Well, of course, you could use petroleum to drive instead, and this would have less of an impact on the availability of food. This way, instead of converting petroleum into fertilizer for food crops, and then converting those food crops into fuel for your car, with all of the inefficiencies that result, you could just use the petroleum for your car, and let the fields that would otherwise be devoted to producing fuel for your car actually work toward feeding people. It's organic, too!

Yes, I certainly think we should be comparing the costs and benefits of "chemicals" (as people here tend to use that term, as if everything on earth were not composed of them) and the apparently "chemical-free" organics that, of course, were themselves produced with copious amounts of "chemicals." Just because you didn't apply the synthetics yourself does not mean that you are not using them. You are just closing your eyes to your involvement.

Thank you for responding, I think I'll start another post on this topic when I get my thoughts together. Unfortunately it will probably be a long one, there are just so many variables.

I'm not sure what level of waste or enviro-harm or whatever you're thinking at paulinct, but the line about an unnatural lawn probably sums it all up. Once you've decided to feed your lawn you have to decide how you will do that... and you can avoid that choice by letting it go back to the natural order.

To sort of be on topic, my own personal reasons for using "organic" lawn care are:
(a) might be healthier for my kids to run around rotting grains than whatever the orange pellets were
(b) it's my secret experiment to compare against neighbors, albeit unscientifically
(c) it feels less wasteful to be using renewable resources

As for metrics, well I've been sticking with it for a few years because my soil does seem softer, and I'm able to grow grass on a trouble spot where even weeds wouldn't grow before. It also helps that when I pour a bag of fertilizer into my spreader now, it doesn't sting my hands.

That's a lot of words but no raw numbers =) Oh and I do get weeds just like my neighbors, I don't have a carpet of a lawn because I didn't start over with new grass seeds, etc. But I'm still happy with the results so far.

but the line about an unnatural lawn probably sums it all up. Once you've decided to feed your lawn you have to decide how you will do that... and you can avoid that choice by letting it go back to the natural order.

Thank you! IMHO that is EXACTLY RIGHT! None of us here who are trying to maintain ornamental turfgrasses in environments where they would not ordinarily thrive, are "green" at all. We are either trying to do the best for our grass, or justifying our behaviors with half-baked theories, at various levels, or trying to keep synthetic pesticides off of our children, or kidding ourselves into believing we are "saving the planet" by shunning urea, or whatever.

But the fact remains that none of this activity is truly "green," and I think that that should be the starting point for any discussion of what exactly we are trying to accomplish here.

Thanks again!

Best,
Paul

Paul,

Can you clearly and specifically state your point or question?

If one point is that lawns require inputs to stay lawns, then I agree. We input labor in the forms of mowing, irrigation and weeding as well as applying grains, meals, compost, sewer sludge, etc. You will note that some are part of the feed stream and others are a part of the waste stream. To each his own. In nature you will read that animals do the mowing, fertilizing and to some extent watering. The soil food web is in synergy with the animal food web. Animals are not obsessed about weeds and mowing, surburban humans are.

Gibb's free energy states that all systems gravitate to a state of highest entropy (randomness) without the addition of energy. We provide energy to maintain our lawn and are thus abiding by the laws of physics, which is always a good thing.

If your concern is environmental in nature, than do everything in your power to recycle/compost your waste stream and minimize the environmental impact on your feed stream? Grow and buy locally while in season, support the fight against hunger, and live at least carbon neutral. It is not a contradiction to concern about the environment and still maintain a great lawn. The alternatives with chemicals, have a much larger environmental impact. Arguing about shipping cost seems somewhat out of scope here. I often hear a commercial where something like one ton or cargo can be railed 300 something miles on one gallon of fuel. I can find a source if needed.

The web is full of usefull information on this subject and others.

Hi Gray,

Why don't you just read what I have said and respond to that on those terms? Do you think setting up a bunch of straw men and then knocking them down is really convincing? I assure you that you are only hurting your own cause by doing that.

I mean, *I* know why you argue in this way... But really, why not just go ahead and face the things I have actually said, rather than trying to re-frame the debate on your terms, ignoring my most significant points in the process?

Do you think any of the ideas that I expressed were wrong? Why not spell out your disagreement?

I have read the posts and thought I addressed the concerns.

What are they?

Hi Gray,

Nice try, but assuming your good faith, apparently you need to re-read this whole discussion. And if you still can't seem to keep it straight after that, then I imagine that I will reach a different conclusion.

