If you have ever looked into the idea of organic lawn care, or perhaps this summer finally moved into a home of your own and now the lawn care is all up to you, fall is the best time to transition into an organic natural lawn.

As winter creeps up on the northern states there are a few lawn care tricks that will help bring you a luscious lawn in the next spring. Many of our lawns are finally recovering from the summer stresses of drought, heat, and overuse by the kids playing all summer long.

This is an important time to add some vital nutrients to your grass so it can push through winter. This is crucial to the development of grasses underground roots and rhizomes. At this point in the year, grass will start to store carbohydrates. These carbohydrates will act as an antifreeze into the winter as well as give the grass some nutrition to get into the next spring and flourish.

Lawns that have been sprayed with herbicides, pesticides, and inorganic fertilizers are going to need a lot of TLC to come back to life. Be warned, its not going to always get prettier when you are going from a non-organic lawn practice to an organic lawn. Over the years the biological life in the soil has been knocked out, and the key to a healthy lawn is healthy soil.

The beautiful thing is that once your soil's health starts to come back, so will the overall health of your grass. Healthy lawns with lush grass can suppress weeds, and resist disease without the overuse of chemicals.

So where do you begin with your lawn so that it’s a natural and safe place for our kids and pets to play? As said, Fall is a great time to get started and transition over to an organic lawn. There are 4 things to start with to support the healthiest lawn possible. First, is what did your soil test says, then how you mow, how you fertilize, and whether or not you aerate and overseed every year.

if you just moved into a new property recently and you are looking to transition into an organic lawn I highly recommend taking a soil sample. its very simple, and easy to send into a lab such as an extension office that does testing of a full range of soil nutrients, pH, as well as organic content. This is going to help you know where to start for nutrients and soil pH.

By adding fertilizers or adjusting pH without a base idea of what is going on, we might do more harm to our lawn, and many of those nutrients will just leach into the groundwater, storm drains and cause algae blooms and other environmental damage.

Knowing what is going on in your soil nutrient levels can also help save you money in the long run. A soil test can run you around $30, but knowing that you can save from adding more than you need. Some nutrients such as phosphorus are immobile in the soil. If the soil gets to its holding capacity of phosphorus, anything you add will leach away.

If your soil comes back from the lab testing high in acidity make sure to grab a bag of lime. The addition of this soil amendment will bring the soil pH away from acidity into a neutral pH. This is important because grass thrives in alkaline soil, and that matters because nutrients that are important to grass can be unavailable in high pH soils. Just make sure not to fertilize and lime together, as this can cause both to bind to each other and become unavailable.

Fertilizer

There are a lot of fertilizers out on the market for lawns, both organic and non-organic, so sometimes it can be overwhelming, especially if you’re looking to transition into an organic lawn.

Some of the best lawn fertilizers are fish meal and other fish products as well as seaweed, bat guano, worm castings are great as well, but a little more costly. Worm casting is a great addition to building organic matter in the soil. I like to make my blend of a few different organic fertilizers and spread them out across the lawn.

Corn gluten meal is a good source of nitrogen and acts as a weed suppresser by killing germinating seeds and annual weeds. I also like to make a compost tea from worm casting or chicken manure to help boost the soil microbial life.

Many premade mixes are great for your lawn. Just check to make sure that they are for fall use (when applying during fall), that they are organic if you’re looking for the organic, slow-release can help feed the lawn over time, and some fertilizers come with herbicides included.
Check the fertilizer you’re using to make sure it checks all the boxes of what you are looking for. Just remember not to use fertilizer and lime (pH adjusters) at the same time or else they can bind together and becomes useless for your lawn.

Mower height

Now that fall is here, its time to adjust the high of your mower back down to the 2-inch height. Hopefully keeping the mower hight at a higher setting during summer allowed the lawn to survive the hot and dry summer. With fall the temperatures have dropped and there a bit more humidity in the air and especially around the soil where the summer sun has been quick to dry up any moisture. This excess moisture in the fall can cause mold and disease build-up, just another reason we bring it back down to 2 inches.

Aeration

Fall is also a great time to aerate the lawn. If you don’t know what we're talking about, have you ever seen a yard full of small tubular clumps of dirt, often looking like a flock of geese have walked through. Well, those pieces of dirt are the cores that lawn aerators pluck out of the sod.

Aeration of your lawn allows the soil to loosen up from constant compaction of kids playing, or general wear and tear. Using an aerator on your lawn will also help loosen that soil so that new seed, and especially fertilizer can get a bit deeper into the soil.

Over-seeding lawn

Fall is a great time to overseed a lawn, cooler temperature, and higher moisture mean grass seed can germinate. Most broadleaf weeds are not going to be competing for sunlight at this time of the season. Notice seeding in midsummer, lots of weeds pop up and compete with the grass seed.

By over-seeding, you are allowing the seeds good germination weather, and once they set roots they are going to be ready to overwinter. Come next spring grass seed is going to have roots established and take full advantage of the early warmth to fill in your lawn.

When you look into overseeding your lawn, first check the square footage of the lawn, this is going to be the number you use to figure out how many pounds of seeds are needed to cover the whole lawn. A 10000 square foot lawn uses about 50 pounds of seed.

By taking the time and putting down a few soil amendments and fresh seed in the fall you are going to have an easier time come spring to get that lawn that the neighbors will wish they had.