By Sandy Barbic
Since our stormwater goal and theme this year is backyard conservation, here are some ideas to get you off to a good start at becoming an environmental steward of your own land.
Greenscaping encompasses a set of landscaping practices that can improve the health and appearance of your lawn and garden while protecting and preserving natural resources. Greenscaping is a preventative approach, which enlists the help of Mother Nature.
By working with nature, you can have a great-looking yard that’s easier to care for, cheaper to maintain and healthier for families, pets, wildlife and the environment.
Amend your soil. The first and most important step for a healthy landscape plan is to build and maintain healthy soil since this is your foundation. To grow well, your lawn needs soil with good texture, key nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and lime, and the right pH, alkaline/acid balance.
Feel the texture of your soil to see whether it is heavy and dense with clay, light and sandy or in between like loam. Lawns grow best in loamy soil, which is a mixture of clay, silt and sand. Y
ou can improve the texture of your soil by adding compost, manure or grass clippings periodically. These natural additions will help to maintain the community of beneficial soil creatures that keep our soil loose, allowing water, oxygen and nutrients to be available to plant roots. These materials also conserve water and stabilize soil temperature.
Look to see if your soil has been compacted by equipment or heavy traffic. If it has, you can aerate it by pulling out plugs of soil here and there to create air spaces, so that water and nutrients can penetrate down to the roots.
Test your soil. It is extremely important to have your soil tested and check the pH. Grass grows best in slightly acidic soil with a pH of 6.5 to 7.0.
By having your soil tested for nutrients, you can avoid adding excess nitrogen and phosphorous synthetic fertilizer, which costs money and ends up in our lakes and streams when it rains. We have plenty of phosphorous in most Summit County soils and phosphorous is a pollutant being watched closely by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency since it remains in our watersheds in an amount over the acceptable limit.
The plants will only take in the fertilizer they need, and the rest will be wasted, harming the environment. When the extra fertilizer is added to the waterways, the end result is usually eutrophication or death of the lake or stream.
So take a minute to call your local extension service at 330-928-4769, for a soil test kit, or call Summit Soil and Water Conservation District for more information at 330-926-2452. Then you will be prepared for the next step, choosing the right plants to add to your landscape this fall.
Native plants, which are more drought-resistant than exotic non-natives, thrive in our local climates. You can contact Summit SWCD by email at staff@summitoh.net. to obtain a list of plants native to this part of the country. You may also find information from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a reference source for this article.
(Sandy Barbic is an outreach coordinator at Summit County Soil and Water Conservation District. She can be reached at sbarbic@summitoh.net.)
