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Soil Improvement

Rehab for Waterlogged or Flooded Soils

When soils, especially heavier loams or clays, are sitting in water for too long, there are a number of very bad things that happen: loss of aeration, breakdown of soil structure, compaction, loss of beneficial soil microbes, and/or root rot or other diseases. Whether you are growing grass, garden plants, trees, or farm crops, it is vital to rehabilitate the soil if you want healthy plant growth in the future. The first step in rehabilitating is to bring oxygen into the soil and to regenerate the beneficial soil microbial life.

Soil Basics

Topsoil is a wonderfully structured growing medium for plants. It is something that is created by nature out of rock, over eons. This is done mostly through the interaction of beneficial micro-life acting on very small pieces of sand, silt, or clay (which is microscopic in size). The living organisms group mineral particles into tiny micro-aggregates. These are held together by both organic substances and the attractive forces of charged clay particles. Inside and in between these aggregates is space for air, water, microbes, and fine roots.

An ideal topsoil is a might contain 25% air space, 25% water, 45% minerals, and 5% organic matter, including living organisms. The amount of air space in the soil is critical because most of the bio-life in the soil depends on air for survival. Plant roots need air as well.

The soil structure, or matrix, once formed is fairly stable, especially if it is high in organic matter–you might liken the structure to a dampened sponge. It holds water but there is plenty of pore space for air.  But under a microscope it looks more like the image below.

When soils are submerged in water for too long the oxygen is pushed out of the soil, which leads to root rot and the death of beneficial soil microbes and plant life. Additionally, the excess water degrades and breaks down the soil aggregates, releasing clay into the open areas, collapsing the structure and ruining the aeration. (Imagine a cathedral collapsing into a pile of dust and stones and you get a good picture of what it’s like.)

As this broken-down soil dries out, it tightens up into more of a heavy, claylike soil that is tightly bonded due to microscopic clay particles holding on to each other.

The Solution

The only way to rehabilitate soil that has lost its structure, aeration, and bio-matter due to flooding or water-logging is to break up the clay bonds and reintroduce air into the soil, in order to help roots to breathe and to regenerate the bio-matter that is capable of rebuilding soil structure.  The simplest way to do this is by applying a soil penetrant that can work into the clay, one that can also break some of the clay bonds and release oxygen throughout the root zone and below. Our product of choice is Aerify PLUS.  It not only provides liquid aeration to damaged soil, but it also puts readily available organic matter (humic acid and kelp/seaweed) that acts as bio-stimulants to plants and soil microbes, while also providing food for beneficial soil restructuring microbes.

If your lawn or garden has suffered from flooding or being water-logged, be sure to use Aerify PLUS today to get your soil back in shape!

How to Mow Your Lawn – Part 4: 12 Tips to Help You Mow Like a Pro

In our last post about mowing, we talked about grass clippings and mulching vs. bagging. Today we’re going to tell you how to mow like a pro!

Before You Mow

1.) Make sure your mower blades are sharp. Dull blades tear or rip the grass instead of slicing it cleanly. When grass is wounded like this it is slower to heal and is an open invitation to insect and disease organisms. Dull blades cutting wet grass makes the shredding even worse.

Dulllawnsc00133257You can tell when a lawn has been cut with a dull mower because the top of the grass has a white or gray look to it due to the shredded tips, like the lawn on the right side of the picture. You can actually see this easier from the street than when standing in the middle of the lawn.

Start the season with a sharp blade and, if your lawn is a good size, have it sharpened (and balanced) again before the fall. Keeping a spare sharp blade around to use while the other is being sharpened is not a bad idea.

Also: inspect your blades occasionally for nicks. We all hit stones or branches now and then. File them out if you can. Sharp blades give a clean cut and that puts less stress on your mower engine.

2.) Keep the underside of the mowing deck clean. Check it before mowing. Moist grass has a tendency to stick and clump up under the mower deck. When it gets thick it affects the ability of the mower to lift up the grass, resulting in a poor cut. You can scrape off the grass with a putty knife, flat stick, or whatever is close at hand. I use a hand weeding tool. If you are mowing really lush or wet grass, you may have to stop and clean underneath mid-mowing. Unhook the spark plug first or at least make sure the mower has been stopped for 5-10 seconds before putting your hand under it!

To get under the deck you are going to have to turn the mower on its side. Make sure you do this in a way that doesn’t spill oil or gas out. And be careful doing anything around sharp mower blades. Wear gloves. Put them on before you mow.

