Why Choose Organic Lawn Care?

Written by Greenwise Team
Published on May 24, 2019

You have a lot of choices when it comes to lawn care, so why choose organic? Let’s start with nutrition. When you choose which foods to eat, you want a well-rounded diet with important nutrients to sustain your body and ensure your good health for a lifetime. When you fill your body with sugar and processed foods, you might get a quick boost of energy, but you won’t be sustained for long, and eventually, your health deteriorates.

When you feed your lawn with synthetics, it’s like trying to maintain good health by chowing down on candy bars. You are feeding a craving, but you aren’t giving your lawn what it needs for sustained growth. You aren’t helping to build a healthy turf over time.

In fact, you are creating problems by giving your lawn the junk food of a quick nitrogen fix. With a diet of synthetics, you are creating a lawn that’s more susceptible to pests and other stresses, such as fungal issues.

And, when choosing organic lawn care, it’s important to understand the organic choice as a process, not a product. The organic process takes time and a little patience, but it’s all worth it knowing you are helping the environment and creating a safer yard for your families, pets, and neighbors.

How Your Lawn Benefits from Organic Fertilizer

Our Greenwise fertilizers are derived from natural sources, filled with micro-nutrients and microorganisms, and apply the necessary amount of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous to maintain healthy turf. In addition to releasing nutrients, as organic fertilizers break down, they improve the structure of the soil and increase its ability to hold water and nutrients. Over time, organic fertilizers will make your soil–and plants–healthy and strong.

Plus, you get these benefits with organic fertilizers:

  • It’s difficult to harm your plants by over-fertilizing since organic fertilizers are the ultimate slow-release fertilizers
  • Organic fertilizers are renewable, biodegradable, sustainable, and environmentally friendly.
  • Microorganisms are required to break down and release nutrients into the soil, and they obtain energy from decaying plant and animal matter, so an application of organic fertilizer provides a complete package of nutrients for your soil.
  • Organic fertilizers break down according to nature’s rules, so they may not release nutrients as soon as you need them. You have to be patient – you won’t see improvement overnight. Hang in there! You’ll most definitely be rewarded.

Why Chemical Fertilizers Harm Your Lawn and Our Environment

Pesticide Application sign

CHEMICAL LAWNS ARE UNSAFE

Chemical fertilizers might grow plants but they don’t help sustain the soil or promote life. They are primarily made from nonrenewable sources, including fossil fuels. Even packages labeled “complete” do not include the decaying matter necessary to improve soil structure.

In fact, chemical fertilizers don’t replace many trace elements that are gradually depleted by repeated plantings, resulting in long-term damage to the soil.

Because the nutrients are readily available, you risk over-fertilizing, which can kill plants and upset the entire ecosystem. Furthermore, chemical fertilizers tend to leach, or filter away from the plants, requiring additional applications. With each repeated application, you can cause a toxic buildup of chemicals, such as arsenic, cadmium, and uranium in the soil. These toxic chemicals can eventually make their way into your fruits and vegetables.

Long-term use of chemical fertilizer can change the soil pH, upset beneficial microbial ecosystems, increase pests, and even contribute to the release of greenhouse gases.

Four Factors Determine the Health

of Your Lawn

1. Good Soil

Building healthy soil is at the heart of organic lawn care. Just as a healthy person is less susceptible to colds, healthy plants are less susceptible to insects and diseases. Healthy soil equals a healthy lawn. And, because the organic matter in the soil acts like a sponge by holding the nutrients and water for future use, an organic lawn is self-sustaining. That means, over time you are doing less and less to maintain it.

2. Appropriate Plantings

Native plants are an ideal choice for your garden. Natives have been here well before Christopher Columbus set sail. And, because they’ve been here so long, they have co-evolved with animals, insects, fungi, and microbes, thus forming a complex and necessary network of relationships. Natives are the foundation of our natural communities.

According to the Audubon, without native plants and the insects that co-evolved with them, local birds couldn’t survive. For example, research by the entomologist Doug Tallamy has shown that native oak trees support over 500 species of caterpillars, whereas ginkgos, a commonly planted landscape tree from Asia, host only 5 species of caterpillars. When it takes over 6,000 caterpillars to raise one brood of chickadees, that is a significant difference.

3. Thick Grass

A regionally appropriate grass (or grass mix) will tolerate local weather and soil conditions more easily than imported varieties, and as a result, will need less watering and less fertilizer. The first line of defense against weeds is a thick, healthy lawn. Thick grass crowds out weeds while thin grass sits there, inviting invasion.

Weeds are incredibly opportunistic and will move into any bare spot they can find, but even weeds need at least minimally attractive conditions, including space and light. Thick grass deprives them of both.

Keep in mind, it doesn’t count if your lawn is thick but shorn as close as a 1950’s crew-cut. Shave it close, and once again you’re inviting problems. Exposing grass roots and soil to summer heat damages the grass and increases evaporation, while also letting weeds that have managed to sprout find the light they need to take off — and take over. So, you only get points for thick grass if it’s well above putting-green length.

Deep roots are one of the signs of a healthy lawn, and they work hard to keep it healthy. Deep roots allow a plant to reach water for a long time after rain or irrigation, helping to protect the grass from drought. Since a plant can access nutrients only as far away as its roots reach, a healthy, deep root system gives grass access to more nutrients, reducing the need for fertilizer.

4. Regular Maintenance

Maintaining your property means different things to different people. For Greenwise, it means caring for your property to create a sustainable, safe yard that brings you joy. We use a 5-step organic fertilizer program throughout the growing season. Plus, we aerate the turf to enable oxygen and nutrients to reach the roots, seed and overseed to repair bare spots, thus preventing weeds from taking over, and add mulch and compost to supply more nutrients and suppress weeds.

Greenwise Takes a Unique Approach to Organics

Not all organic fertilizers are created equal. Greenwise chooses potent and dense organic ingredients resulting in a powerful fertilizer that’s effective and affordable.

We stand behind our products and are consistently researching and tweaking our organic program and customizing our fertilization product to create a system that we trust works best for your property.

Our products are crafted to work symbiotically to give your soil the best chance to be healthy, viable, and sustainable.

Think of it as an artisanal approach to organic lawn care. When our technicians come out to fertilize your property, they aren’t just fertilizing, they are observing what’s happening with your turf. If they see a bare spot, they will overseed. If they see salt damage, especially during the first fertilization, they will put down a soil builder to absorb the sodium. To put it simply, we are your caretakers.

Take the Label Challenge

Other landscaping companies might offer organic fertilizers, but they’ll most likely blend in synthetic weed management products into their program. Few, if any, offer natural weed management programs.

Do you know what’s in your lawn care provider’s products? Take the label challenge. Ask your lawn care provider to show you the labels for the products they are using on your lawn. Are they organic? Need help reading the label? Send it to us and we’ll happily review it.

Greenwise guarantees that every ingredient on our fertilization labels is approved for organic food production. Our products are 100% safe all the time.

Call us today for a free consult at (847) 866-1930; we’d love to help you grow a safer lawn for you and your family!

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