Sustainable Lawn Care
What is sustainable lawn care?
It’s tending to your lawn in a way that helps preserve natural resources, such as water, that will ultimately help the environment.
Today, many homes and businesses are interested in improving their sustainability. Sustainable landscape management utilizes practices that minimize or reuse valuable resources to reduce the negative environmental impact of landscape maintenance.
Green Baron has been proudly using the WaterMaze water treatment and filtration system providing spill containment protection since 2000. This provides us a way to mitigate any spill that may occur, keep it confined and recoverable. It also captures and filters our spray truck’s wash water rinse-ate.
We’re the only landscape maintenance company in the Yakima area using the WaterMaze.
Ways a healthy lawn benefits the environment:
- It extends “living” space and provides a great play area for pets and kids.
- It removes carbon dioxide from the air.
- It helps cool the air and reduce the surrounding temperature.
- It removes pollutants, dust, and particulates from the air and water supply.
- It reduces noise pollution.
Sustainable practices for Greener Lawn Care:
Aerate the Soil
Lawn core aeration is probably one of the single best things you can do for your lawn. Removing small cores of soil from the turf helps reduce compaction and improves the ability of grass roots to expand into the soil, producing a stronger plant. The holes allow for better water and fertilizers uptake and also improve air exchange. Our local soils can contain a lot of clay and be very compacted. We recommend core aeration annually.
There are also certain products that combine well with aeration, such as wetting agents and soil conditioners that are both environmentally friendly and beneficial in reducing soil compaction and aiding water penetration into the lawn’s root zone.
Water Less Often, More Deeply
Overwatering leads to “lazy” grass roots that stay close to the surface of the soil, where they can absorb frequent irrigation. Watering less often but more deeply encourages the grass to grow deeper roots to search for water. This leads to a stronger, more resilient lawn better able to withstand drought and summer hardship.
Mow Tall
Our turf grasses are not designed to be mowed short. Few things harm a lawn more than cutting off too much of the grass blade. Mowing your lawn tall (3.5-4 inches) improves lawn health, creates a more resilient plant, promotes deeper roots and makes it more difficult for weeds or other invasive species to get established in your lawn. You’ll also be able water less often because longer grass insulates the soil, keeping it cooler and slowing down evaporation and moisture loss.
Regular mower maintenance is crucial to maintaining a sustainable lawn. Change your spark plug yearly. They’re inexpensive and can make a huge difference in the way your mower runs. Sharp mower blades will make your cuts cleaner, lessening the time it takes to mow, reducing fuel consumption and your carbon footprint. When you notice the cuts are ragged and have brown edges, it means you need to sharpen your blades. Generally, it’s a good idea to sharpen your blade(s) at least 2-4 times a year (depending on the size of your lawn).
Mowing with a mulching mower is an excellent way to return finely cut grass clippings back where the organic matter can benefit the lawn. It also eliminates the hassle and expense of disposing grass clippings. Grass clippings do not add to the thatch layer, mulched properly they’ll break down completely.
But not all mowers can mulch. Mulching mowers have decks designed to move air so the grass clippings circulate back to the mulching blades repeatedly producing finely chopped clippings.
However, even the best mulching mowers have a limit. If you decide to mulch, you’ll likely find that getting the best results requires mowing every four to five days, rather than once a week.