We are Pure Prairie Organics and we have been fertilizing lawns and trees in DuPage and Kane Counties since 1994.  We use all natural products that are safe for children and pets and get great results. I get lots of organic lawn care questions (and gardening questions in general! ).   I will answer some of them here to give you an idea what I use, how it works and how we solve problems.  Thank you for your time! What's wrong with my lawn?  It looked good last spring! Your lawn is hungry.  Honestly speaking, we have great soils. This is the Prairie State and if we do nothing we can grow grass.  Soils are incredibly active over the winter and lots of nutrients are released by the microbes in the soil.  In the spring there is a huge amount of food available to the plants and our spring growth is very strong.  About Mothers Day most of the food is used up and our lawns  need our help to stay thick and green.  Grass is a very heavy feeder and goes thru enormous amounts of food.  The original prairie grasses were very tall and had deep roots which could forage around for food. We mow our lawns which keeps the roots more shallow so our home lawns need our help in getting enough food to stay thick and green. OK, but do organic fertilizers really work? They work better than chemicals.  Chemical fertilizers are like breakfast cereal; They give energy but not health.  The grass is real green but the lack of minerals and carbohydrates weakens the lawn and problems show up.  Over time, the grass gets thin, grubs and diseases take over and the soil sets up like cement.  Aeration and dethatching does not help. Reseeding won't work, either, because the soil doesn't have enough energy or nutrition to support the new seed.  Organic fertilizers are like a balanced meal.  It takes a while to digest but the health is much better.  Organic fertilizers are high in minerals and carbohydrates which feeds the whole system rather than just pushing the green.  Over time, the soil becomes softer and the lawn becomes thicker with fewer insect and disease problems.  What kind of natural fertilizers do you use? I custom mix  a variety of dry ingredients.  Most of them are animal vegetable and mineral.  These include; alfalfa meal, feather meal, bone meal, dry molasses, brewers yeast, gypsum, high calcium lime potassium sulfate, kelp meal and dry humates (a type of coal). I also use small amounts of ammonia sulfate which is a man made product but has an organic response in the soil. The weak point of organics is it won't work in cold weather.  The ammonia sulfate will work well in cold weather (cold soils, actually) and the earthworms and bacteria love this stuff. What about aeration? Aeration by machine doesn't work.  It doesn't solve the problem. Calcium makes soil loose and open and magnesium makes soils tight.  Our soils are high in magnesium which is why it is so compacted and tight. Gypsum loosens clay.  So do bacteria and earthworms.  This is why I use large amounts of gypsum.  I am able to soften about one inch of soil each year.  So after two or three years, the soil is soft about three or four inches deep which really helps the grass to stay green with less water in the summertime.  The longer we stay on the program the deeper it goes. Bacteria make a lot of mucus on their bodies and soil particles glom onto them which opens up the soil.  Bacteria need a high calcium environment to thrive in which is why we use lots of high calcium lime with each application. They also need lots of carbs and organic fertilizers are naturally high in carbohydrates. The food for earthworms is bacteria.  Earthworms can tunnel 10 to 20 feet each week!   There is no better aeration than that.  After a couple of years on our program you will see earthworms everywhere after a rain.  I do not need to add them to the soil.  Feed them and they will come! Nature uses dandelions to aerate the soil.  Other tap root weeds like thistle, burdock, and queen anne's lace  will also aerate the soil.  Dandelions make a tap root that wedges open the tight soils.  The half inch of soil around the root is a perfect soil; perfectly balanced in minerals, perfectly balanced in organic matter and perfectly balanced in bacteria.  The bacteria around the root is so active that earthworms come to feed.  Many times when we dig up a dandelion we can also pull up an earthworm with it.  In December, the tap root dies and becomes more organic matter for the soil.  This is natures way of opening up the soil and adding organic matter.  Dandelions are new every year.  They are not perennial. Some lawns are in new subdivisions which has a thin layer of soil on top of blue clay.  This situation can encourage diseases because of the compaction in the clay. In that situation I can do a special application of liquid herbs and bacteria which are specialized at getting clay to loosen up.  Sometimes I am able to soften five inches deep in two weeks.  Not all the time but sometimes. What about weeds? The best way to control weeds is to mow high.  Weed seeds need sunlight to germinate and mowing high will shade the soil. Also, getting the grass thicken will help a lot.  The person mowing at two and a half inches will have twice the weeds and need twice the water as the person mowing at three and a half inches. (top setting on the mower.)  Mulching the grass clippings will also help shade the soil giving even more weed control as well as feeding the grass after it breaks down.  We need to make sure we have at least a half inch of thatch to shade the soil and hold in the moisture to reduce watering.  A half inch of thatch is ideal.  I never recommend dethatching. That's your future topsoil! Crab grass is easy to control organically.  Quack grass too. Crab grass only germinates where there is salt and gypsum neutralizes salt.  Gypsum is a better crab grass preemergent than the chemicals are.  Usually crab grass grows along the curb where the snow plows push the snow.  It will also grow along the driveway where the snow melts off our tires.  It may take a little time but gypsum definitely works. Quack grass hates calcium.  High calcium lime will eliminate the quack grass over time.  I doesn't happen fast but when it does, it is permanent.  There is no known chemical that will control quack grass other than Round-up which will kill everything. Creeping Charlie is sensitive to boron so boric acid will work for that but I can't always get it to work.  There are definitely a few tricks to get this to work right.  