Archive for the ‘Organics’ Category

Ways to Compost

Composting Revisited About a year ago, I started composting only after recommending this technique through this column for at least a year prior to that. Why did it take so long?  The answer is, unlike most of humanity, I don’t do change so well. However, I am finding that if I keep positive change on [...]

Organic Soil Management

A Blueprint for Feeding Your Lawn and Garden: Healthy gardens and lawns have one major component in common, that is healthy soil. Healthy soil is soil that breathes, and is alive. Healthy soil has twenty to forty percent organic content (composted material, peat moss, etc). Healthy soil is alive with fungi, microbes, and worms that [...]

Switching to Organics

The Basis of Organic Garden Care Many Westchester county residents are turning away from chemicals in their daily landscape care as concerns about continued exposure to children and animals, as well as issues regarding chemical run off into local bodies of water come to the fore. However, stopping the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and [...]

Real Costs of Lawn care

Our company, Greener by Design, has had an upsurge in local calls for pricing on organic lawn care. Consequently, we have a price sheet similar to what chemical lawn care companies have pricing various programs in thousands of square feet per year. We are not unique in this, there is a national organic franchise offering [...]

Should We Ever Use Chemical Fertilizers?

 Should We Ever Use Chemical Fertilizers? Our basic stand on chemical fertilizers has two legs. The first is that chemically produced nitrogen comes from oil and has a tremendous carbon footprint-6.7 pounds of carbon go into the atmosphere for every pound manufactured. The second is that chemical fertilizers kill microbes that breakdown organic material in [...]

An Argument For Composting

I grew up in New York City, the heart land of waste removal and disposal. You put your garbage outside your back door and it goes away. Your home is as cluttered or uncluttered as your ability to put things out the door. The other side of this was that if there was a garbage [...]

Converting To Organics From Chemicals:

      I converted my lawn from chemicals to organics by making it go “cold turkey”. I stopped applying pesticides and fertilizers  and  kept my fingers crossed. Anyone who has tried this knows exactly what happened, the lawn deteriorated steadily over a year and by the following spring I had a terrific lawn of crab and [...]

Greener Landcare Through Onsite Leaf Mulching

In an article on line in grounds magazine, Zac Reicher and Glenn Hardebeck Reviewed studies done at several well known universities on this topic. In reviewing these studies, leaves were mulched directly into the  turf. Formal mulching devices like the flowtron mulcher were not needed, instead, leaves  were mulched with a mulching mower on top [...]