It’s Natural to Want a Healthy-Looking Lawn

If you’ve been using synthetic chemicals--and chemicals alone--to improve the appearance of your lawn, you’re missing alternative strategies that not only help you reach your goal, but also are a little kinder to the environment.

One problem with chemical pesticides and herbicides is that they offer only a temporary solution. Over the long term, weeds, diseases and insects still enjoy the upper hand.

If you apply a selective crab-grass herbicide, with luck, you’ll kill the current stand of crab grass. The problem is that thousands of crab-grass seeds lie ready to start the cycle anew.

A similar conundrum exists with insects. Insects are best controlled by other insects. This has been the case for millions of years. When we kill nuisance bugs, we also kill their natural enemies. A new batch would soon drift over from your neighbor’s lawn.

Another problem is that many of us have never figured out exactly which chemicals to use, or how and when to apply them effectively.

We might apply a pesticide for the grubs we find in June, for example, not knowing that grubs don’t feed until about the third week in July. In that case, all we end up killing are beneficial insects and birds, which would probably have kept the grubs in check anyway.

Here’s the most important thing to know about lawns: If you were to establish a hardy, disease- and drought-resistant grass variety, many of your current lawn problems would go away. In fact, often the best way to reduce water and chemical usage is to till up that beloved, old-generation bluegrass.

The problem is that traditional bluegrass has a very shallow root structure, with nearly all of its roots within 5 inches of the surface. When surface moisture is depleted quickly, as it is in many parts of the country, the grass becomes distressed and susceptible to disease.

The more constant subsoil moisture that rests only a few inches farther down remains out of reach.

Lacking sufficient moisture, traditional bluegrass will revert to its thinned-out, conservation mode, leaving an open invitation to deep-rooted weeds to fill the gaps.

Add to the mix the fact that traditional bluegrass has little shade tolerance, becomes thatch bound annually, is genetically vulnerable to several kinds of blight and a host of insects, and other grass varieties begin to have real appeal.

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Let’s consider an equally unimproved, though hardier, competitor: tall fescue, or K-31 fescue. Its roots are long enough to reach the more constant subsoil moisture. This means a tremendous water savings. It is also genetically more resistant to fungal and bacterial leaf blight, and grubs find its roots much less appealing than bluegrass roots.

Well-established fescue can choke out some weeds, and, as a clump grass, it won’t invade the neighbor’s yard or your flower garden. Finally, it won’t commit suicide with a dense layer of thatch.

If tall fescue, (with its coarse leaves and rapid top growth) is not for you, then you might consider red fescue, or one of the new, fine-blade, dwarf fescues. How good are the new wonder grasses?

Some tall fescue varieties have roots that reach down a foot or more and are actually poisonous to some insects.