3.) Know your mower – in particular, where the the blades are in relation to the deck, wheels and ground . This way you can safely navigate around the obstacles in the lawn without damaging them or the mower blades. You can also avoid “scalping” the lawn if you know where the blades actually are.

Scalping of the lawn happens when the blades cut far too close to the soil line, way below the height the grass can withstand. Usually this results in either dead grass, weeds, moss or a combination of the three. Most scalping occurs on high spots (or bumps) on the lawn, or they occur where the lawn meets the drive or sidewalk and the soil is a little high.

You can see in the top drawing how the wheels of the mower sit on both sides of the high spot resulting in a scalp. The mower would have to be moved a few inches to either side to avoid this.

The second drawing shows how the point where the lawn meets the walk gets scalped. This happens when the soil under the grass is higher than the walkway and the mower wheel is positioned on the walk but close to the grass. You can see that the mower and the mower blades are at an angle, cutting down into the corner.

The way to fix this is to simply move the mower wheels further out into the walkway, lessening the tilt of the mower and thus keeping the blades higher at the edge of the lawn. You might only be cutting 5-6″ of grass on this pass but no scalping will occur. The third drawing (which should have been flipped around to have the grass on the left side of the mower) illustrates this pretty well. You may think that scalping the edges of the grass this way makes the grass look neater, but the grass will eventually die off, and then weeds or moss will replace it.

On The Lawn

4.) Clear off any sticks, stones etc.. before you mow. Aside from dulling the blades, stones or wood chips can fly out of a grass chute and cause a lot of damage. Make sure you know where any potential obstacles like vent pipes, above ground tree roots etcetera, are hidden in the grass.

5.) Avoid mowing a wet lawn whenever possible. It gives a poor, uneven cut unless you have a really strong vacuum effect on your mower. It also tends to result in a shredded cut, rather than a clean slice.

6.) Always make sure your grass is standing straight. Grass that is standing upright will give you the cleanest cut that stays looking good the longest. If you cut a lawn that is leaning (due to wetness, being too long or mowing too much in one direction) it will cut poorly, and may even lean more when you are done. Sometimes a mower with a very strong vacuum can straighten up a wet or leaning lawn, especially if you mow against the way it is leaning. A light raking in the opposite of the direction of the way the lawn leans will lift the grass upright and make for a clean cut.

7.) Alternate your mowing pattern frequently. If you continually mow in the same pattern you will get tire ruts and perhaps a wavy look to the lawn. Try reversing or going in a perpendicular or diagonal direction to the way you normally cut. As mentioned above, grasses that lean in one direction can often be lifted back up by mowing in the opposite or a different direction.

8.) Keep the discharge chute unclogged so clippings can shoot out easily. Damp grass, or too much grass cut at once, will clog up the shoot especially if there is a grass catcher set-up. Never clean the discharge chute when the mower is running. You are asking for trouble. Shut the mower off. Unhook the spark plug. Of the 50,000 people that go to the hospital yearly for lawn mowing injuries, cleaning the discharge chute while the mower is running is probably the most frequent reason cited.

9.) Watch where your clippings are going (if you aren’t bagging or mulching them).  If you have a side discharge chute on your mower, you need to know where the clippings are going. You normally don’t want the clippings blowing into your beds or all over the drive and walks even if they are cut pretty short. Also, you don’t want to create a buildup of grass clippings that gets too thick to mow over.

The easiest way to mow when concerned about clippings is to go around the perimeter of the lawn a 3-4 times moving inwards with each cut, having the discharge chute facing towards the inside of the lawn, away from the beds. Then, when you think it is safe to do, reverse the direction and start throwing the clippings outwards towards the bed, but not reaching into them. This is just one way to do it. Because you should be changing mowing patterns frequently, you’ll have to do a little thinking beforehand.

10.) Keep your lines straight when mowing. This gives the lawn a nicer look than having the tires make wiggles all over the lawn. Also, don’t run the tires of the mower in the same groove that you made on your last pass. This can create tire ruts and lines of grass being pressed down by the wheels but not cut. If the grass springs back up you can get skinny lines of higher grass appearing on the lawn. Always overlap the tires by at least a few inches to make sure all of the lawn is getting cut.

11.) Don’t force the mower when the grass is thicker, taller or wetter. It will result in a very poor cut. When you are mowing, you can get a feel for whether the mower is cutting the grass easily or if it is straining. When conditions are tougher, slow down a bit. Shut the self-propel function off if necessary, and take your time over the really bad spots. You can also mow less with each pass when the grass is too thick. Cut the mowing width of your passes by a third or even a half when conditions warrant it.

