Episode 13: Natural lawn care: organic fertilizer, native plants and green lawn mowers [7:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadT: Most of us love lush, beautiful yards with vivid green grass and vibrant flowers. Unfortunately, those yards are often created by using copious amounts of synthetic fertilizer and gasoline, but alternatives do exist.
Ladd Smith, co-owner of In Harmony, a sustainable landscape company based in Bothell, Washington, says his company uses organic fertilizers in their work.
Smith: They are derived from materials that break down and feed the soil, not just the plants. It’s how mother nature has worked through the years: manures and plant debris has been broken down by the soil organisms. Traditional fertilizers are quick-release, and they don’t do anything to feed the soil or the soil biology. It’s mostly a quick nitrogen fix.
T: Matt Broering, owner of Broering Landscaping in Indianapolis, says organic fertilizer is important for the safety of pets, children, local water supplies, and the environment.
Broering: The main reason for using organic fertilizer is to relieve the environment of all the harmful chemicals associated with herbicides and other fertilizers on the market. When it comes down to the best nutrients for any plant, organic is by far the best way to go.
T: Ladd Smith says there’s a wide variety of organic fertilizers available to homeowners.
Smith: There’s a plethora because everyone’s getting into it. All the major fertilizer companies are making organic products. Some are manure-based, like chicken manure. Some are soybean-based, which gets nitrogen from plant material. Most of the materials are found in any garden stores now because of their popularity.
T: So if you can buy organic fertilizers at your local home & garden store, why pay someone to apply them for you?
Smith: Nowadays, a lot of people are so busy that it’s difficult to understand all the different fertilizations and the different times of year the products should be down in order to get the results they’re looking for. Plus, having someone to run questions by just gives added value of having that expertise on the property, not just the fertilization.
T: Matt Broering says many homeowners have difficulty properly applying fertilizer.
Broering: If you do some areas and miss others, you’ll have a striping effect where it gets really green, and areas that didn’t get nutrients will be much more yellow, especially if there’s a drought in that region of the country.
T: You might pay twice as much for organic fertilizer compared to the traditional synthetic fertilizer. However, rising petroleum costs are leveling the playing “field”, so-to-speak. Broering and Smith agree that though organic fertilizer is traditionally more expensive, the cost is well worth the benefits.
Smith: There might be a little bit of a price difference in beginning, but they find they’ll be using less and less in the future because the soil is becoming healthy enough that it’s possible to use materials and the minerals in a more efficient basis — you don’t have to put so much fertilizer down. Also, we need people to understand the environmental costs of using too much of these products or fertilizers with pesticides connected to them. We’re seeing environmental problems when too much of these products get into our streams and waterways and underground water systems. If people added those costs of the problems that we’re having to clean up as taxpayers and consumers, they’ll find organic products are the best.
T: If you’re interested in saving money in your yard, you might also be interested in native plants, which are more resistant to climactic swings, reducing the need for watering and saving you money while beautifying your yard. Broering says it’s easier to care for plants indigenous to your home’s region.
Broering: They require a lot less watering — virtually no watering except for establishing them after planting. They’re more disease- and bug-resistant to the region that you’re in, more so than one brought in from another part of the country.
T: Smith says native plants also help your local wildlife.
Smith: We think native plants are best to use as a transition zone from our landscape into native areas, to give hedgerows so it’s a transition zone so animals have protection, homes, shelter and food sources.
T: As with organic fertilizer, it’s wise to hire an expert to help you with native plants.
Smith: For most people it’s a pretty daunting undertaking, trying to understand everything about the landscape and what they’re looking for.
T: Broering agrees.
Broering: You’ll probably see a better planting method out of a professional: we know what’s required to get the roots to take off and for the plant to not see much shock. That’s one of the biggest reasons they die when they’re planted by homeowners, just because they’re not planted correctly.
T: Most professional landscapers are happy to work with organic fertilizer and native plants. If you hire a highly rated pro off of Angie’s List, odds are good they’ll be willing to help your lawn and garden, naturally!
Organic fertilizer and native plants help with a healthy lawn, but you can go even further with a “green” lawnmower. Andy Humphrey is owner of Ecomowers, an online purveyor of earth-friendly goods based in Traverse City, Michigan. He says the United States’ gradual shift towards eco-friendliness has brought increased demand for push-reel mowers, which have zero emissions in addition to other benefits.
Humphrey: They’re really quiet, there’s no noise, they’re easy to store —— sometimes storage becomes an issue when you have a townhouse and don’t have a shed — and they’re good for exercise.
T: Humphrey says old-fashioned reel mowers were difficult to push because the blades came in direct contact with each other, causing friction, and gasoline-powered mowers were more convenient and widespread. Today’s reel mowers, though based on the original versions, are better.
Humphrey: The older metals that were used were much heavier, and the concept of reel mowing disappeared. Now that metals are lighter — technology’s changed — these mowers are actually very easy to push.
There’s no metal on metal contact, which would cause the mower to become dull. We’ve seen them last 7-10 years without a sharpening.
T: Humphrey says the short-term costs are often less than that of a new gasoline-powered push mower.
Humphrey: I think you can go to a typical big-box store and buy a fairly inexpensive gas mower. I can’t tell you that it’ll last more than a year, so we tend to say that the long-term costs are much lower with an ecomower. There really is no need for tune-ups with these mowers: no replacing spark plugs, air filters, oil filters, sharpening the blades, and so for about $10 a year for basic cleaning equipment, that’s the only long-term cost.
T: Expect to pay about $150 for a basic earth-friendly push-reel mower, on up to about $250 for a top-of-the-line model.
For links and more info on natural and earth-friendly lawn care, check out our website, angieslistpodcasts.com.
Until next time, this is Tristan. Thanks for taking the time to list-en!