Paul

P.S., about the "goodness" of your "faith," of course.

Is this it?

Yes, I certainly think we should be comparing the costs and benefits of "chemicals" (as people here tend to use that term, as if everything on earth were not composed of them) and the apparently "chemical-free" organics that, of course, were themselves produced with copious amounts of "chemicals." Just because you didn't apply the synthetics yourself does not mean that you are not using them. You are just closing your eyes to your involvement.

My response

We input labor in the forms of mowing, irrigation and weeding as well as applying grains, meals, compost, sewer sludge, etc. You will note that some are part of the feed stream and others are a part of the waste stream.

as well as...

If your concern is environmental in nature, than do everything in your power to recycle/compost your waste stream and minimize the environmental impact on your feed stream? Grow and buy locally while in season, support the fight against hunger, and live at least carbon neutral. It is not a contradiction to concern about the environment and still maintain a great lawn. The alternatives with chemicals, have a much larger environmental impact.

If beyond that you are critisizing us for the use of grains/waste to feed our lawns instead of chemicals, due to argicultural practices than I believe this debate is reaching the point of minimal retuns. We are pulling minute materials from the non human food chain at PPM levels and are not providing considerable impact to the demand. If you have evidence suggesting that it is more environmentally friendly to spread Scotts than grains, I would love to review that article!!

The best envirnonmental practice would be to only use the waste stream. I am about 50% of the way there. I live in an upscale community and have an obligation to provide the remaining 50%. I believe that the organic program I follow is the most environmentally sound. I enjoy what I believe to be a better solution to lawn care, eat organically and do my best for the environment.

If you wish to d**n us for taking care of our lawn at all, than once again I think this conversation has reached the point of diminishing returns.

"Thank you! IMHO that is EXACTLY RIGHT! None of us here who are trying to maintain ornamental turfgrasses in environments where they would not ordinarily thrive, are "green" at all."

How about me? I've been working on replacing my mostly KBG lawn with streambank and western wheatgrass. Both of these are native and not traditionally lawn grasses. In my area, most people water daily (and have already started). I water once a week or less and haven't even tested my sprinkler system yet. The only thing I use to fertilize my lawn is used coffee grounds (picked up from Starbucks when it is on the way).

Is my lawn green enough?

Is my lawn green enough?

Is the lawn green enough to make you happy? Good. What anybody else thinks does not matter.

In my case, that answer is generally, "No," although that's changing with the Mag 3. I'd still like it two notches darker, but that would practically be black.

I can understand that. It seems that it isn't as bad if you're living in a large city like Houston but if you live outside of city in the middle of largely undeveloped land like mine, you're bound to get something... I suppose that's one of drawback of living in largely undeveloped land where there are a lot more small animals roaming around. So far a skunk hasn't come to my backyard and stink it up but apparently i have mole/vole somewhere digging holes in certain spots where rocky soils aren't right under the lawn. Annoying...

When you have a nice nutrient cycling going on, you don't really have to do much except apply soybean meal in the spring and fall like my mom's lawn in houston with millions of earthworms in the ground helping provide P and K (from leaves and grass clippings). Nitrogen tend to be limited and have to get some input from us.

However, I can understand where you are coming from. I mean soybean meal is FOOD and I wonder just how much supply we have and just how much demand are there for soybean meal? How much of it are really going to lawn? it may be a drop in the bucket, who knows? I've taken a look at Scott's organic fertilizer since it is waste from chicken factories. I've applied it last week. Honestly, I have no idea what to look for out of it as my lawn has already greened up nicely.

If I was forced to use synthetic fertilizer one day, I would go with slow release urea and some potassium like 24-0-11 in the spring and fall only. Either no or very little potassium. There is no way of having a nice lawn without any nitrogen input. I've seen sad looking lawns just because they never got any nitrogen input. Bermuda is the worst offender. Zoysia can get by with a lot less nitrogen input.

Paul (in CT):

I think I get what you're saying, and its an interesting point. What I think it boils down to is that organic does not necessarily mean sustainable -and so in that sense, is not as "green" as it could be.

I think there are 2 (definitely more) viewpoints of "green" that are blended together in the world of organic agricultural:

1) Minimizing the use of and exposure to chemicals that harm people or the environment

2) Maximizing the sustainability of agriculture by extensive use of recycling, reusing, and most efficient approaches, etc. (composting, recycling, etc.)

