know that there is an Organic Lawn Care forum here in the gardenweb? If you spend some time reading past (and present) threads in there, I'll bet that you will come away with alot of great tips and ideas.

Good luck to you!

Here is a link that might be useful: Here....let's visit the Organic Lawn Care forum

I'm trying to go organic on my lawn- help!

Comments (4)

john_trussville

bcb77
Original Author

Related Discussions

john_trussville

rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

I'm trying to go organic on my lawn- help!

Comments (4)

john_trussville

bcb77Original Author

Related Discussions

john_trussville

rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US

bcb77
Original Author