Work less in your yard. Planting native vegetation and practicing low-inputlawn care saves you time and money and reduces environmental impacts. What kind of summer do you want to have? Don’t let your yard decide how you spend your time!
As Maintenance Free as a Plant Can Be
Native plants are best adapted to the local climate. Once established, they seldom need watering, fertilizing, mulching, protection from frost or pests or continuous mowing. So native landscaping generally costs less over time.
Native Critters Need Native Plants
Native plants attract beautiful and diverse native butterflies, insect pollinators and birds to your yard since Minnesota plants and animals evolved together over time and have complex relationships. For example, a native plant may produce a chemical to protect it from certain insects. A caterpillar that eats this plant is then protected from predators because of a bitter taste. Plants and animals depend on each other for food, habitat and seed dispersal.
Hold On! Let’s Let this Soak in…
Native grasses have deep roots (often 8 feet or more) that hold down the soil and provide excellent erosion control. These expansive roots also absorb a lot of water runoff compared to monoculture ground covers such as bluegrass or purple crown vetch with shallow roots.
Native Herbaceous Plants
Native legumes (peas and beans) fertilize naturally by enriching the soil with nitrogen.
The Grass is Always Greener…
You can have a beautiful yard with little maintenance. For details, go to www.extension.umn.edu
Search “Low Input Lawn Care” (LILac).
If you are starting a new lawn, choose lowmaintenance grasses such as: Kentucky bluegrasses (Kenblue, Park, South Dakota Certified, and Newport) and fine-leaved fescues (creeping red fescue, chewings fescue, and hard fescue). Other bluegrass varieties that do acceptably well once adapted to lower input levels include Rugby, Parade, Touchdown, Ram I, Nugget, Sydsport, and Monoply.
Eliminate one fertilizer application by leaving clippings on the lawn. The best time to fertilize is in the fall for low-input lawns. Remember, fertilizers containing phosphorus CANNOT be used on lawns in the 7-county metro area, or in the rest of the state starting Jan. 1, 2005. (Exceptions to this law apply when establishing a new lawn or when a soil test shows phosphorus is needed.)
Keep your mowing height at 2 to 3 inches to help shade out weeds. A slightly higher cutting height also encourages deeper rooting and allows moisture and nutrients to gather from a larger soil volume.
Don’t overwater. Use a rain gauge when watering and apply ½-inch of water two or three times a week. Overwatering simply wastes water and predisposes lawns to fungal diseases.
Dawn Dubats, Ramsey, County Master Gardener
