Why Build Healthy Soil?
• Without healthy soil, there would be no food, no clean water, no oxygen to breathe... Soil is ALIVE, and it needs us to treat it properly in order to be sustainable.
• If left on its own, it would simply maintain a normal cycle, but in today's world our soil is bombarded from the negative impacts of modern chemical-based agriculture, destructive construction practices, poor land management, and pollution.
• These disruptive influences interrupt the natural balance, compact soil and saturate it with chemicals that kill the ecosystem that normally thrives within it.
• When we fertilize our lawns (or plants) in essence we are feeding the soil, not the plant. When we water our lawns (or plants) in essence we are replacing soil water available to the plant roots for their uptaking, not actually watering the plant.
• Building healthy soils starts with an understanding of these forces, changing our destructive and damaging methods, and replenishing the biological activity within.
What's Wrong With Using Chemical Fertilizers and Pesticides?
• Chemical or synthetic fertilizers act as a quick fix for plants, similar to a sugar or caffeine high.
• Weakened and stressed plants are left vulnerable to attack by disease or pests, thereby resulting in the need for herbicides and pesticides.
• Chemical fertilizers damage, stunt and kill the ecosystem in the soil rendering it sterile and lifeless.
• Lack of soil biology causes soil structure collapse. Collapse of soil structure results in compaction, poor drainage, low water-holding abilities and loss of nutrient retention.
• Chemical fertilizers cause grass to overproduce thatch, with nothing to break it down.
• Studies prove as much or more than 60% of applied chemicals leave the soil via runoff and leaching.
• Synthetic fertilizers also build up in the soil, cause an imbalance in soil pH and fertility, and build up toxic levels of salts and heavy metals.
• The most widely used broadleaf weed killer, 2,4-D was the key ingredient in Agent Orange (the chemical used during the war in Vietnam, responsible for over 400,000 deaths and maimings and over 500,000 children born with birth defects).
• Dogs are 2 times more likely to get lymphoma if they live in a home with a chemically treated lawn.
• Men are 3 times more likely to get prostate cancer if they work as lawn care technicians, spraying conventional chemicals.
• Children are 6.5 times more likely to get leukemia when living in homes where the lawns have been treated with chemicals.
SafeLawns Video
Here is a video produced and funded by SafeLawns.org an advocate for healthy, chemical-free lawns and landscapes. It will introduce you to some very helpful insights as to the safety (or lack thereof) of chemical fertilizers. View Video
Maybe I Don't Care About Fertilizing My Lawn -- How Will I Benefit by Improving My Soil's Health?
• There are vast health benefits of staying away from chemical fertilizers.
• Improving your own soil via our organic fertilization spray services will significantly increase storm-water management and drought resistance over time.
• Everywhere extreme droughts are a huge concern, and depleting water tables (ground water) effects all of us from skyrocketing food prices to protecting and preserving our soils (think of the great dust bowl of the Midwest in the 1930s, which was directly related to poor soil management!).
• Improving your own soil will help reduce runoff and pollution, holding more water in the soil to recharge our precious aquifers. Won't you consider the future of our environment and the future of our kids?