Wisconsin’s professional lawn caretakers want to know how to do their job with fewer chemicals, or lower-risk chemicals, or none at all, for the most compelling of reasons. Customers are asking for it.

It’s not surprising. Organic products are among the fastest-growing sectors in the food business, and it make sense that people who worry about chemicals in their food would rather not have them in their yards. But if they’re hoping for anything close to certified-organic lawn care, they’re going to be disappointed, says UW-Madison soil scientist Doug Soldat.

“The USDA has established standards for organic food, but there’s nothing comparable for turf. So there’s a huge range in what people are doing and calling ‘natural’ lawn care. It’s kind of been like the Wild West,” Soldat says.

Soldat took up the topic July 19 at the Wisconsin Turfgrass Association’s annual field day, when he offered a sneak-preview of a soon-to-be-released UW-Extension publication titled “Organic and Reduced Risk Lawn Care.”

“We offer two paths,” he says. “One is organic lawn care—basically following the USDA’s organic standards for food. That disallows most synthetic materials and means no GMO products, no biosolids for fertilizers. It’s very strict, and it’s also very difficult to grow a lawn under those standards.

“It’s very expensive,” he adds.  “And based on our research, it probably won’t meet most people’s goals.”

“It’s analogous with human health,” he says. “If you wanted to live your live without any medications, you have to rely on preventive medicine—eat right, get enough sleep, get enough exercise. But you can do all the right things and yet sometimes you still get sick and maybe die.”

But Soldat says it’s possible for lawn services to offer an alternative program that would meet the concerns of a lot of their green-minded customers. The approach relies on a combination of lower-maintenance grasses and a group of pesticides that EPA categorizes as “reduced risk.” It would probably bump a typical lawn-care bill bill by about 50 percent, he says.

“(These chemicals are) less toxic. They tend have have lower use rates—less amounts applied per acre. They’re often derived from natural organisms,” Soldat says. “And they are actually quite effective. So if you follow the cultural practices we list under the section on organic lawn care—choose the right type of grass, test your soil, fertilize properly—and then add in the ability to use reduced-risk pesticides, you can manage a very high-quality lawn. You’re following a lot of the organic principles and the pesticides used are reduced risk.

Soldat co-authored the book along with three fellow UW-Madison turf specialists: plant pathologist Jim Kern, entomologist Chris Williamson, and John Stier, a long-time horticulture professor who is leaving Madison to become a dean of instruction at the University of Tennessee.

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