People who mostly focus on 1, with little thought about 2 will scoff at the use of things such as Milorganite or living in an "Earthship" that's built out of old tires. But they will have no problem with using alfalfa or corn on their lawn. People focusing on 2 are just the opposite: they see Milorganite as a great re-use of human waste (and would be even happier if they could get it from their local sewage treatment plant) and earthships as a way to keep tires out of the landfills and put them to good use, but they'll see the use of alfalfa or corn on their lawn as an inefficient use of products that could be used for food (for humans or livestock).

Instead of arguing about it, though, I think we should understand both of these points of view and try to rise to the challenge of both!

So, since this is the organic lawn-care forum, the question should be about lawn care:

How can we maintain a satisfying lawn in a manner that reduces the impact of harmful chemicals, pollution, etc. in the most sustainable and energy-efficient way possible?

I don't know the answers here, but I suspect they're much farther reaching than just the lawn. And even if we can't come up with a final solution, it may point towards a framework for making decisions and how to decide at what point the cost of maintaining the lawn isn't worth the price.

-Paul (in VA)

How can we maintain a satisfying lawn in a manner that reduces the impact of harmful chemicals, pollution, etc. in the most sustainable and energy-efficient way possible?

Exactly. I have just reel-mowed my Mag 3 lawn for the 11th time this season, an average of every 3 days so far since April.

I am not doing this again. Frankly, I'm exhausted, it's getting harder to punch through the very dense growth, and it's just not worth my time to save that much energy.

That having been said, my Robomower is out for repair. Until it's back, I'm borrowing my parents' gas mower, biting the bullet, and using irreplaceable fossil fuels when it's not necessary that I do so. That rankles.

But not as much as wanting to go to bed at 7:30 PM because I'm completely exhausted.

"Is my lawn green enough?

Is the lawn green enough to make you happy? Good. What anybody else thinks does not matter. "

Excellent response, Morpheus, whether you intentionally used a different meaning of green than I intended or not.

We need to be happy with our choices. Whether we seed an elite KBG to get the deepest green, use grains (that were probably grown with lots of chemicals) to have a chemical free lawn, use Milorganite, which has some heavy metals or seed natives to reduce water, the choices we make are our choices and we need to be happy with them.

I'm happy with the green color my lawn is turning, even though it is a MUCH lighter green than the non-elite KBG varieties I started with.

Morpheus, you'd probably hate the color. But my goal is to have a grass that will be some sort of green with little or no additional water in a desert. KBG doesn't come close. TTTF does better, but at .75 inch per week, still uses too much water for my purposes.

I should have bitten the bullet, killed the existing lawn and started from scratch, but I've been overseeding and trying to get the natives to dominate by cultural practices. I think this year is the year I start to really favor the natives, in part because I had a sprinkler die on me last year and a chunk of lawn died (KBG has some drought tolerance, but no water for a month of 90+ temperatures is a bad idea). So I now have a base of native grass with sporadic tufts throughout the rest of the KBG lawn.

I figure that if I water just enough to keep the fire risk down until after the fireworks season, then quit watering, the rest of the KBG will die off. I'll then seed my natives once more, and next spring, I'll have a pale green lawn that will stay pale green if I water every couple of weeks, or maybe not at all. Note that nearly all of my natural precipitation comes as snow, from October through May. Grass growing months average about an inch per month of rain.

Morpheus, you'd probably hate the color.

Probably, but I'm in Pennsylvania and we get an average of 45" of rain a year in a moderate climate that's neither very hot nor very cold at any point. I made different choices for a different environment.

Native grasses in Utah sounds very smart and wouldn't require the water KBG will--and that the environment provides here naturally except during a drought.

If you're happy, what I think is irrelevant.

I tend to go with supply and demand. I would prefer to use Beluga sturgeon caviar from the Caspian Sea as a fertilizer, but the supply is too low and the demand too high leading to high prices. Even salmon caviar, commonly used as fish bait here in the US, is priced too high for me. When I look at the supply of various other protein sources, I wind up with the grains. Fortunately there is enough corn left over after making food and booze that our pets and livestock can afford some. That is the stuff I go for. People do not compete for the grains I use, animals do. And as I have said elsewhere, any food shortage in any part of the world is a political problem not a supply problem. Sometimes governments have an interest in starving certain populations to force them to move away.

