Where I live in NW Indiana, we get some freaking snow! In fact, some winters I have to sit back and wonder why the heck I still live here, LOL. Anyway, because of the amount of snow we get, I have to have a snow blower to clear my driveway and sidewalks with.

When I first moved into this house about 7 years ago, I went the quickest and simplest route and bought a gas powered single stage snow blower. It was a Yard Machines brand and worked well. However, I gotta be honest: the fumes were nasty bad and it was a pain in the butt to manuever. Plus, I hated having to add stabilizer to the gas at the end of every winter and store it.

So this year, I bought an electric snow blower, the Snow Joe SJ620 18-Inch 13.5-Amp Electric Snow Thrower. I bought it because it was under $200 and required no gas, so no fumes! That is eco friendly, and also cheap! Here is the review I did on YouTube.

I have always taught you guys that the way to have a healthy organic lawn is to first start with healthy lawn soil. If you can get your hard-packed and basically sterile clay soil to be alive with bio-organisms, you can have a nice lawn that will stand up to the test of time.

How To Soften Clay Soil

There are a couple ways to soften up and improve the clay soil that is the foundation of your turf. The first one and best one (because it requires no chemical or anything resembling a chemical) is to have the lawn aerated. Aerating your lawn  is a process whereby cores of soil are removed from the lawn. The result is the clay soil is literally “aired out” and water and nutrients are able to penetrate into areas that were previously hard and compacted.

I recommend you aerate your lawn every single year, however, if you can do it in the spring and the fall, all the better. Of course, after you aerate, you should also throw down some fresh grass seed.

The next thing you can do is use liquid gypsum. It’s a very easy to apply product that does a lot of the same things that an aeration will do. The natural ingredients in the liquid lawn aeration will literally penetrate into hard clay soil and help bring in fresh air and nutrients. It’s best to use the two of these strategies in conjunction with one another.

But I realize that a lot of you are not able or willing to go and rent and aeration machine and then spend labor hours using it… I get it. So using the liquid lawn aeration in the form of liquid gypsum is a great alternative that works. Get It Here.

Going Organic – It’s A Great Choice

If you want to know how to have an organic lawn that is thick, lush, green and beautiful, then you have stumbled onto the right blog. What you will find as you “thumb” through the pages here is that I am NOT an extremist who preaches organics as a way to save the world. Of course, I do believe that going organic in your lawn care is better for our environment, but on the flip side, I don’t believe that synthetic lawn products are BAD either. Let’s explore shall we?

Synthetic or Man-Made Lawn Chemicals – Pros and Cons

The number one reason why synthetic lawn chemicals get a bad rap when it comes to the environment is because homeowners don’t follow label directions! Sorry guys, I’m not trying to make you feel bad, but the majority of you have this whole “more is better” philosophy that means you just dump and dump and dump thinking your lawn will become beautiful because of it. And in the short term, you are right! If you put lots of synthetic fert on your lawn, it will be VERY green… but not for long.

In addition, there are synthetic products out there that make things easier for you that aren’t really good for the environment or your lawn either. As an example, let’s look at the typcial granular “weed-n-feed” product you can buy at big box stores.

A weed-n-feed bag contains a couple things: Fertilizer and weed killer – both mixed in the bag together.

So you head out to your lawn in April to spread this stuff, and a

s you throw it out on the lawn using your broadcast lawn spreader you are laying fertilizer evenly on the lawn (good assuming you set the spreader properly) but you are also throwing weed killer all over the lawn too – but what if there are sections of the lawn that don’t have weeds? Does it make sense to throw weed killer in an area where there are no weeds? Of course not! But you can’t control it…

Finally, synthetic lawn products don’t do anything to build the natural soil organisms that a lawn needs to stay healthy for the long haul. In fact, using synthetic fertilizers creates a dependance… like drugs in humans (dramatic I know LOL)

However, you can use a combination of synthetics and organics as a way to boost a crappy lawn with a goal of going to 100% organic, and my book here tells you all about it. The idea is to use synthetics in a controlled and smart way to get your lawn growing and thick and mostly weed-free, then move to 100% organic treatments.

