Why We Use Organics: Our Background
Using organic products when possible and offering a REAL successful organic lawn care service to our customers just seems to make sense to us. After all we have families, pets and live here on Long Island too. We value our pristine drinking water, our pine barrens and our beautiful community’s clean water and air. We cherish our health and the health of our families as much as any-one. We have made our homes here, and love Long Island. Long Island has so much to offer and we have made a commitment to do our part to help keep it that way for generations to come. By offering organic lawn care that works to our customers, ensures that we are not only saving our environment but we are encouraging our competitors to do so as well. A happy Alternative Earthcare organic lawn care customer will force our competitors to offer the same service thereby using and applying less dangerous lawn chemicals and pesticides.
Alternative Earthcare has been developing our organic lawn care programs for over 15 years. Our use of organic products some of which we helped developed ourselves are second to none in terms of quality. We are the original pioneers for school sports field organic turf care on Long Island and currently service over 25 school districts. We use products like corn gluten for weed control and our own self custom brewed compost teas for microbial activity and disease control on lawns and it works wonders. We own our own compost tea brewer. Our compost teas have been a work in progress and developed over 15 years and have over 14 ingredients. Our fertilizers are all 100 percent organic and have been proven to work great. All you need to do is visit one of our school fields and talk with the superintendent to realize the beauty and value of going organic. Our organic treatments and programs are tried and true and are time tested. We saw organics as a viable option years ago, we embraced it, and have developed the best organic lawn care programs available anywhere. We use it, we teach it and we live it!
Why Organics Work: Organics vs Traditional Methods:
Many books and articles have been written discussing the dangers of herbicides (weed killers) and synthetic lawn fertilizers and lawn care pesticides and chemicals. Suffice it to say there is an overwhelming amount of evidence and studies and real world health issues that dictate that the green industries use of synthetic products is affecting Long Island water supplies, our environment and our health.
For those reasons mentioned above, traditional synthetic non organic lawn care programs are becoming a thing of the past. In short traditional synthetic lawn care causes plants to become addicted to the products with quick shots of fertilizers without regard to sustainable soil quality and natural microbial activity while forcing the root systems to become shallow and come up to the surface almost like a form of hydroponics to get fed, making the grass plant weak and susceptible to disease and fungus. Having a superficial shallow root system quickly causes the plant to go into decline at the first sign of a drought or other stresses like heavy traffic etc. It also causes a thick thatch layer that smothers out food, water and sun and air which in turn starts the viscous cycle to start all over again. All these cultural shortcomings are all side effects not withstanding all the environmental issues that are caused by the use of all these pesticides and chemicals.
Conversely, organic methods and practices provide a tremendous wealth of benefits far and above traditional lawn care. Natural organic lawn care methods underscore and require good soil quality as a primary factor in growing a beautiful, healthy lawn. That means that for an organic program to work it all starts with the soil and an abundance of rich, organic matter teaming with life in the soil. Transitioning from a traditional lawn care to organic methods can be instituted at any time. An organic lawn has many benefits and will prove to be a great choice from a result standpoint as long as you are a bit patient. A detoxifying time period will take place. Over time organic lawn care is also cheaper because you will save on your water bill substantially as the root system reaches much greater depths and density. When a possible late summer August drought shows up, you will also find the lawn doing much better than in years past. Earthworms Mother Nature’s soil builder will return and bring about nice health soil for ALL your gardens and planted areas. Earthworms make the richest, best, black gold soil called worm castings than you could ever imagine. Plants growing in this type soil will amaze you! Over time with our organic service you will see a lot less disease and fungus and the lawn will wear much better if you have a lot of traffic from pets and family out on the lawn. These are just a few of the really great things that an organic lawn can bring to your home life. A PESTICIDE AND CHEMICAL FREE LANDSCAPE GIVES PEACE OF MIND AND GOES A LONG WAY TO YOUR QUALITY OF LIFE!
Our Organic Lawn Care Service:
Alternative Earthcare has been successfully providing organic lawn care to our customers for over 15 years. Many of our products and methods were developed along the way through trial and error. We believe we have the best organic methods and balanced products in the industry. Our organic programs work! They do take time though and you must be patient. You may experience a bit of a higher level of weeds in your lawn in the beginning or transitioning phase. This is normal as it takes time for the lawn to establish itself and detoxify. When a true organic lawn gets established it will become thicker and crowd out most the weeds itself but this takes time.
Our organic lawn care program consists of and starts with 6 visits of proprietary 100% organic balanced fertilizers. Our balanced natural fertilizers help the lawn recover from summer stress and greatly improve the density and green color of the turf. These applications are done based on the timing and growing degree days for the weather that we are experiencing for that particular year. This ensures the products are being most effective and release at the right time which encourages turf vigor and a quick spring green up. We use corn gluten for weed control (provides a barrier that prevents weed seed germination naturally) when we can according to the size property and we employ a process called IPM (integrated pest management) for the pests which means we only treat the specific areas affected. We also use beneficial nematodes to control grubs when necessary. We spot spray for weeds with a natural fatty acid based least toxic weed control. This is done on an as needed basis with our technicians constantly looking for possible problems to treat and rectify. Also by using our custom blended compost teas we are introducing organic matter to the soil and compost tea acts as a natural deterrent to fungus and disease. We also check the PH of the lawn at the beginning and end of each season and apply lime as needed. Lime is very important in regulating and raising the PH level as a proper PH level helps the plant with regulating nutrient uptake. Finally and most importantly we core aerate and over seed the lawn every year with our organic programs just like the golf courses do. Seeding is extremely important in order to continuously fill in the bare spots to prevent weeds. This ensures a really thick, dense weed free lawn. Our seed varieties are hand selected and reflect the best possible quality and type for the area it is being applied (sun or shade areas). We also do add various micronutrients and fungicides on an as needed basis depending on what might be trending with our other customers landscapes in any particular year.
Call today for a complimentary organic lawn care evaluation with one of our trained service managers, so we can help create a great custom organic lawn care program for you this year!