12.) Be very careful on hills or steep grades, or don’t mow them at all. You really don’t want to slip and have a foot or other body part go under the mower. Controlling a mower going down a hill is not easy even in perfect conditions. Never mow hills when they are wet. You don’t want to be another mowing injury statistic. If the slope isn’t too bad, mow side to side when the grass is dry. If it really isn’t a safe slope to cut, consider putting in ground cover.

Finally, don’t allow children to mow the lawn until they are physically strong enough to control the mower, and to understand these mowing tips.

These tips all apply to riding and reel mowers as well.

Mighty Liquid Iron – Using Liquid Iron to kill weeds, reduce moss, and green up your lawn!

Iron is a micronutrient that plants need in order to form chlorophyll, and chlorophyll is the main component in plants that make them green. But in many iron-rich soils the iron is unavailable to plants due to high pH or compacted/clay conditions. By spraying our Liquid Iron on your lawn, you can get immediate absorption of iron through the leaf blades of the grass or other plants. And because the iron is sugar-chelated, it will be very easily absorbed through the roots as well.

Every grass type and variety has a color potential of its own.  Some are deeper green, and some are lighter green. With a light application of Liquid Iron (3-6 oz per 1000 sf) you can get your lawn to its best color.

Moss Control

Though we don’t officially label our Liquid Iron as a moss killer, many of our customers have used it with great results. We tested it out recently using a pump sprayer that contained 6 oz of Liquid Iron per gallon of water. By just wetting the moss thoroughly, the moss started showings signs of dying within a few hours and was completely brown by the next day.  Note: if you are spraying moss that is in a lawn, make sure the grass is not under any drought or heat stress. The iron may cause some discoloration of the grass, but it recovers fairly quickly.

Organic Dandelion Control

Here is a formula that we have been testing for the past couple of years:

  • Mix a 14 oz container of regular table salt with 3 ½ quarts of warm water. Shake or stir until fully dissolved.
  • Add 6 oz of Liquid Iron and ½ teaspoon of dish soap.
  • Put the mixture into a pump-up sprayer with a wand on it, or use trigger sprayer if you’ll only be treating a handful of weeds.
  • Wet the leaves of the dandelions thoroughly, then spray some extra into the center of the plant.

You will have to respray at least once more, maybe twice, perhaps a week between applications.  The older the plant, the thicker the root and the longer it will take to kill. Summer and fall applications will be more effective than spring ones. This strong solution will discolor grass around it, so don’t over-spray. Salt is not great for the soil, so make sure you are also using Aerify Plus or any of our other soil conditioning products that neutralize salts as well.

Bonus: Organic Lawn Ivy Control!

Mix 2 oz of Liquid Iron instead of 6 oz as in the above formula. Wet the leaves of the ground ivy well and respray every 4-5 days. The ground ivy will shrink and turn brown as it starts to die off. Try to avoid getting a lot on the grass, and only use when the ivy is actively growing and not dormant due to summer heat. Fall applications work best for this and most weed control applications.

As spring winds down into summer, now is a great time to apply iron as a soil amendment or as moss or weed control!

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How To Mow Your Lawn – Part 3: What do I do with my grass clippings?

What do I do with my grass clippings?

I can’t recall the last time I picked up my grass clippings–it’s been years. Bagging grass clippings is extra work and, in my case with my cutting routine, mower, grass types, and soil conditions, it is quite unnecessary.  But it may not be unnecessary for you at the moment.

Let’s go over the finer points:

Grass clippings are almost 80% water. Another 10% is fiber and organic matter (good for soil), and what is left over are nutrients, similar to what you get in fertilizer, with perhaps some extra nutrients obtained right from the soil and air. Whenever you remove clippings you are disrupting the natural growth/decomposition cycle and are removing nutrients. If these nutrients are not replaced by fertilizers, the grass will inevitably deteriorate.

Most lawn experts agree that the fertilizer value of leaving your clipping will be roughly equivalent to one good feeding.

