Conditioning the Lawn

Mike spreading compost on back lawn
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Last Sunday we were rained out, so on Thursday evening (28-Apr-2005), Mike and Soni came by with another load of compost to finish the side and back lawns. Mike brought an aerator tool that you step on to pull up plugs and aerate the soil, but because the yard was not very compacted we able to proceed directly with the top dressing.

What I learned from Mike was that early spring and late fall are the ideal times of year to condition the lawns with a thin layer of compost to enrich the soil and encourage worm growth.

After spreading a thin layer of compost, we overseeded with fresh grass seed to top up the lawn for the start of the season.




Back yard conditioned with fresh compost
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Soni scattering grass seed
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Once the grass is ready for cutting, Mike will bring by a push mower for me to try out. He says today's push mowers are much better and easier to push than the ones from years ago.

Mike mentioned that running a typical gas power mower for one hour creates an amount of pollution equivalent to driving a car from Toronto to Montreal. Because small gas motors are highly polluting, Garden Gnome uses only hand tools.

When we begin mowing for the season, we will leave the clippings on the lawn to compost directly onto the soil. Grass clippings can be added to a composter, but they tend to add too much nitrogen (green matter) to the mix unless balanced with generous amount of leaves or other carbon-rich brown matter. The consensus is that it's best to leave grass clippings right on the lawn.

A photographer from The Mississauga News dropped by to take some photos of us. The newspaper will be featuring some articles on EcoSource's Green Neighbour Program.

Soni brought along our composter -- a City of Mississauga composter that looks rather like Darth Vader's helmet. We assembled it and parked it in the spot Marion and I thought would be good because it will catch some morning sun to help keep the compost mixture warm and speed up composting.





New composter installed & ready
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On the bottom layer of the composter, we layered twigs, leaves, and a basketful of maple buds I had swept from our deck. Mike added a little existing compost as a 'starter' full of beneficial bacteria.




Maple buds gathered for composting
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We celebrated our efforts with a dinner of Marion's homemade veggie soup and some freshly baked loaves of wholewheat-oat-cranberry bread.




Homemade veggie soup and wholewheat-oat-cranberry bread
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The next day I composted the kitchen scraps we had been saving up: banana, orange and potato peels, onion skins, some lettuce bits, tea bags, coffee grounds, and coffee filters. I also roughly shredded and added any paper towels we had used. I popped it all into the opening of the composter and covered the kitchen scraps with some leaves and a bit of dirt.

I was amazed at how much of our normal weekly kitchen waste went directly into the composter, and I felt a strong sense of pride in this simple act of recycling.

We still have much to learn about composting and organic lawn care, but we're already deriving deep satisfaction from our first baby steps in going green!