Storey Publishing has an excellent new book by Paul Tukey on organic lawn care. Last year, Tukey won the Horticultural Communication Award from the American Horticultural Society.

If you’re still using chemicals (bad!), this is a great way to learn how to convert to an all-organic lawn-care system.

Locally, we’re fortunate to have Patti Wood and her Grassroots Healthy Lawn Program. This Scarsdale-based group has been working with Westchester County and local landscapers for a couple of years to encourage homeowners and others to stop using chemicals on their lawns.

Here’s a link to the Grassroots Web site. Poke around there and you’ll find good lists of local retailers and landscapers who’ve gone organic.

Here’s a story of mine from the paper a couple of years ago about Grassroots and what you can do to have a healthy chemical-free lawn. (Sorry- it’s a little long.)

Bill Cary/The Journal News

With 40 estates and corporate clients that include Swiss Re, General Electric and Philips Research USA, Larry Labriola has one of the most lucrative landscaping businesses in the northern suburbs. He has also become the poster child for the organic lawn care movement, having adopted a program that eschews chemical fertilizers and pesticides in favor of organic products like compost, corn gluten, natural fertilizers and compost tea to maintain the hundreds of acres of lush turf grass under his watch. Labriola is the president of Carmine Labriola Contracting Corp., which provides horticultural services and landscape maintenance for large clients, including the 144-acre Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Garden and PepsiCo world headquarters in Purchase. Larry’s late father, Carmine, founded the company, which now has 120 employees.

“We’ve all been trained that pesticides are the answer to everything,” says Labriola, who estimates that his company spent about $1,000 on pesticides last year, down from $50,000 in 2003.

Labriola, who lives in Purchase, became a convert after attending a workshop on organic lawns led by Jeff Frank of the Nature Lyceum School for Organic Horticulture in Westhampton, N.Y.

“The time was right and I was ready for a change,” he says. “I’m now a believer and I’m determined to make this work.”

Patti Wood, the founder and executive director of Grassroots Environmental Education and a pesticide consultant for Audubon New York and other groups, is another leader in the organic lawn care field.

“Here we are afloat in Roundup and four-step programs from Scott and we don’t need it,” Wood says. “We’re working against nature.”

“The instant you start using a chemical program you are killing everything you need for healthy soil and turf,” Wood says. “They are nonselective.”

After you kill every living thing in your soil and lawn, then you need extra fertilizer and more chemicals to make the grass grow and keep it free of disease.

Last fall, Wood and her Grassroots group launched a new program with Westchester County called the Grassroots Healthy Lawn Program, working with landscapers, retailers and the public to educate them about organic lawns that are free of insecticides, fungicides and herbicides and less likely to be harmful to children, pets and the water supply.

“This is the first program of its kind in the country,” says Wood, who has been teaching seminars on organic lawn care around the county, including one this spring sponsored by the Native Plant Center at Westchester Community College in Valhalla.

Grassroots, which is based locally in Harrison, has also been working with the New York State Turf and Landscapers Association to develop two-day educational programs to train landscapers in organic methods and then test and certify them as natural organic landscapers.

“We’re one or two years away from big-box stores having organic sections,” says Chip Osborne, a Marblehead, Mass., turf grass expert who taught one of these programs for landscapers at Lasdon Park and Arboretum in Somers this spring. “We’re right on the verge of going mainstream.”

Certified landscapers

The Grassroots Web site (www.ghlp.org) lists certified landscapers who have completed the program and retailers that stock at least one product in each of several categories the group recommends as part of a complete organic program for homeowners.

Cece Fabbro, a photographer who lives in the Edgemont section of Greenburgh, plans to switch to an all-organic program next spring and recently got three estimates from landscapers on the Grassroots Web site.

“The estimates were all comparable to what I have now,” Fabbro says.

In November, Grassroots will host a training course for golf course superintendents, municipal workers and landscapers who maintain athletic fields.