The boric acid mix does not kill the grass. Organically we don't have anything for broadleaf weeds (dandelion thistles, etc).  I worked with corn gluten in 1995 and 1996 but the results for weed control were very poor.  It makes great green lawns but the weeds were still there. Vinegar and lemon juice works to kill the tops of weeds but not the roots.  This will work ok in the beds or the driveway but it will leave brown spots in the lawn.   Polka dots in the lawn... not good. I recommend the homeowner keep a bottle of liquid weed killer in the garage and spot spray a weed that bothers them.  If it doesn't bother you then don't spray it!  Usually it's just dandelions in the spring.  The rest of the year nobody even sees them.  We keep some chemical in our truck and will spot spray if we are asked.  We never do this automatically.  With our service, the homeowner is always in control of the killer chemicals. On the larger lawns we need to call in a truck.  Usually, tho, it's just once a year for dandelions which keeps the use of killer chemicals to a minimum.  I don't like it and I don't recommend it but I don't want my clients to make enemies in the neighborhood if things get  bad. Weeds and what they tell. Weeds are not evil!  They are natures' soil repair system.  When the soil is high or low in a certain mineral, a weed will appear to correct the imbalance. For example, dandelions add calcium to the soil.  When the soil is low in available calcium, and there is calcium in reserve, dandelions digest the calcium from unavailable to available.  If there is no calcium in reserve then the weedy grasses thrive, which are crab grass, quack grass and sedges. Weeds with a strong stem will digest potassium.  Plantain thrives in surface compaction (footprints) but deeper down the soil is ok.  Creeping charlie is an indicator of poor drainage (it likes wet).  Clover fixes nitrogen into soils that are low. In this way, weeds are indicators of poor soil conditions and are also natures way to correct this condition.  Controlling weeds in the lawn is more complicated than I have explained but I wanted to give a general idea of the biology that occurs in nature. How can I grow grass under my trees? You can't!  Grass is a full sun plant.  Even the "shade" grasses need five hours of full sun.  If we don't have five hours of full sun under the tree then the grass will always be thin.  Trimming the bottom branches definitely helps but shade will always be an issue.  Plants don't have a stomach.  The digestion has to happen in the soil.  Grass is fed by bacteria and trees are fed by fungi.  Fungi like wood chips.  Lawns and trees don't fight but they are different ecosystems and trees can out pull grass for water and food.  Trees definitely do better with mulch underneath. The first week of August, trees get a signal from the soil to start getting ready for winter and about mid August the grass under the trees turns brown as the roots start pulling extra water.  This also thins the grass under the trees and explains why putting new grass seed down under the trees in autumn doesn't work very well.  Even if you water it, the tree just takes the extra water. How often do you fertilize? I fertilize four times a year, roughly every two months.  I feed three times per year to keep the lawn green and the fourth application to help me get enough food on the lawn to make it thick. The fertilizers do not need to be watered in and the lawn is safe to walk on after we do the application.  We can fertilize in our bare feet if we want to. All our products are 1000% biological meaning it is safe for the bacteria, fungi and earthworms who do all the important work in the soil. What about grubs? The best way to control grubs is to take away their food.  The food for the grubs is fungus.  There is a fungus that attacks the lawn called summer patch disease and it makes those brown circles in the lawn around the Fourth of July when it starts getting hot.  Gypsum works well to kill this fungus.  Gypsum has sulfur in it and sulfur is a fungicide.  Gypsum is a mineral that is quarried out of the ground. Sometimes I use probiotics to control the summer patch disease.  Home owners can use yogurt to do the same thing.  Yogurt contains Lactobacillus bacteria which is a superior competitor.  Just make sure the yogurt has active cultures!  In the soil,  98% of the microbes in the soil are good and helping us. They digest the grass clippings, old roots and the minerals in the soil and make the nutrients available to the plants.  Controlling the bad guys is easy!  We just feed the 98% and they overpower the bad guys.  Plants are also able to kill the bad fungi.  All plants make an enzyme that can dissolve the cell walls of diseases.  The mineral at the center of this enzyme is copper.  Diseases are an indicator of a copper deficiency.  Sometimes I spray small amounts of copper and other minerals to feed the plant so it can protect itself.  My grandfather used to pound a copper nail and a zinc nail in elm trees to help control Dutch Elm disease.  Don't try this at home because if you over do it then you can kill your tree!  But you get the idea. We have known for a long time about the value of small amounts of certain minerals. Practicing soil and plant nutrition is very important in the organic program.  We sometimes do soil testing to help us know what minerals are high or low. Do you do soil tests? If I see problems  that concern me then I will do a soil test to help me identify the problem and some solutions that will get our plants healthy and happy. Insects and diseases are indicators of malnutrition and it's ok to treat for them but until we address the underlying malnutrition these problems will continue. Soil test are an important tool for this reason.  I do maybe 50 tests each year and I learn many things from each one. Why should we choose your service? I give great advice!  For example, I give detailed advice on how high to mow, when and how often to water, what to do about Japanese Beetles,  rabbits in the tulips, dog urine spots, and the right kind of mulch to use.  All the other wonderful things that we do for our yards! The best part of my job is talking to you and helping you solve your plant problems.  I do lots of homework and I love working with the soil. I also leave awesome newsletters every time we fertilize! If you have any questions, please call or email me and I will be glad to help. Thank you for your time! Bill Scheffler, owner Pure Prairie Organics PO Box 1458 Wheaton, IL   60189 630-510-2483 pureprairie@gmail.com pureprairieorganics.com