Create your own living lawn

Don’t just stop throwing chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and money at the lawn to “go organic.”

Set the table and let soil bugs work for you.

For decades, most American gardeners have treated the dirt as it were lifeless. Bugs, of course, are bad.

But healthy soil lives, dies, excretes, drinks and breathes — and it’s full of good bugs.

If you are trying to go organic, as many more people are this year, you need to create a living lawn.

That means creating an environment where nature’s recyclers — fungi, bacteria, nematodes, earthworms and other tiny underground animals — can eat and digest organic matter.

Debris needs to be repurposed for an organic program to succeed. And plants need the products of good bug activity, from the sticky humus creating soil texture to the nutrients released by bug digestion.

Nature’s recycling soil creatures, like aboveground animals, need air and water to grow, said James McKamey, owner of McKamey Landscaping based in Apison, an organic lawn care provider since 1991.

They also need food.

If you throw lawn clippings on the ground, yet have no soil bugs to digest the material, you get thatch, he said. The debris remains on the top of the soil, undigested, undecayed.

But if your good bugs are in good shape, the bugs will eat the thatch.

“Fertilizer has to be processed by microbes in the soil,” Mr. McKamey said. “Without humus or organic matter to feed the microbes, that process is nonexistent.”

Once bugs begin to show up in your soil, you can begin to add organic matter. Annual applications of compost help. Regular applications of compost tea work, too.

Mow regularly, but cut no more than one-third of the length of the grass blade. During the growing season, roots will die back to compensate for missing top growth. Soil bugs will digest the dead roots, creating more humus for plant growth.

Growing an organic lawn requires a switch in mental gears. At first, it may seem more difficult, Mr. McKamey said.

After three to five years, however, organic lawns hold water better and require if any expensive amendments.

And no toxic chemicals need to be used.

“From a health standpoint, it’s healthier for everybody around,” Mr. McKamey said. “Organics are healthier for the lawn, the pets and people.”