U.S. households spent $29.5 billion in 2013 on lawns and gardens, about $347 per household, according to a National Gardening Association survey. This estimate does not include time and energy costs performing these chores. Yet, homeowners can reduce the amount of time and money spent on grass, avoid toxic chemicals, and still have a great-looking lawn.
Where did we get our fascination with green lawns?
The ideal of expansive, closely shorn grasslands dates back centuries. Wealthy 17th-century European landowners employed armies of groundskeepers to hand scythe the lawns around their manors. Although lawns emerged in America in the 18th century, often kept shorn by sheep or cattle, it wasn't until the invention of the mechanical mower that lawns became popular, according to Virginia Scott Jenkins, author of "The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession."
Within 15 years after Elwood McGuire of Richmond, Indiana, designed an affordable push mower in 1870, the U.S. was manufacturing 50,000 lawnmowers a year. The American Garden Club began campaigning for lawns, promoting as ideal landscaping "a plot with a single type of grass with no intruding weeds, kept mown at a height of an inch and a half, uniformly green, and neatly edged."
After World War II, when Abraham Levitt and his sons built their massive subdivisions ("Levittowns," with thousands of homes in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts) for returning servicemen and burgeoning Baby Boom families, the concept of the grassy yard was so entrenched that every residence came with an established lawn. The Levitts required residents to keep up their lawns, banned fencing, and thereby created the suburban standard still common today.
Clean green prescription: compost/meal, irrigate, mow properly
As a prime example of how to care for a lawn in a healthy way, the spreading lawns of the Glenstone museum in Potomac, Maryland, are kept lush and green with limited care and environmentally friendly methods, says Paul Tukey, chief sustainability officer for Glenstone and author of "The Organic Lawn Care Manual." Glenstone does not use chemical fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides. Instead, gardeners spread a thin layer of compost on the grass in the spring, irrigate deeply every once in a while, and mow with the cutters set 4 inches high.
The short grass height once advocated by the American Garden Club is really too short for trouble-free lawns, according to Debra Ricigliano, lead horticulture consultant for the University of Maryland Extension Service.
"A mowing height of 3 to 4 inches for tall fescue (grass) helps to reduce weeds, especially crabgrass, significantly," Ricigliano says. "Close mowing actually causes the lawn to deteriorate."
Tukey agrees. "Every weed starts from seed at some point," he says, and applying one-quarter inch of dark compost and then keeping the grass relatively high keeps most of those seeds too shaded to germinate.
As an alternative to compost, some experts advocate application of corn gluten meal.
To add nitrogen to the soil at Glenstone, Tukey says they allow clover to grow amid the grass, and leave the grass clippings on the lawn, which is not only easier, but helps to return nutrients to the ground.
"You should mow lawns as needed — more frequently when it is actively growing in the spring and fall and less frequently in the hot, dry part of the summer," Ricigliano says. "You shouldn't remove more than one-third of the leaf blade at each cutting."
Taller grass helps to retain moisture, letting homeowners water less frequently. Watering too often can encourage fungal diseases. When you do water, Tukey advises, water deeply, wetting the soil to 4 to 6 inches (you can check this with a spade), to encourage the grass to develop deep roots. "Deep roots can overcome insects and disease," he says.
Organic gardening requires patience, bestows reward
The one thing home gardeners should remember about chemical-free lawn care, Tukey says, is that results aren't instant; they take time. Weeds, pests and diseases usually indicate soil deficiencies, though, and over the long-term, organic methods develop better soil and thus, healthier lawns.
When you fertilize using compost and grass clippings, Tukey says, "It's not plant food. It's soil food."
— Leah A. Zeldes, Tribune Brand Publishing