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Paul Tukey

Green Lawn Guy

Lawn, schmawn—summer's over, right? Not so fast. First step to getting your best lawn ever next year—one that's safe for you and your family, including pets—is what landscaper Paul Tukey calls mental detoxification. That you can start right now. Stopping any further poisoning by pesticides can happen later. —James Servin

How is organic lawn care different from the non-organic kind?

With an organic lawn, you are not relying on synthetic products to grow grass, kill weeds, or kill insects. With chemically-enhanced lawn care, you've got the four-step plan: you put down your pre-emergent weed control, your weed killer, a summer fertilizer, and your fall weed and seed kind of thing—all chemicals. I facetiously call the organic plan the Twelve Step Program, because step one is mental detoxification, but it's really a Five-Step plan.

Step One: This involves examining reality. It's not real to have a couple of acres of nothing but grass, and not a weed anywhere. It doesn’t really exist—even the most pristine golf courses have a few weeds. What I like to say is: You can grow a really healthy, lush lawn and grass without chemicals. There will be a few weeds. Some people do have unrealistic expectations, and to achieve that marketing myth of a perfectly weed-free green lawn, they're willing to dump whatever chemicals people will sell them when the evidence is unassailable that these things harm the water supply, children, and pets.

Step Two: A good organic lawn needs correct soil for growing grass. Get a soil test, and find out what your pH is—pH is a measure of acidity to alkalinity, on a pH scale of 0 to 14. Grass likes to be rated at about 6.5. Depending on where you are in the country, sometimes it can go as low as 4.5, and sometimes I've seen it as high as 8. You really need to make some adjustments to your soil. To make it sweeter, we add things like lime. To make it more acidic, add sulfur. Focusing on the soil is really the essence of any kind of organic transition. With chemicals, we're focused on the plant. Chemicals feed the plant directly. Organics feed the soil, which in turn feed the plant, so there's more time involved. That's why if you put down Miracle Gro on your lawn at 8:00 in the morning, by 4:00 your lawn is greener. If you put an organic product down at 8:00 in the morning, often you don't green up as quickly because the organisms don’t eat the fertilizers that fast.

Step Three: Proper watering. If you send your lawn into the winter with no water, it’s not going to come through next spring very well. Add organic amendments to your soil and they will hold onto the water. As soon as you can, water as deeply as possible. The ground ought to be wet, six inches deep. If it's not, go back and water some more. That's really important. Don't water a little bit every day—that actually harms the grass, because the grass doesn't learn to gown deeply. The goal is to get grass roots as deep as possible. If you can do that, your lawn will withstand a lot of things.

Step Four: Overseed. This time of year, you ought to overseed your lawn. Every other plant in nature goes to seed naturally, and that's how it perpetuates itself. We mow lawns before we allow them to go to seed. Even organic lawns that are maintained perfectly will get tired after a while. It's a good idea to go out, get yourself a bag of seed, and scatter it around, especially if you have any bare areas. The only time you want to water every day is when you put seed down. Once you put the seed down, keep it moist—dry seed doesn't germinate. As soon as it's up and germinating, you can cut back on your watering, and work toward watering once a week again. You don't want to wait too long before winter, because if you don't put your grass seed down til December 1, it may not germinate in time, and you may have wasted your money.

Step Five: Mow properly. Make sure you have a sharp blade—you should be sharpening the blade after every twelve hours of use. Raise the mower blade to the highest setting from spring until early autumn. In the spring, you want the blade high because the fall grass will shade the soil and keep the weed seed from germinating, and in the summer you want it tall because summer tall grass shades itself and conserves water. In the fall, after you start to get some rain, it's okay to mow it lower.

In terms of a general care calendar for lawns: what should we be thinking about now?

Mother Nature brings some moisture when the fall rolls around, so we count on the cooler days, the not-yet-frigidly-cold evenings, and grass starts growing again. Summer is the hardest time of year on the lawn, because you've got the drought and all these conditions that make it difficult for lawns to thrive. In springtime, you've got fast growth in some cases, and in others a lot of competition from weed seed flying around. Our care calendar is the East Coast, but it really stands for most of the country. The farther south you go, then the September calendar really gets moved back to October or even November.

For city dwellers—is using a Miracle Gro on your plants a kind of heresy? Should we be considering an organic approach?

Miracle Gro is definitely not organic. There are all kinds of organic fertilizers that you can use in your container plants. You can go to pretty much any garden center at Home Depot or Lowe's and buy an
organic alternative to Miracle Gro that works every bit as good. It's going to be healthier, and if your cats start eating the plants, if your dog paws around in them, they're going to be a lot safer.

