Four Eco-Friendly Tips to Improve Your Lawn

Every homeowner wants a lush, green lawn, but not everyone uses eco friendly practices to achieve that beautiful lawn. It is possible to improve your lawn using only eco friendly and green methods that include conservation, smart landscaping and organic and eco-friendly products. More importantly, it is necessary to understand how your lawn can be improved. In order to improve your lawn, you need to concentrate on the soil and the grass roots. While it is important to care for your lawn and see to very specific details, there is also the possibility that you can over work the lawn. The best way to avoid this is to take up eco-friendly practices which foster the natural growth of your lawn instead of trying to change it.

Here are four tips to help you improve the condition of your lawn using only eco-friendly practices.

Aerate Your Lawn
Aerating your lawn has several benefits for the soil that it is growing in. Oxygen, water and beneficial microorganisms are able to penetrate the soil more than they ever could and reach the roots of your lawn. In order to aerate your lawn, there are a couple eco friendly methods that you can try. Soil aeration shoes strap onto your regular shoes and are meant to be worn as you walk the area of your lawn. You can do this while performing other lawn work, or to specifically walk the entire area of your yard. Another eco-friendly option is to use a spading fork that you can manually push into the soil to remove grass plugs and open up your lawn.

Use Organic Lawn Fertilizer
Your lawn does not need to be fertilized all summer long, nor every year. It is important to make sure that your lawn is fertilized to improve its growth, but you do not want to overdo it. The best organic fertilizers include manure, compost, and grass clippings, but specially prepared organic cleaners can also be used. For the best results, fertilize your lawn at the beginning of the growing season to promote healthy root growth.

Practice Smart Watering
Watering your lawn is one of the hardest points to keep up when it comes to eco-friendly gardening. A lot of differences in climate, location and the amount of sun your lawn receives will determine the amount of watering you need to do. Rather than pulling out the lawn sprinkler and giving the lawn water every day, reduce the number of waterings you provide but increase the quantity. This type of watering encourages deep root growth, which will improve your lawn in so many ways. Invest in a rain barrel that can be hooked up to your gutter and then used to water your thirsty lawn, instead of using new water all the time.

Weed Your Lawn
Weeds in your lawn are frustrating for most homeowners, and while they are important plants to have around sometimes, they can also take over your yard. To prevent that from happening, it is important that you weed your yard, but that you do it without chemicals that are harmful to the environment. In general, practicing the other three eco friendly lawn tips will decrease the number of weeds you see in your yard, but for any areas that become overgrown with weeds the best method is to completely remove them and their roots. Organic herbicides can also be used, but generally are not the best option for lawns since they will naturally kill more than the weeds. Use this only on areas where weeds have entirely taken over the lawn and there is no longer any, or much grass remaining.