Maureen Wise

Fairy Rings are rings or arcs (an unclosed ring or a C) of mismatched grass caused by fungus in the soil. There are three types of Fairy Rings. Type I is the least common: rings of dead grass due to the fungus causing the soil and thatch to repel water and not allow the water to infiltrate the ground. Type II Fairy Rings are the most common: darker green, faster-growing grass forming a ring. Type III Fairy Rings often occur with one of the other two: a circle of mushroom...

When you make the decision to start a clean slate with your lawn, you have two options: you can either lay down sod on top of the soil or plant grass seed. Both options have drawbacks and benefits.

Plastic is everywhere. What are you reading this article on? It definitely contains plastic. Look around your home and try to find a room that doesn’t contain plastic. It surrounds us. The material has changed the way we live. It has lots of sanitary benefits for the medical and food industry, but we’ve overused it.

Boxwoods are common landscaping shrubs. They require very little maintenance, stay green all year, and can be shaped into attractive silhouettes. It is believed they arrived in the United States with European settlers in the 1600s. They also thrive in both shade and full sun. However, boxwoods are susceptible to many pests and diseases including Boxwood Blight (Calonectria pseudonaviculata), Boxwood Psyllids (Psylla buxi), and Boxwood Spider mites (Eurytetranychus buxi).

A major driving factor in our business at Good Nature Organic Lawn Care is to lessen the environmental impact of managing turfgrass. We don’t want kids and pets to be exposed to poisons that are typically used to kill “pests” like Dandelions. We want to help pollinators thrive. We don’t want our waterways to be choked by algae caused by over-fertilization. We never want those fertilizers to hit the waterways to begin with because they are toxic to aquatic life.

What Are Dandelions?

Dandelions (Taxaracum officinale) are found in nearly every country in the Northern Hemisphere, as well as Australia and New Zealand. The plants moved around the world before written history but were probably native to Europe and Asia. Early Romans documented eating dandelions and European settlers exploring America purposely brought dandelions with them to the new world.

Ticks are parasitic arthropods that feed on the blood of mammals. (What a gross sentence!) They’re kind of like tiny vampires that can give their hosts debilitating diseases. It's fair to say that everyone wants to prevent getting a tick attached to their body, their kids or their pets. We are happy to share some Earth-friendly ways to prevent ticks in your backyard, without chemicals that can be harmful to beneficial insects, pollinators, pets, kids and waterways.

In the Spring, we get excited about caring for our lawns and gardens after a cold, white Winter. Not many flowers are blooming in the gardens in the Midwest in April and May but yellow dandelions and purple violets are blooming in the lawn. Your neighbors may not like these flowers but we want you to reconsider your ideas about Wild Violets.
We encourage you to embrace the Wild Violets in your lawn.

Hairy Bittercress, ​​(Cardamine hirsuta), is a member of the mustard family and is considered a Winter annual weed. Sometimes the weed can act as a Summer annual or biennial, depending on the weather and climate. In the Midwest, it’s a Winter annual, which means the seeds overwinter, germinate sometime in the late Fall, and start growing in the Spring. Hairy Wintercress is one of the first weeds to emerge in gardens after the snows melt.

Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea) is known by many names including Creeping Charlie, Creeping Jenny, field balm, cats-foot, ale-hoof, and inch weed (because it spreads an inch a day). This weed is very hardy and is found in gardens, lawns, sidewalks and driveway cracks, as well as along building foundations. Unfortunately, this creeping weed is a perennial and so remains year after year and usually continues to be green during milder Winters.

Good Nature Organic Lawn Care is honored to be recognized by ERC as one of 99 great Northeast Ohio workplaces for top talent. In its 23rd year, Northcoast 99 is an annual recognition program that showcases exceptional workplaces in a 22-county region in Northeast Ohio. This is the first year that Good Nature was nominated for the award.

Our waste and what to do with it is a big part of our world’s climate change solutions. Left over, scrap, and uneaten food is part of this problem. If food waste was a country, it would be the third largest producer of greenhouse gasses in the world, behind China and the United States. Happily, food waste is something we can address at our own homes and don’t need to rely others to do the work for us.

Nimblewill (Muhlenbergia schreberi) is a dense, fine-textured, perennial, warm-season grass that stays green in hot weather and turns brown at the first frost when the weather turns. Nimblewill grows best in moist, shady conditions but will grow in sunny, dry locations as well. It has a light to blue-green color and patches can look fuzzy compared to the rest of a green lawn. This weedy grass spreads through both seeds and by stolons (above ground roots) and tends to creep...

Yellow Nutsedge ​​(Cyperus esculentus) is a common turfgrass weed in the Midwest. It looks a lot like grass, but is brighter yellow-green and shinier than turfgrass. It also grows faster than grass at the height of the Summer and therefore pokes above the rest of the lawn. When picked, you can tell that Yellow Nutsedge is not grass because the stem is not flat, but instead triangular.

Moles are small rodents that dig tunnels underground. They’re smaller than you think, only six to eight inches long, which is about the size of a chipmunk. There are only six mole species in the United States and only three that hang out in lawns in the Midwest: the Eastern Mole (Scalopus aquaticus), Hairy-Tailed Mole (Parascalops breweri), and Star-Nosed Mole (Condylura cristata).