You have on your list of 'Top Ten Benefits of Lawn Care' noise reduction—what's that all about?

People who tend their lawns organically only mow 60 percent as much. With those chemical fertilizers, you're pushing out massive growth in the spring time, and with organic fertilizers you're pushing out even growth. Lawn mowing, in some parts of this country, contributes to 10 percent of the air pollution in the summer. Lawn mowers are thirty times less efficient than automobiles. They're just little smokestacks of air pollution. I'm not trying to put landscapers out of business, I'm just trying to tell them: There's a more environmentally friendly way of doing business, and let's smarten up before we ruin the planet.

Are there some easy-care grasses that readers should know about?

I'll just tell you, anecdotally: When the first settlers came to this country, they were disappointed to find out that we didn’t have a lot of grasses here that could sustain their cattle, because the native grasses simply don't grow very fast. They went back to Europe and brought back what we now call Kentucky Blue grass, and started to use it as field pasture grass and lawn grass. So I say to people, if you like to mow your lawn every four or five days in the springtime, grow Kentucky Bluegrass and knock yourself out. But if you really like to mow every two or three weeks, then there's lots of other grasses that you can plant that are better suited for your climate. They are not going to use ridiculous amounts of fertilizer or water. So, down South, in areas where there's not much rain, you can grow things like buffalo grass. Centipede grass only needs to be mowed every two to three weeks at the most. There’s bahia grass—it's a nice grass, it grows very low, and you might mow it 5 or 6 times all summer long. In the northern climate, there are any number of fescues that you can grown. You mow 'em two or three times a year. For me, that's a heck of a lot better than mowing 25 or 26 times.

Your book The Organic Lawn Care Manual contains instructions on 'how to get your lawn off drugs.' Do lawns go through a detox or a withdrawal?

They do. It's like a junkie waiting for its next fix. Lawn chemicals kill all the natural soil biology. Inside a teaspoon of healthy soil are billions of microorganisms. Chemically treated soil loses its ability to sustain plant life on its own, and it becomes dependent on the next fix of chemicals. The goal of organic lawn care is to create soil that is sustainable. During the transition period, the detox period, you as the gardener, you as the homeowner have to add life to the soil, and it takes a while. If you've been on the four-step plan and suddenly the drug isn't there anymore, there may be some pain involved. And the pain can come in a number of forms. The pain can come in maybe reduced appearance, or increased expenditures. You can spend enough money on your renovation with organics so you can have a nicer looking lawn pretty much instantly, but you're going to have to pay for that. If you're going to do a gradual transition, one to three years, then you don't have to suffer the financial pain but visually you may suffer the pain.
My book is the best-selling lawn book in its category since it came out. People are ready to hear its message. If you're a young mother, why would want kid rolling around in chemicals? The EPA estimates that 65 per cent of the fertilizer that we put down washes off into the water. And 98 per cent of the weed killers and insect killers that we put on our lawn go someplace else.

You got into organic lawn care in 1994 after being diagnosed with acute pesticide poisoning—with symptoms like blurry vision, nose bleeds, and cold sweats. The doctor told you to cease all application of lawn chemicals and then the health problems went away—how long was it between the diagnosis and the health problems going away?

It took a while to get the diagnosis right. Once I stopped using the chemicals on the lawn, all the symptoms went away within a few weeks. I have lingering problems … like with nail polish. I can’t be in the room when my wife uses nail polish and she can't wear perfume. I can't go in a garden center anywhere near the pesticide aisle without getting headaches to this day. There are other people out there with chemical sensitivity. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that one in seven people have some form of sensitivity to lawn chemicals. I've heard so many stories of the Chemlawn truck showing up and the dog getting sick and dying two days later. Chemlawn has been one of the sued companies in American history. I’m 46, and I had my annual physical today, and I'm doing fine. There's a woman in the next town over from me, she battles with her neighbors, and finally all sixteen of her neighbors agreed to stop putting down lawn chemicals because she became incontinent. This is a grown woman who lost bowel functioning when the Chemlawn company came around. She was written up in the local newspaper in Maine. What I'm saying is, 'Why don’t we just go organic, folks, where you're dealing with natural substances that are not going to cause these kinds of reactions?'

After you stopped using the lawn chemicals, did the grass improve along with your health?

Initially, back in 1994, the appearance of the lawns declined precipitously. Because I had no idea what I was doing. It's not like you can snap your fingers and go organic and have it look better—that's
not how it works. You need a whole life soil program, and you need to bring that soil back to life. I did the product for product swap, and I would put down an organic fertilizer on one property, and it would green up the lawn a little bit. Two doors down, I would put down the exact same product at the exact same rate, and that lawn didn’t green up. What I found out was that in the lawns where it wasn't working, there were no organisms in the soil to digest the organic fertilizer. That's how the green-up happens. The soil organisms need to eat the fertilizer so that it can then green up the lawn. It's a whole process.