I think organic can be sustainable if you take properly from the waste stream and not from the food stream. By 'properly' I mean it would replicate the complex recycling that happens in nature. Every creature eats and recycles waste products in a special way. Eventually it all goes back to the soil where the microbes finish the cycle. If you want to get concerned to the nth detail, consider that every plant and creature is in the middle of both a food and waste cycle.

Wow, miss a day and the thread takes off. Thank you everyone for your input.

Gray, I didn't mean to be insulting to people using grains. I've been trying to avoid them but given what I can find locally I am pretty sure I will be using them to some extent myself soon. I'm just trying to get comfortable with exactly how I plan to care for my new lawn, and this is one aspect of that.

Lou, I'm glad we found some common ground, so to speak. And I'll probably end up using synthetics in just the way you suggest that you might, if you were so inclined.

BPgreen, I think what you're doing there is absolutely great! I personally won't try that for my own personal aesthetic reasons, and that bothers me a little, but apparently not quite enough to change course....

Paul (in VA) I thought you put that very well. I have a half-written post somewhere breaking the different perspectives into more categories, but I like your approach better.

Morpheus, IIRC you use a hybrid approach. After all of this discussion I think that makes the most sense for me too, just probably with fewer grains.

I hope I didn't miss anyone.

I apologize if I come off bullheaded sometimes (often? ;-)), but unfortunately I am a lawyer so there is nothing I can do about that... Seriously, I've been trying to get my head around the "correct" (subjectively speaking) approach to caring for my lawn since renovating last fall, and this has really helped me clarify some things that have been bothering me. I don't mean to shut down this discussion or anything, and would love to hear any other thoughts on this, I just wanted to say "thank you."

Hi David,

Just saw your post, looks like I was typing over you. I thought the GW software used to warn people when someone else posted while you were typing, but this doesn't seem to be happening for me lately, no idea why.

Anyway, I agree the whole thing is very complicated, and I think in part I'm just suffering from "analysis paralysis." I mentioned previously that I like the idea of using slaughterhouse waste, particularly since my eating habits make me responsible for some of it. And yet, even much of that material - not all of it, but a good chunk - can be used to feed livestock, which puts it back into the food stream and leaves me feeling wasteful for using it.

But in the same way, that "leftover" corn that you mention could be used to feed livestock is, of course, also back in the food stream. Is that what you were getting at by saying that everything is in the middle of both streams? If so I guess the question would be which materials are actually more likely to end up as waste, and I have no idea how to approach that. Reminds me of Woody Guthrie's "Deportees" and his reference to oranges piled in their creosote dumps, and the total insanity introduced into agricultural production by subsidies and price supports.

(whoops, was that out loud?)

...I am a lawyer... Aaaah! Nuff said. That clears up a lot ;-)

Ag subsidies. If you follow the money, it goes from the consumer through the farmer, add in the (welfare) subsidy paid by taxpayers, and then to DuPont, Monsanto, John Deere, and the county tax collectors. At least that's where it goes in my world. Any time the subsidies go up, the taxes or cost of equipment/chemicals goes up to compensate for the farmer gouging the taxpayers.

Morpheus, IIRC you use a hybrid approach. After all of this discussion I think that makes the most sense for me too, just probably with fewer grains.

Yep. I'm not above and beyond spot-treating with Creative Chemistry as required, but what I use has to pass my very bright line of comfort. Round Up passes without nicking a heel. Certainty passes easily. Weed B Gone passes but barely and rarely.

I tend to alternate grains and Milorganite (the only waste-stream product I can easily get here). I also don't like dipping from the food stream too often if I don't have to, but also don't want to overdo the Milorganite. If I had a ready source of feather meal, etc., I'd use it. I don't.

unfortunately I am a lawyer

Didja hear the one about the lawyer and the shark...

Sorry. But if I hear one more joke about the Aspie programmer...

Any time the subsidies go up, the taxes or cost of equipment/chemicals goes up to compensate for the farmer gouging the taxpayers.

Regrettably, roundly true. Subsidies would have their place if they actually meant we ate American-grown food. In so many cases, it's imported for no good reason.

Didja hear the one about the lawyer and the shark...