3 Things to Consider About Lawn Clippings:

  1. Clippings must be short enough that they do not mat down on top of the lawn. They should filter down to the soil level and quickly decompose. If you cut often, especially on higher mowed lawns, the clippings will be short and will drop down easily.  If you have a side chute discharge on your mower and find that the clippings remain on top and are unsightly, you can quickly go over the lawn again, just to cut up and disperse the clippings more. Better yet, get a mulching mower which will chop the clippings up finely and throw them to the ground. A mulching blade may be available for your current mower. It chops the grass up more, but doesn’t do the job a mulching mower can do.
  2. On poor soils that are not bio-active, clippings may be slow to decompose. This may be the result of just having a dense clay instead of real topsoil. Or, it could be that there have been too many detrimental products put on the soil over the years, resulting in the kill-off or suppression of the beneficial soil microbes and earthworms that do the actual decomposing of the grass clippings. Some fertilizers, pesticides, and even excessive lime/calcium can have harmful effects on the bio-life in the soil. We’ll cover all of this and teach you how to restore or create bio-life in your soil later on. It is one of my favorite subjects and the reason we started selling products on our website.
  3. Beware of thatch. Grass clippings do not cause thatch unless they mat up without decomposing. In fact, most of the thatch problems I have seen over the years were on lawns where clippings were actually bagged! How is that possible, you ask? Thatch is actually a matted, woven layer of grass stems, roots, runners, and clippings, that sits on top of the soil. Clippings add to the thatch, but don’t necessarily cause it. Over-fertilized lawns, of course, make for more or longer clippings. If the soil is also not bio-active you have a real problem. If you find a thatch layer sitting on top of the soil, bag your clippings until it is corrected. Also consider treating with our Biological Dethatcher, which breaks down the thatch layer and turns it into valuable humus.

The Final Verdict on Grass Clippings

If you can do what is necessary to be able to recycle your grass clippings on the lawn, it will be well worth in many ways. If you really do need to bag the clippings, you can still use them for composting or mulching your garden beds. It would be a shame to see so much valuable organic matter going to waste.

In the next section we’ll go over how to do the actual mowing of the lawn, and all the little steps and nuances that will teach you to mow like a pro.

Read on in How to Mow Your Lawn Part 4

Is your lawn getting too much nitrogen?

How to Avoid Lawn Fertilizer Pollution of Lakes and Waterways

Nutrient pollution of water happens when runoff of fertilizer (or nutrient-rich sewage) gets into streams, ponds, rivers and oceans. The fertilizer feeds plant algae in the water, stimulating large scale blooms. These thick blooms can clog waterways and can have an awful smell. The algae also depletes oxygen from the water and causes numerous problems for aquatic and other wildlife. It can even affect drinking water.
The primary pollutants are Phosphorus and Nitrogen. Over the past decade, many states have either banned or limited phosphorus in fertilizers. But Nitrogen, the nutrient most associated with greening of lawns, is not regulated, and is still being applied at levels that are beyond what grasses need. The potential for runoff is enormous.
For over 40 years we have been telling our customers that lawns growing in a healthy, well-aerated, and bio-active soil, where clippings are left to decompose, will need much less fertilizer than a “dead soil” that depends on fertilizer for all of its nutrition. Many of our products are designed to improve aeration and beneficial soil life. With new research into soils, bio-life, and the soil-food web, we are now understanding exactly how this is possible. We won’t attempt to explain it all here, but it has a lot to do with keeping the microbial and fungal life in the soil alive and not trying to bypass or degrade them with excess nitrogen or soil toxins.

How to Have a Great Looking, Healthy Lawn Using 1/8th the Nitrogen

The average 4-step lawn care program you find in the big box stores will have you putting on approximately .8 pounds of nitrogen per 1000 sf of lawn area. That equates to 3.2 pounds per season. With our Biologically Enhanced All-In-One for Lawns you would have to put on 8 applications to get the same amount of nitrogen you are getting with just one of those 4-step fertilizer applications. In different terms, it would take 32 applications of All-In-One for LAWNS to give you 3.2 pounds of nitrogen.
Our All-In-One customers rave about the color and health of their lawns, and probably have no idea that they are using so much less nitrogen. The reason it works so well is that it contains soil conditioners, humates, trace elements, and beneficial root fungi. Additionally, while creating an ideal soil environment, All-In-One for Lawns contains our Biological Dethatcher which breaks down thatch and grass clippings and turns them into compost.
As always, if you have any questions about your lawn or our products, please email us at info@natureslawn.com. We’re always happy to help!

Working With Wet Clay Soil – Or, How to Avoid Premature Cultivation

One of the biggest mistakes gardeners make is trying to “work” (till up, cultivate, or hoe) their high clay content garden soil before it is dry enough to be worked. When you do this, the soil structure is broken down and you end up with rock-hard crusts or clumps when the soil dries.

