Aerating vs Dethatching When Overseeding

Good seed to soil contact is about as important as watering grass seed to get good germination rates when overseeding. Core aerating and dethatching are both recommended practices when you plant to overseed. But is it better to aerate or dethatch when overseeding?

I've done both in the past and in my opinion, dethatching will give you better results. This post contains my recommendations for dethatching and overseeding.

Use Rain Gauges To Save Water

A rain gauge is a device you place in your garden to see how much rain has fallen on your landscape in a given period. There are simple rain catchers as well as wireless electronic versions.

They help you accurately determine how much rain has fallen on your property which will help you save water. If you followed my advice on how to water your lawn, you already know how much water your lawn needs. A rain gauge will tell you how much rain fall you had so you can adjust your watering cycle so you can subtract the amount of time necessary to account for natural rain fall.

Make Your Own Soil Sampler

In quite a few of my posts, including my last one in how to water your lawn, I mentioned a soil probe sometimes called a soil sampler. It's a device used to pull a round section (core) out of your soil for examination.

It can give you a lot of information about your soil and comes in very handy if you need to see how deep your roots are, take samples to send to a lab, see how moist your soil is, etc. The design is pretty simple, just a tube with a cut out on one side. You push it down into the soil, twist it and pull it out. In the opening you can see your soil profile and grass roots. Or dump out the contents and play around with it. Mush it around, feel the texture. Whatever you need to get a good sense of your soil. Pull a few more cores, remove the thatch and grass and send it to the lab to find out even more.

How To Get Grass To Grow In Shade

Growing grass in shade can present many problems. Like all plants, grass needs sunlight but shade cast by your home or trees leave some areas without much sunlight. There are also problems associated with lawns in shade that you'll need to keep an eye out for.

Some common problems with shade lawns are poor density, compacted soil, excess moisture and moss.
In this post I'll cover some issues and tips on how to grow grass in a shady spot.

1" Of Water Per Week and Other Lawn Watering Myths

How much should you water your lawn? That's a very common question and one that gets asked frequently and there are some common answers. They may have started out as rules-of-thumb but have been repeated so frequently as to at least verge on the edge of being classified as myths.

So lets go over why you shouldn't go by these suggestions and then cover how you should really water your lawn. Bear with me, it's pretty easy, the only hard part is understanding why you can't let someone else tell you how to water your lawn. There's even a tool to tell you how long you need to water your lawn. The hardest part is probably reading through this, I know I can be a bit long winded. Hopefully it's worth it.

How To Take Great Lawn Photos

So you've worked hard getting your lawn to look great and you want to show it off on the various organic lawn care forums that have helped you get to where you are.

You walk outside, digital camera in hand and ear to ear grin as you snap pictures of your luscious green lawn. As you're downloading the photos from your camera so you can upload them for posting you start scratching your head. What happened to your nice green lawn? Where's the dark green color? Someone must have secretly swapped out your memory card and replaced the photos you took with a lawn that looks yellow and old. That's clearly not your lawn!

Don't worry, your lawn is fine, you're pictures are not but with a few simple tips and one relatively inexpensive piece of equipment you can have your lawn as good as it does in pictures as it does in real life. Having a camera where you can control the exposure settings and the ability to add a filter is recommended but you can still get better results just by taking photos at the right time.

The photo at the top of this post shows the same section of lawn taken on the same day. The right side looks more like what the lawn actually looks like the left side is what the camera thought the lawn looked like.

Get Organic Corn Meal Delivered Every Month

Corn meal is used by organic gardeners to help fight and prevent lawn diseases caused by fungus. Applying at a rate of 10 lbs per 1,000 square feet every month helps prevent disease, 20lbs to fight an active disease. It is also a very mild fertilizer. Around 1.7-0.7-0.4 NPK. It's not just good for your lawn but also other plants (roses) and vegetables (tomatoes) that are susceptible to disease.

I just found something that I think is worth sharing. It's going to be a little more expensive than buying it from your supermarket, which is already more expensive than buying at a feed store or wholesale food distributor but you get the benefit of having it delivered to your home every month for free! I've never been to a feed store and don't have any locally.

No excuse to forget it. It comes, you apply! And it's 100% organic so you're not applying genetecally engineered products to your organic lawn.

It's normally about $35 for 24 lbs with free shipping, but if you order a subscription it's only around $30. There is no obigaion. You can discontinue your subscription when you don't need it. You just have to remember to start your subscription in early spring when you start getting your lawn ready to wake up.
Click here to order your free delivery subscription of Organic Corn Meal now.

UPDATE: Also recently found Great River Organic Milling, Organic Specialty Corn Meal, 25-Pound Package which is a better deal Even more so if you subscribe to receive it monthly.

Edging An Overgrown Lawn

photo by SriMesh

I'm going to be honest. For a long time I didn't even know edging a lawn was a thing! There's a lot of things you don't learn growing up in an apartment.

Edging your lawn isn't that difficult but if its been many months or years since your lawn has been edged it's going to be a little harder than usual.

