Confessions of a Laidback Gardener: I Don’t Fertilize My Lawn

I know. It’s a horrific revelation. And I’m so ashamed!

Well, actually I’m not. In fact, I’m kinda proud of the fact that I managed to buck the system.

I mean, what with lawn maintenance companies galore promoting the superior fertilizing services they offer, plus all those fertilizer companies with their 3- and or even 4-part lawn fertilizer programs (I know, crazy isn’t!), you’d think I would have succumbed to the pressure long ago. But I have held steady over the decades.

My lawn, now it’s 27th year, has always gotten along pretty much on its own, other than for mowing. I’ve never fertilized it, nor have I watered it. Except for that first fall (I sowed it in September). That first year, yes, I did water. I watered in the seed after sowing and kept the soil moist by watering until frost. Giving it a chance to settle in.

The lawn has pretty much taken care of itself ever since … except for mowing.

In a Nutshell

Although I live on an average-sized suburban lot (about 70 ft × 120 ft/21 m × 37 m) for Canada, my lawn is actually pretty small. About 800 square feet (75 m²). That’s because I took out all the lawn in the front and sides of the house (now they’re now mostly covered in beds, borders and renaturalized woodland) and only reserved a small part of the back yard for lawn. It was one of the few flat surfaces on the property … and mowing on a slope is quite an enterprise! One I certainly wasn’t interested in continuing.

And the truth is that my lawn is really a disguised spring bulb garden. Its main purpose is to allow me to naturalize the small spring bulbs that bring me such joy in the spring. When the snow finally melts in late April (yes, we have over 6 months of winter here) and the lawn immediately bursts into full bloom, I just feel like dancing! It keeps me happy for months and months. What great therapy a bulb lawn can be!

The downside to spring bulbs, though, is that they’re so ephemeral. Two months of bloom and growth in earliest spring and then they’re gone. No blooms, no leaves, nothing. They just melt away and retreat underground into their bulbous storage organ. And that would leave, in my case, a bare space for the rest of the summer and fall. And I’d rather see green lawn than brown dirt.

My Lawn 27 Years After I Sowed It

So, what does my bulb lawn look like today, after all those years of “neglect”?

Well, like a lawn, a normal lawn! It’s a short, green carpet. You can walk on it, picnic on it, jump and run and dance and play on it (although that would more likely be the grandkids than me).

Yes, but it is a classic lawn? You know, with only Kentucky blue grass, and looking absolutely identical and sterile—short green grass leaves clipped off at the tip like a golf green—throughout? Absolutely not!

And it hasn’t from the start, as what I sowed over the bare surface was a blend of a low-maintenance grass seeds (composed of varied lawn grasses, some of them containing beneficial endophytic fungi), to which I added wild thyme and white clover seed.

Low-maintenance lawn grasses were new at the time and hard to find. No so anymore. They’re now widely available.

The More, The Merrier

There is much more variety in the lawn today, though.

Some are plants others might consider weeds. But I feel weeds are in the eye of the beholder. So, I choose not to see them as weeds and, miracle of miracles, they no longer are! Talk about a fast and efficient herbicide!

Here are some of my lawn inhabitants:

Perennial grasses

I’ve never tried to try and identify them. I don’t know if the original low-maintenance varieties are still there, or whether local grasses have seeded themselves in and taken over. And no, I don’t have crabgrass (Digitaria spp., an annual grass). I don’t know why. In spite of my negligence, perennial grasses still dominate my little lawn.

Azure Bluet (Houstonia caerulea)

This native plant showed up on its own and creates a lovely carpet of pale blue in mid-spring. Someone should market this plant as a lawn flower!

Bugleweed (Ajuga reptans ‘Atropurpurea’)

One of the purple-leaf cultivars. It wandered in from a neighboring flower bed and just kept spreading. Does it clash with the green plants? Probably. Do I care? Not in the least.

