Every spring the smell of fresh-mown lawns wafts through the air. Which signals time to fire up the mower, buy the synthetic lawn care products to fill into the spreader, and have at the season long battle against nature.

Or not. Because if you’re tired of your chemical-saturated lawn maintenance routine maybe it’s time to get your grass off performance-enhancing drugs. Turning instead to more sustainable methods to achieve a lawn that’s still perfect, the envy of the neighborhood, yet eco-friendly too.

Now organic lawn care begins with the grasses you plant. It also involves watering wisely, feeding sustainably, mowing right, while dealing with weeds or pests organically. Let’s briefly learn what each entails and then some.

Going Native When Deciding Which Grass to Plant

Grasses local to your area are more apt to thrive without a regular dose of pesticides. Because they are better able to fend off pests on their own without chemical assistance. For that reason you want to plant warm season grasses if you live in the south, cool season varieties up north and go with transitional strains if you live somewhere in the middle.

Feeding Your Lawn the Organic Way

Question: How much should I water my grass exactly?

Innocent enough question. But one with a myriad of answers really. With the best one being “It depends.” Let me explain.

The rule of thumb you see most often shared is to water an inch a week. But what happens is that rules of thumb are all too son taken to be iron clad rules by some. Chiseled in stone as it were and to be adhered to at all costs.

Yet the answer to how much and often to water your grass is really dependent on a variety of factors. Simply spouting a rule of thumb and being done with it won’t cut it for that reason.

For starters you need to know how often it rains. Pretty obvious, yes. But I had to point it out.

Related to that last point is you only want to water when your lawn needs it. And it’s not like it has a calendar counting down the days to the next water-fest. But if it looks weak and limp (under stress) and when you walk on your grass you can look back and see footprints because it doesn’t spring back like it should, well, it’s fair to say that it’s time to water.