I've heard them all, no worries, just a career mistake on my part... ;-)

paulinct, you might also think that I am the oldest person on earth but I have worked in an era when foliar analyses were not a tool, when the most commonly used fertilizer was ammonium sulphate ('salt' as in "I salted all my citrus trees over the week-end"), when 'planters' would seek any elevated position to observe the comparative green tints and hues of the fields in their vista to decide which ones needed 'salting'. Those were the days when planters could tell by touch whether a transplanted clump of sugar-cane would make it or not. I was the young, full-of-myself skeptic whose mission was to prove them wrong by 'the judicious application of science'. They were not always right but they were never wrong!
We have come a long way and I do not think that any of us would want it otherwise.
Decidely, the most important tenet in diagnosing plant problems is 'know what a healthy example of the species looks like'. Now, I think that I know Stenotaphrum secundatum, St. Agustine grass, having studied it as a pasture grass. There was a time when I could rattle off its properties and compare it with half a dozen other pasture grasses. One thing which I remember is that it is light green in color. Now there are improved varieties and who knows what their true (genetic) color is? Because, even in the experimental stages, these varieties are selected under a regimen of fertilizer application, at the sod farm -more of the same- and I, the end user am led to believe by all and sundry that the light green color of my 'Floratam' front lawn is not normal and it needs a fix, organic or otherwise.
You are quite correct that the front lawn is an almost unnatural phenomenon.
Mother Nature protects bare ground in my neck of the woods with sandspur and spurges.
The debate which you have started (purposefully, I think) is healthy and timely. Land, rain forest or reservoir, farmland or farmyard, real estate, or recreation field is a finite resource and its prudent husbandry can determine the life expectancy of the planet as we know it.
I also expect that Science will continue to provide the solutions to our (self inflicted?) dilemmas.

Hi Ron, you don't sound that old to me, I mean, I thought that was coherent.

;-)

Seriously, it was more than that, and if I understood you correctly I agree with you that our genetic meddling has made things much more complicated, mostly because the results are appearing and "diversifying" so fast, and there is no real body of knowledge about caring for all of these new plants.

Thank you for your thoughts on this debate. Yes, I did start it intentionally, but I honestly did not know where it would end up. I had my own ideas, and of course I was also trying to smoke out a few ideas that I thought involved logical fallacies (some of which I still think do), but I also learned a lot, and that was really the point, at least from my perspective.

Best,
Paul

P.S. And, of course, if I missed an aspect of your post that you would like to see thrashed out, please by all means bring it back up, either here or in a new thread! I enjoyed reading your post very much.

Paul

Just a quick note on the food stream vs waste stream thought.

Most of the corn grown here is "dent corn" NOT sweet corn. Dent corn is used to feed livestock, which uses only a fraction of it to gain weight - most of those calories are burned up just living, eating, breathing, etc.

I know corn gluten and ethanol are made from dent corn (I confess I'm not sure abou corn meal) so if you are concerned about taking from the food stream skipping a few burgers ought to equalize things.

Disclaimer: I'm not a vegetarian - I LOVE steak - but beef is one of the most inefficient uses of corn there is. What you use on your yard pales in comparison.

I think it's valid to debate using food as fuel, just realize that this corn isn't for human consumption, it's food for our food. Also ethanol is not so much an end all solution, as a step in the right direction. Long term it would be better to use prairie switchgrass - which can be grown with much less fuel and messing around than corn and grown where corn can't. They can even get oil out of algae, so corn based ethanol is just a first step - I sometimes wonder if some of the 'food for fuel' rhetoric has been fed by big oil, though the previous posts are very well reasoned out.

Recycling feathers for yard fertilizer does sound good - tho even those feathers were being fed dent corn at one point. I guess what I'm trying to say is that there's no one easy answer, but a whole lot of ways to take steps in the right direction. Which is what I'm here trying to learn how to do.

Feeding corn to cattle is also unnatural. They evolved eating grass, not grain.

Corn fed seems to mean there is a different taste to the meat. I've eaten grass fed/finished beef recently and it tasted very much like beef.

Hi Lucy,

Thanks for posting that, I was not aware of "dent corn." Is that just a byproduct of sweet corn production (the unsellable bits and pieces?) or another crop entirely?

I ask because, if it is the former, then I'm encouraged that cracked corn is more in the waste stream than I thought! But if it is the latter, I think another way to look at it is that the really important resource is the croplands, not the plants themselves. That is, apparently we are using croplands to grow plants destined to become fuel and animal feed (and, to a much less extent, lawn fertilizer). If this is putting a strain on the amount of cropland available for raising human food (which I would assume), then I imagine we are cutting down the forests (to get more cropland) faster than we would be otherwise.