Common Blue Violet (Viola sororia)

Actually, in spite of the name, it isn’t just blue. There is an array of colors, including several shades of blue and purple plus white, spotted and near pink, as I’ve selectively brought in new colors obtained from other people’s lawns.

Creeping bellflower (Campanula rapunculoides)

This plant has pretty purple bell-shaped flowers … but not in a lawn, as it blooms on tall stems. Since they are about 12 to 30 inches (30 to 100 cm) tall, that the lawn mower will necessarily mow them down long before they bloom. All you see of it in a lawn is its somewhat heart-shaped leaves here and there. This is not a plant I want, but it’s firmly entrenched. It was here when we bought the place and will still be here when we’re dead. Since there’s nothing I could do to get rid of it, I’ve called a truce and now just ignore it.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

Charming flowers! They’re surprisingly rare in my lawn, though. Why that is so has always been a mystery, as so many of my neighbors complain about having too many of them.

English Daisy (Bellis perennis)

The wild type: very short, pink in bud and white in bloom. I originally started this one from seed and it formed little clumps here and there on its own.

Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea)

What a charming little plant! Such pretty blue flowers and attractive leaves! It arrived all on its own, possibly carried in as a hitchhiker in the pot of a perennial.

Johnny-Jump-Up (Viola tricolor)

It pops up here and there with its ever-so-cute little moustachioed flowers. It moves around a lot. You never know where it will show up next!

Moneywort (Lysimachia nummularia)

A ground-hugging creeping plant with circular leaves and occasional yellow flowers. It wandered into the lawn from a nearby flower bed and just started mingling. It’s mingling still!

Orange hawkweed (Pilosella aurantiaca, formerly Hieracium aurantiacum)

Very pretty orange flowers on fairly tall stalks! Their seeds blew in on little white parachutes, much like dandelion seeds.

Plantain (Plantago major)

There’s not much, but there is some, especially in places that get a lot of foot traffic and thus where the ground is very compact.

Self-Heal (Prunella vulgaris)

There’s lots of this mint-like plant with short spikes of purple flowers. It just showed up on its own.

Thyme-leaved speedwell (Veronica serpyllifolia)

A small creeping plant with blue flowers. Nice!

White Clover (Trifolium repens)

It’s still here, there and everywhere after all these years. Sporadic white flowers throughout the summer. And it helps enrich the soil in nitrogen.

Wild Thyme (Thymus praecox)

A specially robust culinary thyme that looks as good as it smells and tastes. And it makes the bees sooo happy! Also, when you mow the lawn, the whole yard smells deliciously of thyme! And so do you! That alone would be reason enough to include it.

Spring Bulbs

Finally, the pièce de résistance, thousands upon thousands of spring bulbs, including squills (Scilla spp.), puschkinias (Puschkinia scilloides), crocus (Crocus spp.), glory-of-the-snow (Chionodoxa spp.), fumeworts (Corydalis solida), winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis), snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis and others) and Grecian windflowers (Anemonoides blanda, syn. Anemone blanda).

Some of the plants above found their way into my lawn on their own, but others I proudly planted. Yes, I purposely planted plants my neighbors would consider weeds. Bucking the pressure towards growing golf-green lawns, indeed!

Notably Absent

You’ll note that there are no woody plants in the lawn, because they just aren’t mowable. Any seed trees that sprout in the lawn (and there are many) are simply clipped off by the mower blade and then die and decompose.

Nor is there anything prickly. Because that is the one thing I will not tolerate in a lawn. I like to walk barefoot and let the grandkids play barefoot. Indeed, I see lawns as a surface especially designed for barefootedness. So, anything that pricks the skin is banished.

At one point, Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense) tried to move in, but I dug it out. When it sprouted again, I dug it out again. And again and again. And then it stopped trying. I will not allow prickly plants in my lawn. Attractive spiny ones are welcome in my flower beds and shrub borders, but not in my picnicking space!