If you haven't edged your lawn where it meets a hard surface like a driveway, it's going to be very tough to get a clean edge. I ran into that problem recently and this is how I tackled it.

Grass Growing On Sidewalk

The grass, roots and soil over time will creep onto the hard surface. If it's been months or years (or never?) you might find yourself with an edge that looks like the (crude) illustration below.

What you want is an edge that looks like this:

In a situation like this, a string trimmer won't cut it, you'll need an edger as I discussed in my trimmer vs edger post. But that's just going to make things easier, it's not going to make it easy.

String Trimmer vs Edger

You know the old adage, use the right tool for the right job. Well that definitely applies here. Just like it's possible to drive a nail into wood with a pipe wrench, a hammer does a faster, better job.

Many people buy a string trimmer and try to use it as an edger in the hope of creating a nice clean edge where their lawn meets a sidewalk, driveway or path. Many trimmer heads can even be repositioned to make it easier to edge or may even be called a trimmer/edger but in reality, a string trimmer is good at maintaining an edge but a dedicated edger will do a better job creating the edge.

Where To Buy Cornmeal in Bulk

Regular old yellow cornmeal is used by many organic gardeners both as a fertilizer and to control and treat diseases in lawns and plants. You can spread it over your lawn and water it in or apply it to the soil around plants such as roses or tomatoes to prevent and treat disease.

When I first tried it I was impressed by the results. I've been using it almost every year in the spring to fertilize the lawn and help prevent disease. When other lawns in my neighborhood turn various shades of brown, red and orange mine typically stays green.

There have been some university studies that show its effects. The application rate is 10-20 lbs per 1,000 square feet every three to four weeks to help prevent disease and 20 lbs per 1,000 square feet if there is an active lawn disease. You should start seeing results within 3 weeks.

Organic Cornmeal Delivery

If you're having a hard time finding a local supplier of bulk cornmeal or you don't want to go out of your way Amazon has a great deal on 25lb bags of Great River Organic Corn Meal with free shipping.

Cornmeal treats lawn disease because it becomes a host for trichoderma. Trichoderma is a fungus prevalent in many soils and many strains act as a fungicide.

As a fertilizer it is very mild having an NPK rating of around 1.7-0.7-0.4. At 10 and 20 lbs per 1,000 square feet that turns out to be 0.17 and 0.34 lbs of nitrogen per 1,000 square feet which is very light for a fertilizer but you can apply it frequently without burning your lawn. For many, the disease control is the main reason to use cornmeal, the fertilization is a bonus.

Finding enough cornmeal for your lawn can be a challenge but here are some ideas of where you can look to find large bags of cornmeal if you don't live near a feed store.

Mowing Tips For A Healthy Lawn

Following these tips will help keep your grass looking it's best. This isn't about creating an even surface or making perfect stripes in your lawn. It's about keep your lawn thick, green and free of weeds and disease.

Every little thing you do to your lawn can have a tremendous impact on the appearance of your lawn. Mowing is no exception and sometimes poor mowing can really hurt your curb appeal.

The following tips are easy to implement and will improve the look and health of your lawn.

Is Compost Enough For My Lawn?

Some organic lawn care proponents and even some organic lawn service companies feel that all your lawn needs is compost and compost tea. Are they right?

I don't think anyone that is into organic gardening or organic lawn care dismiss the benefits of compost but is only using compost enough to get the best lawn you can? Well I'm not an expert on compost who has performed decades of research on compost but Abigail A. Maynard, PhD. of the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station is.

The Best Composter Is The Cheapest!

Yup, that's right! Those fancy compost tumblers that can cost hundreds of dollars didn't perform as well as a simple and affordable $40 composter according to a test of some popular home composters I found on youtube. (Video below). It got the hottest out of all the composters tested, likely due to it's better air circulation.

It's basic, it's easy to use (I got one shortly after writing this) and really cheap!

Geobin Composter

The Geobin Composting System is a simple to use composter from Presto Products. It's not exactly what was shown in the video but made from the same company. Seems like an updated design.

The Geobin 3' tall and you can adjust the diameter up to 4' but it's recommended to keep the diameter between 3-3.5'. It consists of a mesh plastic perimeter and stakes to hold it in place.

The Geobin is very similar to the homemade chicken wire and garden stake composters except it's a smaller mesh. This still provides good air circulation but restricts a lot of the sunlight from hitting the material which can lead to weed germination. This can be a problem with chicken wire compost bins too. Since it's made of durable plastic, you don't have to worry about anything rusting.

Removing Ground Ivy From Lawns

Ground Ivy, also known as creeping charlie can be a terrible nuisance in a lawn that is difficult to kill.

There are two ways to kill ground ivy organically. Use a solution of borax on it, or manually remove it.

Borax can be found in the laundry aisle of many supermarkets under the brand name 20 Mule Team Borax. Borax is an natural occurring compound but it does not break down over time so repeated use can cause problems. Borax can also harm other plants including your grass, as well as your pets.