Paul

Dent corn is not a by-product of sweet corn. They are two different things. Seed catalogs and two seconds in an actual corn field will tell you this.

So I guess it is just too bad for me that I don't have any seed catalogs or cornfields to consult.

I also guess that you don't like where I was going with my comments on dent corn, and not having any substantive response, but really wanting to kill any further discussion on the subject, you gave it your best shot.

If this is putting a strain on the amount of cropland available for raising human food (which I would assume), then I imagine we are cutting down the forests (to get more cropland) faster than we would be otherwise.

I have no worldwide data on the subject. I can say definitively that my home state of Pennsylvania (corn country, in other words) contains about 1% virgin forest.

That sounds awful, but most of the rest has been maintained by the state government and doesn't count as old-growth forest any longer. We've since learned that letting the system naturalize and not interfering is best.

(snark) Big flipping surprise there. (/snark)

The amount of restored forest is soaring, and even our scrubland is starting to undergo species succession. None of those areas will be considered old-growth forests for at least 200 years, as the whole system has to undergo a full natural cycle before it's considered virgin again.

Still, it isn't dropping, it's rising. There's no cropland stress here.

Still and all, further reduction of cropland by...hmm....let's see... (snark) maybe not burning food for fuel, or throwing it away (/snark) would be a good thing. On the other hand, if they wanted to use that to alleviate world hunger, that would be a good thing and I'd be the first person to commend them on that.

What, no world hunger? (snark) American! (/snark) Haiti, Bangladesh, and Egypt are having food riots right now. Shipment isn't the problem. Availability and price are.

Hi Paul,
Dent corn is a separate crop and the vast majority of the corn grown in this country. If you use cracked corn or get whole corn on cobs to feed squirrels - that's dent corn, usually bright gold and very hard when dried. If you let an ear of sweet corn dry out it doesn't look anything like that - it gets white and wizened. Another sad fact is that corn and cotton are the two crops that take the most fussing to grow - lots of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

My point is (without any attempt to start a word war on vegetarianism) that meat and especially beef is a MORE inefficient use of resources and I LOVE steak! So rather than get upset about using corn, soy or alfalfa - which feed our food - on our lawns. We might be better off cutting back on meat.

That cropland could then be used (ideally) to more efficiently to grow food directly for humasn consumption. So no, I'm not saying don't eat meat. I'm saying if you feel bad using food for our food on your lawn skimp a burger or two.

And Morpheus, some of the big rice producing countries are stockpiling not selling their surpluses, which leads to further stockpiling by worried people which does cause some of the shortages. There's food it's just stockpiled and not available.

The "food" that's being burned for fuel is animal food - with the exception of Brazil which depends on ethanol from sugar. If you feel that strongly about it you may want to consider a vegetarian lifestyle. There's an old book called somthing like "Diet for a Small Planet" that goes into a lot more detail on what I'm talking about and it may interest you as this obviously something you're passionate about. Since writing doesn't convey tone of voice be assured I'm not trying to pick a fight.

Oh , and it's not just forests - grasslands are valuable ecosystems in their own right and we have very little virgin prairie let as well.

Since I'm writing on my lunch hour, aand have written WAY TOO MUCH! I won't be back till tuesday, so I hope I haven't offended any one, I'll explain moire then if necessary.

For a guy that likes to go on about ag topics you just don't seem to have much information handy. Have you ever lived or worked on a farm??

Moratorium request!

If you do organic lawn care, post in this forum.
If you do chemicals, go to the other forum.
Otherwise post somewhere else. Nobody on this forum is dumping nuclear waste on their lawn.

Fescue planter--Who posted anything about dumping nuclear waste on their lawns? I didn't see anything in the thread about nuclear waste. The only mention of nuclear is in your post and most of the references to waste were to the waste stream. Can you point out which post you feel is encouraging the use of nuclear waste on lawns?

You couldn't dectect my sarcasm? As in what we do organically/chemically with our lawns is probably not going to doom the planet and is personal preference. If you really want to continue to debate whether using grains on the lawn or for fuel is going to boost global starvation, I can't stop you but I do think personally it is beyond the scope of this forum.

Who posted anything about dumping nuclear waste on their lawns?