Growing An Organic Lawn

Once you have a good foundation, you can go 100% natural and organic and have a beautiful lawn that is easy to maintain and looks better too. An organic lawn will look 100% more vigorous during the year, even during the most stressful times (like drought and heat) and can stand up to insect and disease pressure better as well.

Organic treatments will built your soil and good soil is the key to a good lawn. Here is a quick list of some posts that will help you understand this concept:

Ringer Fertilizer review

Making Organic Lawn Applications work better

Core aeration benefits

Ok guys, so depending where you live, your time is limited here for the season! I live in Indiana and we have about 2 more weeks where we can do some fall lawn care and actually make a difference. In fact, if you will perform these three actions NOW, you will be thanking me come spring next year because your lawn will be off to a great start.

Stop Crab Grass Now

You guys ask a ton of questions about corn gluten meal and using it as an effective preventor of crabgrass. I always tell you that you will get minimal results but this will improve over time. That is because the corn gluten needs to essentially build up in the soil and that takes several applications. So I say “put down corn gluten NOW just before winter” and start up the process early. I also recommend you apply corn gluten again in the spring as early as possible, as well as again in mid-spring.

The key with corn gluten is to apply it at a rate that is heavy enough to work. Keep in mind that with organics you oftentimes need to apply ALOT to get the desired result. Follow the labeling on your product you buy so you can be assured you are getting the biggest bang for your lawn care dollars.

Mulch Your Leaves Into The Soil

I highly recommend you keep mowing your lawn every single week until the leaves are done falling. Use that mulching blade to mish and mash those leaves up into bits and send them back into the soil. Now this may require you mow over the lawn a couple times each week, but guys, remember, we are ORGANIC here and the commitment to “go green” sometimes requires a bit of extra work.

Now, this won’t work if you have 10 large oaks in your back yard, but within reason, I highly recommend you recycle leaves back into the soil. In some cases I’ve had people become concerned about soil pH in regards to oak leaves, but if you follow my other lawn care tips here, you will be just fine.

The idea is that leaves represent free organic fertilizer as well as general conditioning for the soil… so why rake them all up and get rid of them? Use them when possible!

Apply Organic Lawn Fertilizer

I am a big fan of Milorganite as you guys know. It’s the best all around organic fertilizer I have ever used. With that in mind, just before winter is a great time to apply a solid application to your lawn. I recommend your fall treatment be at 7 lbs of milorganite per 1,000 square feet of turf area. This is enough to sit in the thatch layer and be worked slowly into the soil over the winter. Keep in mind that organics need heat and friction to break down. We want the Milorganite to be “imbedded” in the soil so that when temps warm up next spring, it begins to immediately release nutrients.

I also recommend you apply a small amount of sharp sand on top of the Milorganite to help it penetrate faster.

So to recap our little fall-winter lawn care schedule here.. we want to first apply corn gluten, then immediately apply milorganite and sand.. all the wile mulching in some of the fall leaves. Simple, effective! (and, no, you won’t “burn” the lawn with any of this, I promise)

It’s time to consider a lawn treatment plan for the fall. I say this because I know a good number of you either did nothing all year for your turf or whatever you did do just didn’t work. Either way, you need to get that lawn looking good prior to winter and I can tell you that FALL IS A GREAT TIME to get started! In fact, you can get better results FASTER IN FALL than you can in the spring… and you can do it organic and natural!

Let me help you… just follow these steps and your lawn will be looking good in 6 weeks flat, no kidding.

Aerate The Lawn

Lawn aeration is a big time fundamental here guys – especially when you are going organic with your lawn care. Aeration does a lot of good, like loosening soil, breaking down thatch, helping the grass roots to spread and thicken. It is a mechanical process so it works every time and requires no chemicals. But it is also going to help in our little fall lawn treatment cycle here.