Plus Animals

Of course, my highly varied lawn also hosts all sorts of animals. Some quite visible, others that go unnoticed. Birds are frequent visitors and fully welcome, as are butterflies, bees, hoverflies, itsy-bitsy wasps and other pollinators. Yes, I do have slugs and snails, but not in huge numbers … at least, not in the lawn. I’ve never had moles, but there are lots of voles and shrews that I just ignore. And all sorts of creepy crawlies (ants, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, sow bugs, toads, etc.) live in the lawn, as in any lawn not poisoned by chemicals. I don’t pay much attention to them. Nor do they pay much attention to me. I know they are there and just let them live their lives.

Getting Along Without Commercial Fertilizer

The idea that lawn grasses need fertilizer is, of course, an invention of the fertilizer industry. Most get along fine without it. Not perfectly. But fine … from my point of view.

The fertilizer industry, of course, is right in that if you gave plants better conditions, they’ll grow better. So, yes, you can improve lawn growth by giving it more minerals. But then you would have to mow the lawn more often, as it will grow faster. I don’t want to.

So, I find the compromise quite acceptable. No fertilizer means less expense and less effort, but still you get a surface you can call a lawn. And a “no-fertilizer regime” keeps my lawn acceptably green and full, although maybe not as much like a golf green as some neighbors might want.

Minerals From Other Sources

It’s important to understand I’m not starving my lawn plants. They are receiving minerals, just not from fertilizer. They receive NPK and other elements from:

1. Grasscycling. (Leaving grass clippings on the lawn after you mow it). I’ve always done this, starting long before the term “grasscycling” even existed. Lawn clippings fall on the lawn, decompose, and return nutrients to it.
2. Dust and plant materials that blow in and land on the lawn;
3. Rain. It brings minerals it picks up as it falls. Lightning, for example, charges rain with nitrogen;
4. Bird and Animal Droppings. Yep! More than you’d think!
5. Beneficial Fungi. They latch onto plant roots and help them draw in minerals, even from quite a distance.
6. Fall Leaves. My lawn receives an autumn mineral boost though fall leaves that land on it.
   • Where the leaves fall thinly, I just leave them where they land and when I mow, the mower’s mulching blade chops them into pieces. They then decompose quickly, on the spot, and fertilize the turf.
   • Where the leaves fall very thickly, however, they cut off all light to the lawn. And that would harm it. So, those I remove for use as mulch elsewhere in the garden, as well for use in the compost pile. Still, as I mow these thick fall leaves where they fall on the lawn (the first step in picking them up it to chop them into little pieces), little bits of leaf still end up covering the ground under the lawn plants, again fertilizing them.
7. The other plants that make up my mixed lawn also have leaves that die, decompose and enrich the soil. Clover, a legume, is especially good at supplying nitrogen.
8. Plenty of other sources of minerals exist.

So, I figure my lawn gets “enough” minerals. Certainly, enough to grow well. There is no sign of bare patches or nutrient deficiencies that I can see. And because I don’t feed with fertilizer, the lawn grows more slowly and I don’t have to mow all that often.

I Figure My No-Fertilizer Lawn is Socially Acceptable

From a distance, my lawn would just look like … most lawns in my neighborhood, really! (If anyone could see it than my actual next-door neighbors could see it, that is. Because it’s out back, far from the street, and therefore very private.) Most home lawns have more that just grasses mixed into them—dandelions, plantain and others—and I see nothing wrong with that. Mine just has more variety than most. In fact, that’s something tremendously right about a lawn that where plants and animals are allowed to intermingle much as they wish.

Don’t feel yourself pressured into maintaining a perfectly manicured grass lawn if that just doesn’t suit you. Such artificially maintained lawns do not make up the majority of lawns. One recent study showed that less than half of all American lawns are fertilized, so mine is far from alone. Certainly, where I live, only a fairly small percentage of lawns get all the care fertilizer companies recommend. So, I feel that what I do is quite acceptable!

No, I don’t fertilize my lawn … and maybe you don’t need to either!