Last Updated on August 29, 2023 by ILGM Ninjas
This is what we are after, a beautiful, healthy, resilient lawn that you can enjoy. That uses water efficiently (less), eliminates toxic chemicals, greens up earlier (without help) and stays greener longer into the winter (doesn’t turn brown). OK, that sounds great but how did we get here? This seems so elusive for the average person but it is really simple. There are only a few things that need to happen to have a plant that flourishes. Here they are:
- You need sunlight. Plants make their own food using sunlight.
- You need Air. Plants gather resources from the sky to make things happen.
- You need soil. This should be synonymous with microbiology (microbes). This is also a source of nutrients where plants gather resources to carry out biological functions so the plant can grow and heal.
- You need water. Water moves the gathered nutrients around to the cells in the plant
- You need certain elements, macro and micro from Nitrogen to Selenium that provide everything that a plant needs to live a healthy life.
When there is deprivation or excess you will have a problem. This manifests in stress which leads to disease and pestilence which leads to death. These are often misunderstood how they work together and all too often the problems that arise from this misunderstanding become the normal existence in how we function maintaining our lawns from year to year and through this reinforcement of bad habit and practice in not understanding the proper way to approach this equation leads to very bad systems in managing usually a bad way of doing things. Having good information is a good start so we can save time and save money. Since we have engaged in our Regenerative Biological System after getting away from a synthetic one, we have been able to decipher that which needs to be corrected, getting away from the failing system that has so many people feeling oppressed and hopeless when it comes to maintaining a really nice looking lawn. There are some very basic things we need to know to having a truly well functioning lawn but how do we get there? These are a few starting points that we must consider:
- We live in an arid climate which means that we have typically alkaline soil which makes it difficult to absorb and metabolize nutrients which require a slightly acidic soil.
- We have low organic material, under 5% (carbon) content in the soil which is one reason why our soils do not retain water or have active biological activity (mainly due to synthetic fertilizer usage)
- Watering is typically shallow which largely evaporates, causes thatch problems and limits the movement of nutrient movement through the plant.
- Irrigation is only engaged in for 6-7 months out of the year, placing great stress on the plant life.
These are just a few of the things that have been noticed in our journey towards a better system. The one thing about soil is that it is very forgiving if it is enabled. This must change in order to save our lawns and prevent a lot of wasted time and money.
We welcome those who are interested in discovering a superior way to have a better lawn.