You see, when you aerate, you are basically poking a bunch of holes in the lawn that allow the grass roots to fill in fast. The good news is that turfgrass naturally thickens in the root system in the fall anyway, and the more roots, the thicker the top. But there is more… read the next tip–

Fall Organic Lawn Fertilizer

I want you to fertilizer your lawn RIGHT AFTER you aerate the lawn. This is important because our fertilizer will fall directly into those holes (or wash into them) and directly into the root system. This is important because of the fact that organic lawn fertilizers don’t break down from water/moisture like traditional fertilizers do. In fact, organics need heat to break down. So we want the fert to get in teh holes where it can stay nice and warm and break down fast, then be readily available for the grass roots to take in. Here are a couple of my favorite organic lawn fertilizers. Just make sure you apply the correct “pounds on the ground” as the label specifies.

Grass Seed – Over Seed

Finally, it is a good time to go ahead and throw down some grass seed now as well. Yep, right after the fertilizer is spread, throw in some fresh grass seed. Here is a quick video I did that will help you understand how to grow fresh seed in your lawn.

It’s been 90 degrees plus here in the Midwest over the last two weeks, and this has put quite a bit of stress onto our cool season lawns. In fact, it’s been downright tough keeping the lawns green, but not impossible.

Now, I realize there is a whole faction of people out there who literally preach against lawn irrigation. Then think it’s a waste of water. I am not here to get into that argument (but since I am telling you how to water your lawn in summer, you can guess how I feel about it).

My goal here is to help you keep your lawn green and healthy during the hottest months of the summer while maximizing the water you lay down. We want it to get deep into the root system of the lawn, and here is how…

1) First, we need to use the best sprinkler. A good quality sprinkler will keep the water low to the ground so it doesn’t blow off target (like onto the driveway or into the street). It will also throw out larger droplets that do not evaporate as easily because they are heavier and can penetrate deeper into the lawn when they hit. I recommend impulse sprinklers for this task, also called “impact sprinklers.” A quality, metal/zink constructed impact sprinkler will be your best tool for watering your lawn properly during summer heat.

2) Water only in the morning if possible. Watering in the morning prior to 10 AM will allow the lawn to drink before they sun comes in at full blast and sucks it away. If you water at night, the water will sit there too long and can cause fungal problems. However, if you have no other choice and can only water at night, then go ahead.

3) Irrigate twice per week if temps are in the 80s, and three-times-per-week if we touch into the 90s. When you do irrigate, I want you to lay down a solid 3/4″ of water in each area or zone. I can get down 3/4″ of water with my impact sprinkler in about 55 minutes depending how wide I set it to cover. If you are not sure, use a rain guage to test it. You only need to do this once to know how long it takes to get down the right amount of water.

4) Irrigate after you mow. If you mow on Saturday, then I recommend you make Sunday one of your watering days. This is because the lawn is freshly cut and shorter in length, allowing more water to penetrate faster.

It’s OKAY To Let The Lawn Go Dormant

One little talked about option for your lawn during the summer is to let it go into dormancy. Turf will naturally turn brown and go dormant during the hottest months if it does not get enough water. It’s a mechanism of protection and it perfectly healthy for the turf. We just need to ensure the lawn gets about 1/4 ” of water every 10 days or so in order to avoid drought damage. This is usually something you can get just from sporadic summer rains unless we hit a complete drought situation.

The lawn will turn green naturally in fall when temps cool off and more rain hits. They key here is to let the lawn stay dormant once it gets there. If you do decide to start watering a dormant lawn, you MUST stay consistent with the irrigation once the lawn recovers. It is very unhealthy for turf to be allowed to go in and out of summer dormancy.

SO there you go guys, I hope you are all set up to keep that little patch of green love healthy and vigorous all summer long!