After a long winter of snow and a rainy spring, clay beds are swelled with water and free clay particles float to the top and bond with each other. As the clay dries out further, a hard crust forms, which eventually starts cracking like you can see in the photo on the right. This can happen even if there is a lot of compost or organic matter in the soil.

To get the beds ready for planting, most gardeners will till or turn over their soil, perhaps mixing in more compost, fertilizer, or organic material. However, if you do this before the soil has dried out enough, you are going to run into problems.

The picture below shows a bed a week after it was turned over with a shovel and left to sit and dry out.

What has happened is that instead of the loose and crumbly structure you were expecting, the surface is now covered by hard lumps of clay–some of them 2 inches and larger. The reason this happens is because the wet clay was not dried out enough before tilling, so water is still filling spaces where air would be if the clay was drier. Now the clay, which is still too wet and sticky, will not crumble apart the way we want it to. It splits into clumps instead, and as these clumps dry out they become extremely hard.

Many gardeners have experienced the disappointment of having their soil look worse after turning it over than it did beforehand. It happens all over the country on all types of clay soils. Northern gardeners especially, who need to wait all winter and much of the spring for their cold and wet soils to dry out, are probably more guilty of “premature cultivation” than their southern counterparts.

How do I know when my soil is ready?

So, how do you tell when your soil is ready to be worked? It’s simple: take a handful of soil and squeeze it  into a ball. Then, try to break it apart between your fingers, and see if it separates easily. We like to compare it to the feel of a handful of moist raisins that will clump together when squeezed, but will break apart with a quick rub of the fingers. If your soil stays clumped and doesn’t crumble, it is still too wet to work.

Eventually your clay soil will dry out enough to work. It may be very late into the spring before that occurs. However, since the top inch or two of soil will warm up and dry out faster than the deeper areas, you can usually do some seeding or shallow planting a few weeks earlier. If you do plan to till, make sure the soil has dried all the way down to the depth that you plan to dig down to.

Salvaging a bad situation

If you found this article too late, or if you just can’t wait long enough for all or part of the garden to dry out before cultivating it, don’t worry! There’s still hope. If you do till or dig up a wet soil, there is one thing you can do that will probably prevent the hard crusting on top: after cultivating, smooth out the soil and cover it with a layer of mulch, about 1/2 -1 inch thick or more. Use anything that will keep the clay from drying too fast on top. Shredded bark, leaves, straw, pine needles, compost, or even peat moss will do.

Improving Clay Soils

When you have improved your clay soil it will drain faster and will warm up earlier in the spring, which means it will be workable earlier in the year. There are many things you can do to improve clay soils, including raising the beds (to allow for better drainage) and, especially, adding lots of organic matter. Organic matter is critical. Without it, there is no humus. By adding organic matter and improving aeration as well, you will create an environment that allows beneficial soil life to start working to restructure the soil and form valuable humus.

Many gardeners today, including myself, are doing no-till gardening. Instead of tilling the soil they are keeping a permanent organic mulch on top of their garden beds. By maintaining a couple of inches of shredded leaves, wood chips, straw etc., on top of the beds you will protect the soil from drying out and will provide organic matter for earthworms and microbes to decompose. You can still easily fertilize the soil with liquid nutrients or compost, and do foliar feeding throughout the season to get nutrients to plants at the proper times of the season. (See our 4 Step Garden Fertilizing Program )

Clay soil is a big problem all over the country, which is one of the reasons we created our non-toxic lawn and garden product lines. Customers all over the US can improve clay and compacted soil with our Aerify PLUS, Nature’s Magic, and other soil conditioning products. They can be applied right over the top of mulched beds, or directly to bare soil. These products make a real difference, and help make everything else you are doing for the soil work a lot better.

Soil improvement is our favorite topic because whether it is a lawn or a garden, it all begins with the soil.

How To Mow Your Lawn – Part 2

When Should I Mow My Lawn?

As we mentioned in Part 1, each time you mow the lawn you are slicing off part of the food factory of the grass plant, located in the leaf blades.  Keep that in mind while you ponder these points:

  1. You need to keep grass long enough to be able to produce the food and energy for optimum growth above and below ground.
  2. The blades can’t be so tall that they lean over or mat up. This would prevent the flow of air and moisture and would encourage disease.
  3. It is how even your grass is after mowing that makes it look good, not how tall it is.
  4. You want the grass to still be green after mowing. Cutting off too much of the leaf blade takes you down to the yellowing part of the plant that the sun hasn’t greened up yet.

