A Healthy Lawn, A Beautiful Lawn

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A Healthy Lawn, A Beautiful Lawn

Take back your weekends, throw away the toxic chemicals and make your yard the envy of the neighborhood. Here's how.



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Growing a thick patch of grass is easier than you think. A lot easier. You build the soil, grow the right grass for your conditions, feed it the natural way, and your lawn will be lush and lovely, and able to outcompete weeds.

Start with the soil. Grass grows best in soil that is high in organic matter (which is made up of dead plants in various stages of decay). Organic matter helps sandy soils hold water and nutrients. It prevents the compaction of clay soils. (Compacted soil is so dense that water can't drain from it properly and oxygen can't reach plant roots.) In every kind of soil, organic matter nourishes microorganisms and they make essential nutrients available to grass roots.

How do you increase the organic matter in your soil? Two very simple ways: First, when the leaves fall from the trees, don't bother to rake them up. Instead, chop them into small pieces by running over them with the lawn mower; then let them rest in peace. You'll be surprised by how quickly they break down and disappear. (See, we promised you less work.)

Second, leave the grass clippings on the lawn when you mow. As they decompose, they contribute nitrogen (the nutrient that makes grass grow thick) to the soil—almost 2 pounds of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet of soil each season—which you'd otherwise have to add with fertilizer. Grass clippings add a lot of organic matter to the soil.

Don't believe people who tell you that clippings left on the lawn contribute to thatch, a layer on top of the soil that blocks moisture and oxygen from reaching plant roots. Just the opposite is true: Fresh clippings stimulate earthworm activity, which breaks down thatch. Overfertilizing is the most common cause of thatch.

Leaving grass clippings on the lawn is the best and most effortless thing you can do to grow a thicker, healthier lawn. William Dest, Ph.D., associate professor emeritus of turfgrass studies at the University of Connecticut, compared lawns where the clippings had been left behind with lawns where they had been removed. He found that the lawns with the clippings had:

45 percent less crabgrass

Up to 66 percent less disease

Up to 45 percent more earthworms

60 percent more water reaching plant roots

25 percent greater root mass (which means less room for weeds and more drought tolerance for grass)

50 percent reduced need for nitrogen fertilizer

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