Last Updated on May 27, 2025 by Brian Beck
Everyone wants an awesome lawn, right? Plant life has a profound effect on the human psyche. A well organized and structured landscape is a representation of nature that is mimicked in a landscape and a beautiful turf lawn is the foundation and palate of any successful landscape. OK, great sales speech, so why are lawns so much work and why are they so hard to keep them looking good? Well, it has almost everything to do with one big thing that everyone is overlooking, the soil.
The modern means of fertility involved synthetic fertilizers, inorganic man made chemicals that are water soluble. Plants are basically organic water pumps and they must uptake water when it is available, otherwise they experience wilt and they die. This process of taking water soluble chemicals, that are comprised of salts force the plant to uptake nutrients in a very unnatural manner causing them to uptake more water to counterbalance the salts, making them a prime target for lawn disease and insect infestations. The salts have another effect, they destroy soil biology, microbes. Either by contact with an overdose of salt or by a lack of food that the plant provides or a lack of carbon, the microbes die off and with it comes a lack of structure, compaction and this is the beginning of the end of a healthy lawn and the begging of a decades long struggle managing a failed system.
Almost everything that you associate with the problems of your lawn stem from this injury of the soil. Aeration, power-raking, weed control, insect problems, high stress, water runoff, lawn disease, high water bills, and the like, can all be traced back to the biology die off and the collapsing of the soil. This is where most people are in varying degrees. Oh, the lawn may be bright green and it might even look awesome but this type of lawn is like having a car that gets 5mpg, rather than 20mpg, meaning it is extremely inefficient and wasteful and you are footing the bill, often unknowingly.
So, wat is the solution? Get away from synthetics as soon as possible, get a soil test that provides the biological half of the equation, the cheap $20 from Wal-Mart will not work. Have someone that is experienced read the report and tell you where to start and what the soil needs to be repaired and lay the foundation for a biological ecosystem.
Let me describe what an efficient soil looks like.
A healthy soil is an efficient soil meaning you can get resources into the soil rapidly and into the plant effortlessly. This includes, a thin thatch, porous soil that has all available elements (21), that is high (3%+) in organic matter and is high in humus (40lbs/ac) with a microbe presence over 500ppm with a pH that is as close to 6.5 as possible. This soil will be able to hold a ton of water and will be able to use atmospheric nitrogen (free fertilizer) as it has nitrogen fixing bacteria. This lawn uses far less resources (anywhere from 20-50% and up to 80% in certain extreme circumstances). What you are left with is a lawn that is beautiful and cheaper to maintain that doesn’t expose you to the relentless pressure of a synthetic system. You would not believe how wasteful our lawns are and a lot of it can be avoided IF you get away from synthetics and adopt a biological system.
It’s your choice, we can help, but you have to call…call us today 719-380-0136.