Mowing is always a shock to the grass plant and the more you cut off, the greater the shock. To prevent growth-stopping shock and loss of color, the general rule is do not cut off more than 1/3 of the total blade height when you mow. So, by this rule, the best time to mow the lawn is when it is approaches a length 1/3 higher than the desired height. For example, if you want to keep your lawn at 3″,  cut when it gets to about 4 ½ inches high, not 6”. If you want to keep it at 2” then you would cut when it reached 3”. Never cut so much off that the grass is no longer green.

When lawns are in their quick growth periods (spring time in the North and summer in the South) their recuperative ability is high and you can get away with cutting off half the blade or more.  But during periods of slow growth the recovery time is slower. Try to take off a little less than 1/3. We tell our customers to think of it as trimming the grass instead of cutting.

For these trims, you probably don’t have to worry about bagging the grass clippings. A good bioactive soil will accept the clippings and break them down easily. If you’re not yet confident in the bioactiviy of your soil, regular light applications of Biological Dethatcher will make sure your grass clippings and any existing thatch breaks down into humus.

Homeowners have a distinct advantage over lawn mowing services when it comes to timing their mowing. They can mow as often or as little as needed for the best health of the lawn. Most mowing services will come once a week and, during fast growth periods, may be cutting half or more of the blade length at each cutting.  The lawn usually survives this type of cutting, but it starts to look pretty ragged after a few of these harsh cuts.

How High Should I Cut my lawn ?

This must be the most frequently asked question in all of lawn care. Unfortunately, there is no one answer to this question. Due to such factors as weather, specific grass types and varieties, moisture, heat,  times of season  and so forth there is never going to be one simple answer.  My advice is to “see the lawn in front of you.” Don’t just mechanically follow a chart. You are dealing with a living system that changes with its environment.

Having said that, here is a chart that will give some general guidelines for the mowing heights of various grass types.  There are a few grass types that can be maintained at both high and very short heights.  For example, Bermuda can be used for home lawns as well as putting greens.  When maintained at lower heights you need to compensate with more fertilizer to stimulate more food production from the small amount of leaf blade area that you do have.

Bahia 2 – 3 ½”
BentgrassCreeping

Colonial

¼ – 1”

½ – 1 ¼”

BermudaCommon

Hybrids

1 ½ – 2 ½”

¼ – 1”

BluegrassCommon

Improved

2 – 4”

1 – 3”

Buffalograss 2 – 4”
Carpetgrass1 ½ – 2 ½”
Centipede 1 ½ – 2 ½”
FescueFine

Tall

Turf Type Tall

Creeping Red

1 ½ – 3 ½”

2 – 5”

2 – 4”

2 – 3”

RyegrassPerennial

Annual

2 – 4”

2 – 4

St. AugustineCommon

Improved

2 – 4 ½”

3 – 4”

Zoysia 1 – 2”

As you can see from the chart, there are only a few grass types that can tolerate very short mowing -say an inch high or less.  If you have a grass type that thrives at a 3-4 inch height, but you are constantly mowing around 1 ½ -2” high, eventually your main grass disappears and other grasses take over. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been called out to look at what a homeowner thought was still their original bluegrass lawn, only to find that there was no sign of bluegrass. The lawn had turned into a fine fescue or a bentgrass lawn because they kept mowing too short.

A Bad Idea: Some homeowners, as well as some lawn mowing service operators, have the idea that if they mow the grass short they will have to do less mowing. But short mowing actually stimulates more growth, at least initially. The grass stops all rooting and other health functions in order to send energy back up to the shoots to recover the vital leaf blades. Eventually, however, with continued short mowing the grass gets too weak to grow, dies out, and is replace by weeds and other, usually less desirable grass types.

Our advice is to favor higher mowing heights when you have a choice to make. It is true that you can reduce the percentage of weeds on a lawn to some degree by having a taller or a thicker grass. Cooler soil, less sunlight reaching the ground, and less space for the weeds to grow, all contribute to fewer weeds.

In the next section, we’ll teach you how to mow like a pro and talk about adjusting mowing height by season, grass clippings, and the difference between Northern and Southern mowing.

Read on in How to Mow Your Lawn – Part 3

How To Mow Your Lawn – Part 1

A healthy, properly mowed lawn.

The very least you must do for a home lawn is mow it, and poor mowing is the very first problem that needs to be addressed if you want to give your lawn a chance to be healthy. Poor mowing leads to poor color, weeds, crabgrass, disease, thatch, and invasion of undesirable grasses into your lawn. If you are mowing incorrectly, shifting to a proper mowing technique will give you a better looking lawn in a matter of weeks.

To understand how to mow a lawn properly, you need an understanding of what is going on with the lawn first–then everything gets easy!

The first thing you should know is that grass is a plant that makes its own food in the leaf blades. The importance of that piece of information cannot be overstated, because every time you mow your lawn you are cutting off some of the “food factory” of the grass. Lawn fertilizers like our All-In-One for Lawns, provides some of the raw materials to help plants make their food. When the food factory in the leaf blades is devastated by improper mowing, all plant energy goes towards rebuilding the food factory. Nothing else happens until it is fixed.

A Question of Balance

If the lawn gets plenty of sun and is not cut too short, it has the potential to become a very healthy lawn. The leaf blades can produce a lot of food in this state. It will be able to easily build new shoots and will have the energy to spread out. The roots will be deep and full. Deeper, fuller roots are capable of finding more and deeper water and nutrients in the soil and can store more food as well. It has been shown over and over again that the higher you mow your lawn, the deeper the roots will be.

Here is an illustration from the book Building A Healthy Lawn: A Safe and Natural Approach, that shows the relationship of leaf blade height to root growth. (The book is out of print after a 20 year run, but we have a few copies left.)

If your were to scalp the lawn even lower than the height on the left in the picture shown here, there would be little to no root growth at all.

Most plants have somewhat of a balance between above ground growth (shoots) and below ground growth (roots). It may not be entirely equal, but the important point is that the roots and shoots are mutually supportive. The roots send water and raw material to the shoots and the shoots send food and necessary building blocks to help roots expand and do their job.

When the blades are cut short and too much of the food factory is removed, the stored food in the roots will be called up to help stimulate new blade growth. Making new leaf blades is the highest priority at this point. Root growth slows down or stops completely till the shoots recover. If this continues too long, all the stored food in the roots will be used up and the roots, no longer being supported by food from above, will wither. This creates a high potential for insect, disease, and weed invasion. With continued scalping, the grass has no chance of surviving.

Here are two lawns with the same grass type, but the one on the right is cut too short. Without enough leaf blade area, the lawn is weak, shallow-rooted and tends toward disease and insect problems. The homeowner has created this problem because he had the mistaken idea that short is better.

A proper balance between shoot growth and root growth is one of the fundamentals necessary for the health of your lawn (as well as most of your landscape plants). When things go out of balance for too long, your lawn is going to suffer.

Read more in How To Mow Your Lawn – Part 2

As always, please feel free to drop us a line at info@natureslawn.com if you have any questions about our products or your lawn!

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Why is there moss in my lawn? – All About Moss

What’s the Deal with Moss?

Moss is a plant that can grow in conditions that other plants, including grasses, can’t endure.  It is not a very aggressive or competitive plant, but nature seems to use it more as a filler, for thin or bare soils. So, when you ask the question “Why is there moss in my lawn?” the simple and correct answer is “because you have conditions that are making it too hard for your lawn to survive.”

Moss spores are in the air and only need moisture to germinate and mature. Once established, moss can be very drought tolerant. Some mosses can survive in full sun, though most prefer shade. Moss can grow on any type of soil because their shallow roots simply hold the moss there without drawing nutrients from the soil. They get some nutrients from water, but mostly they make their own food through photosynthesis.

The biggest myth about moss

Ask most gardeners what can be done about moss and they will tell you that that the soil is too acidic (low pH) and it needs to be sweetened with lime (calcium). This is false! As we said above, moss grows in any type of soil – acidic, alkaline, and sometimes on pure rock. The only reason that lime sometimes helps lawns squeeze out moss is when the soil actually is too acidic for the grass to grow properly and it is thinning out. Adding lime in this case, would raise the pH and improve the health of the grass. So, as you can see, the real cause of the moss here is the poor health of the grass.

Weak Grass/Moss Causing Conditions

Here are the major reasons for moss on lawns:

  1. Too much moisture. Soggy soils, often clay types, drown grass roots but shallow rooted moss can tolerate and thrive in wet soils.
    You can improve soil drainage with Aerify Plus.
  2. Too much shade. Grass plants needs a fair amount of sunlight for enough photosynthesis to keep them healthy. Shade tolerant varieties can withstand a little less light, but some moss varieties survive in total shade.
    Trimming back the lower branches of trees can be helpful.
  3. Clay soil/compaction. Grasses are tough plants that can grow in fairly heavy clay top soils, especially if the soil is moist.  But extreme compaction or denser clays are almost impregnable. Moss has no problem growing on this dense clay.
    The best product for improving clay soil and compaction is Aerify Plus.
  4. Drought/ Dry soil. This might sound counter-intuitive, since moss likes moisture, but here is what can happen. When high clay content soils dry out during a drought or normal summer conditions, the loss of moisture causes the soil to actually shrink, which turns it tighter and denser. This can tear and damage grass roots and make it impossible for them to get to the nutrients and water. When the lawn finally begins to receive rain or water, opportunistic moss spores germinate easily, since the grass is not healthy enough to compete. Last summer we experienced a major drought in the North East, and this spring we are finding more moss than ever before.
    Check out our blog post on How to Water Your Lawn for more tips.
  5. Tree Roots. Tree roots can cause moss in a couple of ways. 1. The larger roots that grow close to the soil surface do not give the grass enough soil to dig into. Hence, moss develops and grows on top of these roots. When lawns are not watered deeply, the finer and even microscopic feeder roots of the tree can move upwards into the topsoil and compete with the grass for both water and space. This weakens the grass and permits moss to come in.  This also can happen around shrubs that border the lawn, especially evergreens.
  6. Poor Mowing/Trimming. Poor mowing, mostly too short, can cause your lawn to change from one grass type to a less desirable type. In cases of very short mowing, or even scalping, no grass can survive. Usually you end up with low growing weeds or moss. The same holds true for those who use their “weed whackers” to trim the edges of the grass close to the ground.  The short grass does not allow food production (photosynthesis) and has no chance for survival.
    Check back soon for a blog post on How To Properly Mow Your Lawn!
  7. Very Acidic or Very Alkaline Soil. As mentioned above, this is not the major cause of moss on most lawns. In extreme acid or alkaline conditions nutrients will lock up and become unavailable to the grass. This causes unhealthy grass and allows moss to fill in.
    If the pH of your lawn is extremely low you can balance it with Liquid Lime. If too high, take a look at our Liquid Sulfur.

To conclude, if you have moss growing in your lawn, look for the conditions that may be causing or contributing to it. Change what you can, and if you can’t change the conditions, try to appreciate the fact that this green carpet is covering what may otherwise be bare soil! 🙂

If you have any other questions about moss, please feel free to drop us a line at info@natureslawn.com!

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Top 5 Early Spring Lawn Care Tips

Preparing for Spring

Though parts of the country are still frozen, there are many areas where weather has returned to normal. We are starting to receive a lot of emails about what to do for your lawn to get the jump on the spring/summer lawn care season.

Here are our top 5 tips!

Top 5 Early Spring Lawn Care Tips

  1. BE PATIENT. We know that many you are anxious to get going, but, if at all possible, stay off the lawn until you can walk on it without sinking in. Walking on a sopping wet lawn can cause damage to the roots and blades, which will make it harder for your lawn to recover. If you have been using Aerify PLUS your lawn should drain faster in the spring and green up a little sooner. But when your lawn is ready to go…
  2. Give the lawn a light raking to remove debris and lift up matted grass and (in the North) snow mold damage. Snow mold, a lawn disease, occurs on most Northern grasses, especially the creeping grass types. It is worse when there has been alternating snow cover and warm periods. Most snow mold will disappear by mid spring if you fluff it up a bit so air and sunlight can get to the soil.
  3. Seed bare and thin areas early. This is a good time to overseed your lawn and get the new grass growing before your first fertilizer application. You want the grass thick before the weeds start sprouting. Use the correct seed type for your area and your particular lawn.
  4. Sharpen your lawnmower blades. It may not be time to start mowing just yet, but when your grass starts growing you want to make sure your blades are sharp and ready to go so that they cut clean and do not damaging the grass on the first mow.
  5. Mow short for your first cut, as low as you can go without scalping the lawn. This cuts away some of the dead grass left over from the previous season (if you left it too high) and most weather damage from the winter. It also helps warm up the soil faster, stimulates growth, and allows more sunlight to to penetrate the lawn which helps prevent fungus and disease. Note: mow short only when the grass is just starting to grow, not if it is already growing vigorously.

Keep these tips in mind this spring and help your lawn be the best it can be!

As always, if you have any questions about our products please drop us a line at info@natureslawn.com and we will be happy to provide our expertise!

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