Natural Alternatives to Garden Chemicals

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By Yvonne Jeffery, Liz Barclay, and Michael Grosvenor
5 of 9 in Series: The Essentials of Greening Your Lawn and Garden
Going natural in your yard is worth it to give your yard a life free of toxic and harmful chemicals. Not only do you limit your children’s exposure to these chemicals when they’re in the yard, but you also don’t track the chemicals indoors on your feet or let them blow in through the windows. Just realize that it may take seasons rather than days to eliminate weeds, for example.

Rather than use chemicals to treat your lawn and garden, consider doing the following:

Dethatch and aerate your lawn. Dethatching means removing the woody parts of the grass plant that build up on the surface of the lawn; do this when the thatch gets more than about half an inch thick and therefore keeps water and air from getting to the grass root. A dethatching rake works well for this task. Aerating involves removing plugs of soil from your lawn by using an aerating machine (which you can rent) to encourage air and water to reach the roots. Both practices keep your lawn healthy in a greener way than relying on broadcast chemicals that deliver fertilizer and herbicide in combination. (The herbicide ends up in areas that don’t need it and can run off into groundwater sources.)

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