Lawn care is more than watering and killing ‘weeds’ – The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

My grassman career started 25 years ago when my dad decided I was old enough to push a lawnmower. Once I mastered the art of keeping the hallowed home lawn in venerable shape, I was promoted to taking care of neighbors' lawns. I mowed, raked, fertilized, and sprayed chemicals with a fastidious concern for perfection. Fast forward a couple decades, and here I am, taking care of those same lawns as owner of Organic Lawn. The only difference is my definition of perfection.

Recently, some friends of mine were lamenting how the Joneses lawn next door was more perfect than theirs. The Joneses watered daily, meticulously mowed, and voraciously stamped out diversity in their sea of Kentucky Blue. My friends just bought their home last summer and dont have an underground sprinkler system and spend most of their time biking and trail running instead of moving sprinklers. Their lawn had gone dormant and turned brown. Not only that, it had a couple dandelions. They were living in shame, avoiding eye contact with the Joneses, shopping for a company to install a sprinkler system, and weighing the pros and cons of spraying chemicals to kill the weeds.

Why were my friends trying to keep up with the Joneses? The Joneses are everything that is wrong with lawn care. Watering too frequently, mowing short, and nuking the soil microbiome with chemicals are the last practices anyone should desire to emulate. Allowing for natural diversity, taking care of the biological communities in the soil, and managing in a way that limits water use are far more important. Brown grass in late summer and the occasional dandelion never killed anyone, but glyphosate certainly has. The Joneses should be keeping up with my friends.

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Excerpt from:
Lawn care is more than watering and killing 'weeds' - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle