Organic Lawn Care
Some of you may be familiar with the term “organic” when used with respect to fruit and vegetable production, but it also can be used in terms of lawn and landscape care. The primary goal of organic lawn care is to build healthy soil, which will lead to healthy plants. Pesticides are limited to ones that have met the requirements of the Organic Materials Review Institute (www.omri.org).
I am presenting this topic because, whether you believe in these practices or not, you may have to follow them some day. I moved to Pennsylvania from Connecticut where organic landscape companies are starting to thrive – both from demand and the prospect of being forced to use the practices in the future. Connecticut has passed a number of laws that are phasing out the use of synthetic pesticides on day care, elementary and middle school grounds.
One of the driving forces behind these changes has been the group Environment and Human Health (http://www.ehhi.org/). Though limited to school grounds at this time, and professional pesticide applicators, the push is probably on to prohibit pesticide use on any lawn or landscape in Connecticut. Parts of Canada have already done this by banning pesticide applications on ornamental plants by anyone. To my knowledge, there is not a push like this in Pennsylvania, but it may happen in the future.
If this approach sounds intriguing to you, check out these two sites for how-to books, or you can contact me.
Safelawns.org promotes natural lawn care and grounds maintenance has information on using these practices and has a new publication, The Organic Lawn Care Manual.
www.safelawns.org/
The Organic Landcare Committee of the Northeast Organic Farming Association has produced the first national Organic Landcare Standards and has also recently published The NOFA Organic Lawn and Turf Handbook. Both of these can be purchased from their website. www.organiclandcare.net/
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