2015 in Review

As the 2015 growing season is fast becoming history we at Golden Rule Sustainable Turf Service would like to express gratitude to our loyal customers for loaning  their lawns and trees to us to study and implement best practices, and to care for in a way that promotes health and sustainability. On this Thanksgiving day we would add all of our customer's names to a list of those we are thankful for. We look forward to next year's growing season and hope to have the opportunity to continue our research and applications in our customer's lawns. 

What we saw, what we learned, what we did.  

In our work we are seeing more and more (as we look into soil biology) the deficiencies in the soils beneath the suburban lawn. The typical suburban lawn and trees are trying to survive in predominately clay soils as can be seen in the picture below of a profile we took from a customer's lawn.

We follow the principle that dirt is DEAD, soil is ALIVE (we can't grow healthy trees, shrubs, and lawns in dirt). The starting point is to get a balance of sand, silt and clay but we're not finished if we have only these components in balance. There also needs to be microorganisms and organic matter (organic matter feeds microorganisms which feed the roots of all plants). Our work is to add to clay what is needed to make a soil that is ALIVE, a soil that feeds the grass, the trees, the plants (yes, biologically balanced soil is capable of feeding quite well our lawns, trees and plants). So what are the results?