Nationally, American consumers spend billions of dollars each year on chemical pesticides and fertilizers for their lawns. Locally, Westchester has the dubious distinction of being No. 2 in the state for the use of pesticides, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Traditionally, Suffolk County is always No. 1 because of regular spraying for mosquito control on the South Shore of Long Island.

“For residential lawn care, Westchester County is No. 1 in the state,” Wood says.

There is a growing body of evidence linking pesticides to problems in the environment and to health concerns for humans and animals, including neurological diseases, cancers, asthma, endocrine disruptions and reproductive problems.

Children at risk

With their small and rapidly developing bodies, children are particularly vulnerable. So are pregnant women.

“Children are unable to rid their bodies of these toxins the way adults do,” Wood says. “Because they’re so close to the ground, children really live in their environment.”

Children exposed to pesticides in the first year of life have double the risk of developing asthma, says Dr. Lucy Waletzky, an environmental health specialist and a member of the Westchester County Pest Management Committee, which was formed in 1996 to oversee the phase-out of pesticides on county property.

The county also has a Neighborhood Notification Law requiring commercial applicators to inform abutting neighbors in writing 48 hours in advance of an application of pesticides.

Pets are also affected by the toxins, and millions of songbirds are killed each year.

“You can have a beautiful lawn without the use of these poisons,” Wood says.

Landscapers are well aware that “not only their customers are at risk but also themselves,” she says, noting studies that have shown higher rates of prostate cancer in landscapers.

“Getting landscapers to participate in this program is the No. 1 factor in the key to its success,” says Bill Cooke, an outreach specialist with Grassroots.

“Me, I’m happy with organics,” says Helio Mendoza, a landscaper with Labriola who lives in Scarsdale. “I’m allergic to the chemicals. I used to have to stay well behind the trucks when we sprayed. Now I’m free to be all over the place.”

“This is the way we used to do it 40 years ago.” says Tony Cerasoli, job manager at the PepsiCo site for Labriola. “We’re very happy with the organic program.”

When homeowners move from a chemical program to an organic one, they need to remember that it’s not just about swapping one product for another. Cultural practices need to be changed, too, such as adding compost to the lawn, mowing higher, watering correctly and overseeding in the fall with a mix of grass seeds to crowd out weeds.

Feed the soil first

You need to take the approach that you’re feeding the soil, which in turn will nourish the grass. One of the best ways to feed the soil is to add organic matter such as compost.

Compost traditionally has not been used in turf grass management, but it’s key to a healthy lawn, Osborne says. Compost is the best source of organic matter and beneficial microorganisms.

Another good way to add organic matter is to leave the clippings on the lawn rather than bagging them.

Compost tea, the liquid extract of high-grade compost, is also becoming an important component in organic turf management. “This is sort of the new kid on the block in this thing,” Osborne says.

Making compost tea can be as simple as filling an old sock with compost and leaving it in a bucket of water overnight or as high-tech as investing in a $3,000 tea-brewing machine that holds 220 gallons of water.

The tea, which can be administered with a sprayer, makes grass tougher and stronger and it also helps fight powdery mildew on lilacs and black-spot disease on roses.

“We are producing and applying 500 gallons of concentrated compost tea per day,” Labriola says.

An easy transition

If you already have a pretty good lawn, you can easily make the transition to an organic program within the first year, Wood says. Fall is a particularly good time to start.

An organic program may cost slightly more initially, but the costs should level off as you keep adding organic matter to the soil.

Organic fertilizers cost five times more than chemical fertilizers, Labriola says, but you need less frequent applications. He uses one called Nature Safe that’s made by Griffin Industries.

Since going organic last year, Labriola estimates that his expenses are about 5 percent higher. So far, he’s not charging more.

“My thrust is that if you’re going to do this, you have to go the full 150 percent,” he says.

And best of all – the grass looks great and his customers are happy.

For more info …

For questions or to get a soil test, call your local Cornell Cooperative Extension at 914-285-4640 in Westchester, 845-429-7085 in Rockland and 845-278-6738 in Putnam.