Huh. That would be a great source of iron. Eventually, anyway...and you wouldn't have to turn on the lights at night to mow...!

Hi Fescue,

If it weren't for the fact that many involved in organic lawncare (or at least many of the vocal posters on this forum) tend to deride the chem folks for screwing up the planet out of their own ignorance and selfishness or whatever, I would agree with you. But given the state of the discussions on this forum I can't. Apparently, when chem-folks do it, they are evil, but when organic folks do it, by using products produced with massive chem infusions, it is ok, so long as it wasn't their hand that brought the pesticides and urea to bear. I gather this is what you believe, and though I think that is terribly misguided, that is totally fine with me.

Just to make clear how fine that is with me, having instigated this whole discussion, I myself plan to use a lot more grains in the future, even though I see them as so wasteful, just because I want a nice, green lawn. So there's your conundrum: do you criticize me for being so obviously selfish in the service of my "organic" lawn," or do you come to terms with what you yourself are doing?

Regardless, I hope you see that, though I have thought at times to break this discussion into subthreads (which I still think would be useful to keep folks who are interested in certain aspects of the discussion involved), I have not.

So all you have to do to ignore any discussion of these things that are apparently uncomfortable for you, is to ignore this thread. I would not have thought that this is the way it is on the "organic lawn forum," but apparently it is just that way. And that idea is reinforced for me every day now that I finally see what is going on here.

What are we doing here, people? If not simply for the health of your lawn, why is "organic" the better approach, in any way?

Best,
Paul

P.S., Morph, I loved your response to the previous post, and literally laughed out loud at it: you really have an eye for that kind of thing, please 'em coming! Brings us all back to a common sense, if just for a moment.

I live in a sphere.

I have a sphere of control. In these sphere, I make all my decisions and am totally accountable. I proudly use organic lawn care and take care of my lawn in the most environmentally friendly way that I know. I believe my practices to be better for the environment that I control. I have yet to see evidence to the otherwise.

I have a sphere of influence. In these sphere, I post on websites about things that I do in my sphere of control and the rationale for such. I donate where I think I can make a difference; I freely discuss my opinions and enjoy open discussion.

I also live in a sphere where I have no control or influence. In this sphere, I have absolutely no impact to my surroundings. I can expand some energy here, but it is useless. I should not worry about things that I can't control or influence. Many live in this sphere.

Hi Gray,

You said:

I proudly use organic lawn care and take care of my lawn in the most environmentally friendly way that I know. I believe my practices to be better for the environment that I control. I have yet to see evidence to the otherwise.

I agree, there probably is no evidence "otherwise" to your narrow statement, which of course totally ignores the effects of your landscaping decisions on the world outside of your own little plot of land. I realize from what you say that that is intentional. And like I mentioned previously, that is fine by me. But the same argument would certainly support using natural gas-derived urea, assuming that it is used in a way that is helpful for the grass and not harmful to the soil, in your own particular "micro-environment," on the theory that societal costs that extend beyond our own little plots of green are totally irrelevant.

Is that what you mean? Regardless, I hope you see my point.

Best,
Paul

Thanks Paul,

I did some research and math around cornmeal, which I suspect is the worst case scenario with respect to amount of maintenance required and low protein concentration of the crop (assuming NPK is relevant).

Link on corn yields and fertilizer consumption

According to the link above, corn yields about 150 bushels and requires about 130 lbs of nitrogen. A bushel of corn is about 56 lbs so one pound of nitrogen is equivalent to about 65lbs of corn. Most of us will usually spread 10-20 lbs of corn meal for an application and treat it like a chemical 1 lbs N^2/fertilization. Other grains like alfalfa, soybean meal and waste products like cottonseed meal will have a more favorable ratio of lbs of grains to lbs of nitrogen (or environmental impact to process it) and are applied at the same rate.

With corn a typical fertilization is about 1/6 to 1/3 equivalent pounds of Nitrogen to make it.

Granted the manufacture of corn also expends energy in the form of tilling, harvesting, sorting and packaging. Any CO2 sequestering is destroyed with the yearly tilling. I have no idea how to quantify this but bear in mind that the chemical fertilizer you are buying are a more processed (commercial) version of this nitrogen product and additional energy costs have also been occurred with precipitation and drying of the chemicals into a user friendly easily spread able product. LetÂs call it a wash.

