Current Practice

The conventional approach is to assume that we buy a product or service to simply deal with a problem that crops up. Inorganic fertilisers and pesticides have come to be accepted as conventional and even essential for your lawn management of poor performance and weeds.

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Not only is this approach to lawn care damaging to our lawns, but it is totally unsustainable, certainly in ecological terms, but also in economic terms. It’s expensive and locks us into a symptom-treatment-symptom cycle that is hard to break out of.

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How do inorganic fertilisers damage soil?

Plants require ammonium as a source of nitrogen. Ammonium is ammonium irrespective of source i.e. the plant does not distinguish between ammonium produced naturally from nitrogen fixing bacteria or the excreta of soil microorganisms or from ammonium nitrate or sulphate in a fertiliser bag. This is why you can get excellent short term results with inorganic fertilisers.

 

However, inorganic fertilisers are mineral salts and there is a finite amount of ‘salts’ that can be applied to soils before they become detrimental to the microbial population. Likewise, if the plant is sitting in a sea of nutrient, which may or may not be in an accessible form, it will not form the associations with mycorrhizal fungi and other soil microorganisms that it requires to access nutrient naturally and sustainably.

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What is the alternative?

We need to go back to an approach more aligned with nature. Your lawn is a natural battleground where fine grasses compete for light, water and nutrients with other plants and weeds.

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Therefore we need an environment that encourages fine grasses and is less hospitable to weeds and moss.

If we provide them with a suitable growing medium and take care to mimic the other conditions they would naturally thrive in, our job in made a lot easier.

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Natural grasslands are self-sustaining systems, so we need to start thinking of our lawns as eco-systems and manage them sensitively in order not to upset the fine balancing act being played out daily in any eco-system. Enter the Soil Food Web.

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The Soil Food Web

The soil food web is another way of thinking about the lawns eco-system. It is a community of organisms living all or part of their lives in the soil. It explains how these soil microorganisms interact with each other, the ecosystem – the soil environment and the plants and animals.

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Why is the Soil Food Web important?

Understanding, or at least being aware of the soil food web is important for home owners looking to make the most of their lawns, for the simple reason that the problem-solution-problem cycle common in lawn care isn’t sustainable either agronomically or economically.