Reducing Atmospheric Carbon With A Healthy Lawn

You may be amazed at how much a really healthy, thriving lawn can contribute to improving not only the appearance of your home but also in its benefits to the entire planet. That's because cool-weather grasses, such as those in your lawn, can be some of the most effective carbon-fixing plants on the earth.

To give you some idea of how hard your lawn can work to help protect the environment, consider what Washington State University extension agent Frank Hendrix has to say about it. He's an expert on managed intensive grazing, the practice of using a variety of cool-weather grasses in irrigated pasture land to raise a variety of livestock, from dairy cattle to sheep and goats, to chickens.

Hendrix said irrigated pasture can remove eight tons of carbon per acre, per year. That's more than any other crop or land use. These grasses capture carbon from the atmosphere by the process of photosynthesis and hold it as soil organic matter. Grasses contribute to soil organic matter mostly in the form of their extensive fibrous root mats.

Even though you probably don't have an acre or more of lawn, the cumulative effect lawns can potentially have to reduce atmospheric carbon is noteworthy.

According to Heather Flores in "Food Not Lawns," 23 million acres of lawns are maintained by Americans nationwide, at an annual cost of $30 billion. U.S. lawns use a staggering 270 billion gallons of water a week. She says that's enough to water 81 million acres of organic vegetables for an entire summer.

It's easy to see that the healthier your lawn, the more extensive its root system, the better its water retention, the more it can contribute to the well-being of your neighborhood and your world. It's also easy to see the importance of using natural, healthful nutrition to improve the health of your lawn and landscaping to further protect the environment from the toxic effects of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.

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