Is it mainly men who are resistant to the idea of organic lawns?

Absolutely. I spoke last year to the garden club federation of Massachusetts state convention—350 women. And I literally the next day had angry husbands writing to me and saying, 'Stay the hell away from my wife. I want to care for my lawn any damn way I please.' That's the kind of thing that you run into. I can also say that more and more guys are coming around. But at the same time, I'm one of those people who loves a nice lawn. I've got teenage boys, and we like to play ball. I like to mow and make straight patterns. I'm still kind of addicted to that appearance. I'm just not addicted to using chemicals to make it happen.

What is your grass of choice at your home in New Gloucester, Maine?

I use the fescues I was mentioning earlier, with a little bit of perennial rye grass. Perennial rye grass handles foot traffic very well.

Are there some downsides to an organic lawn?

I think it can be more work the first year, and, depending on your pocketbook, it may not be as green as you're used to. The downside really is that you have to work harder mentally—not physically. Because you do need to understand and at least intuitively buy into the idea that there's life in the soil, and in growing grass we're nurturing that life. We are what we eat. And if we eat garbage, then we're not going to be healthy. If we eat holistically, that's grown naturally and comes out of healthy soil, we are going to be healthier. I'm the founder of The Safe Lawn Foundation, and one of our sponsors is Land O Lakes-Purina Mills. They put out an organic fertilizer product called Bradfield. And Bradfield products are derived from either cornmeal or alfalfa. There's another company out there called Multi-Blooms that's derived from catfish. The Scotts company, which is the largest seller of lawn chemicals in the world, has started selling an organic line, and theirs is based in chicken manure. A consumer has to decide if they want fish going into their property or they want chicken manure, or if they want alfalfa and corn.

Should there be concern about hormones in the chicken or the mercury in the fish going into lawns?

Some people think so. Smell is another issue. The odor of the chicken manure when it gets wet is definitely discernable. Oftentimes the odor of the fish is discernable, although Multi-Blooms and other
companies try to mask it by putting in herbs. Every third booth at a trade show in a green industry is selling an organic product. Everybody’s jumping on the bandwagon.

I've read that farmers have lower fertility rates than men who live in cities.

They do. They have lower IQs, they have lower fertility rates. People who live around golf courses are seven times more likely to get non-Hodgkins lymphoma. There are an awful lot of people who say to
themselves: 'I'm only exposed to it four times a year. I guess I'll take my chances.' The National Gardening Association says that this year, five per cent of Americans have forsaken all lawn chemicals. But by next year, it's going to be ten per cent. It's growing quickly, and there's a lot of paranoia in the chemical industry.

What does green mean to you?

Green is believing, green is honesty. There are a lot of companies trying to capitalize on this, and some of them are doing great things and others are just trying to steal people's money. And ironically, ChemLawn just changed its name this year to TruGreen. In fact, it's the most fake green there is.

Have you adopted any green habits recently?

I compost every kitchen scrap. My wife and I try to buy all organic food. We recycle all of our newspapers and magazines. I drive a hybrid, a Toyota Highlander. It gets 30 miles a gallon, it's still big enough to cart around my three children. But it is a hybrid, and it uses a lot less emissions, so I feel good about that. I don't mean to portray myself as any kind of saint, because I'm not, but I am a bit of a missionary. I've taken my message to 33 states and I plan to go to all 50

Ever do anything eco that feels absurd?

Sorting out seventeen different kinds of paper for the landfill: cardboard, newsprint, magazines, magazine coatings, Styrofoam, different kinds of wax wrapping.

What's your eco sin?

For me, it's drinking Diet Coke. My daughter tells me it's got formaldehyde in it and it's not very good for me.

What's your favorite plant?

I love lemon-scented thyme, because it's evergreen, even in Maine. You can eat it, and it's got a totally uplifting scent. It's got really nice flowers, it's really easy to grow. Thyme is just one of a thousand different ground covers that you can grow instead of grass. And they're better for the environment.

Can you recommend any favorite green products?

Seventh Generation is a company that makes the cleaning products that we use—everything from toilet paper to cleaning products. There's a company out there called Organica, and they make a wonderful array of cleaning products that are all natural-based, and they work well. I love what Nell Newman is doing with Newman's Own organics—she makes organic sweets like Fig Newmans that taste awesome.