Unless you are applying more than 270 lbs of corn per year you are not exceeding the 4 lbs of fertilizer/.1000 ft^2 annual requirements of a KBG lawn. Most of us add about 100 lbs of grains/seedmeal/sewersludge/other organic fertilizers per year. If corn is the worst case, we can assume that we are expending at maximum 1/3 of the chemical that one with expend with a chemical program. I suspect based on the analysis above that the numbers are much lower.

Here is a link to how urea and ammonia are synthesized
Keep in mind that this is just for the active ingredient in fertilizer and that additional processing is performed to turn these gasses and liquids into slow release pellet materials.

The other thing is that if the application of grains concerns you...... find something else to use. There are an awful lot of very good choices.

Honestly its hard to take all this "concern" seriously. I had an organic lawn for many a year before it ever got a single app of grain and it didn't suffer the absence. Find a material(s) you like, work with it, and move on.

Gray, thank you very much for taking the time to put that together! It will take me some time to work through that all myself, but that is exactly the sort of analysis I have been looking for and can't seem to find. I really appreciate your doing that! I'll get back to you when I have something to say... ;-)

Decklap, what sorts of materials were you using before, and why did you stop using them? I ask because my local sources for anything are harware stores, garden stores, box stores and the occasional low volume feed store. Did you have other sources before you switched to grains?

If my "concern" is hard to take seriously, let me try to re-phrase it: I don't believe that anything I do on my couple thousand square feet of lawn is going to have a material effect anywhere else in the world. Though theoretically of course it does, I feel comfortable enough with the "drop in the bucket" concept to go with it. I mean, industrial ag must spill thousands of times more toxins in a year than I will use on my lawn for the rest of my life, even if I were to go with with a full blown lay-down-the-death-and-destruction-no-matter-what four step program.

That said, I still think it is worthwhile to try to manage my little stand of grass in the most efficient way possible, even if the only thing to benefit (besides my grass (and soil)) is my conscience. What I really can't stand is the thinking that "if it's organic, it's good, and if it's synthetic its bad." That is just completely non-sensical to me. The reasons why become most obvious when discussing urea (the first ever synthesized organic compound, and such an important fertilizer, which some apparently think is evil incarnate when produced from natural gas but the height of greenness in the form of chicken$hit). But though that is a gross example, the same kind of muddy thinking is IMHO pervasive in the organic gardening world. So I guess my "concern" isn't "concern" so much as it is skepticism from having read too much, ahem, fertilizer.

Hope that makes sense,
Paul

That said, I still think it is worthwhile to try to manage my little stand of grass in the most efficient way possible, even if the only thing to benefit (besides my grass (and soil)) is my conscience. What I really can't stand is the thinking that "if it's organic, it's good, and if it's synthetic its bad."

Thank you, Paul. I couldn't agree more.

Gray, I had a moment to look into your figures and I got stuck. Did you get your numbers from page 7 of that presentation, titled "Impact of crop rotation?" Particularly the row involving the rotation of corn and soybeans?

Thanks,
Paul

Darius, glad I'm not alone. ;-)

Paul,

Page 11. It is the assumptions page. I used the lower inferred distribution of 150 (149.6) bushells/acre or corn per 130 (129.5) lbs/acre of nitrogen.

Did I use anything before? Are you saying that you didn't think it was possible to have an organic lawn without grains?? Is that what this is about?

Cock-a-doodle do, Milorganite, fish emulsions and/or meal, top dressed compost, compost tea, clippings, cottonseed meal, kelp, my own diluted urine. This notion that somehow grains are necessary to the concept isn't reality. They got a little bump in use among hobbyists because they held a price advantage. By and large that doesn't exist anymore.

And I've haven't "switched" to grains. Im smack in the middle of a major city so feed stores aren't easy to come by and driving 45 minutes each way to the burbs to find one is just dumb. When its been handy for me to buy a bag of SBM or Alfalfa I have but they aren't regular apps.

And to the extent you or others feel that this is a "good vs. bad" issue or that you've been judged I have to say you really ought to step up and take some ownership of your role in that equation. In discussing the impacts of various treatment methods we are only talking about simple facts. That's it.
IMO people are solely responsible for how they respond to them.

What's the best date for a fall feeding of corn gluten meal to eliminate Annual Poa next summer in Z6 (upper south)?

Stan--you'll probably get better results by starting a new thread with a subject that describes what you want to know.

This thread really doesn't have anything to do with controlling poa annua.