Program Implementation & Improvement
Best organic lawn care, natural lawn care and IPM programs incorporate monitoring, pesticide selection protocols, recordkeeping and evaluations to ensure continual improvement.
Monitoring
Field monitoring catches pest and weed problems before they occur, aides with prioritizing areas and provides critical information for evaluating and improving turf management plans. Comprehensive monitoring programs document traffic patterns, turfgrass density/condition/roots, drainage, turfgrass color, shade and other environmental factors. Cornell University and Ohio State University provide excellent field assessment rubrics.
Case Study
Dan Dinelli, Golf Course Superintendent, North Shore Country Club
Monitoring is the backbone of North Shore Country Club’s IPM lawn care program. “Scouting and record keeping is extremely important because history does tend to repeat itself, assuming that nothing has changed,'' said North Shore’s golf course superintendent, Dan Dinelli..
Monitoring on North Shore’s course takes many different forms, from elaborate and sophisticated techniques (e.g. GPS aided smartphones, drones and photos) to simpler techniques (e.g. taking notes on maps).
Dinelli’s monitoring expands past tracking weeds and pests to mapping wear patterns, poor drainage, shade and soil issues. North Shore Country Club can highlight the causes behind the problems thanks to this comprehensive monitoring. Dinelli’s team revisits this data during the offseason to develop plans to alleviate chronic pest and weed problems in areas often associated with micro-climates and infrastructure issues.
Dinelli explains that this note taking “expands into a selling tool” towards capital improvements. Investing in correcting a problem pays dividends in reducing inputs while chasing symptoms. Mapping also allows for effective spot treatments which reduces inputs.
Even in the most basic form, practitioners can have trouble monitoring all their territory. But, Dinelli believes anyone can justify an effective monitoring program, because “if you review a landscape a couple times a week, usually you can stay ahead of most issues.”
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Photo Gallery
Blueprint maps of North Shore Country Club used by Dinelli to track pest and disease outbreaks, turfgrass wear, weather patterns, etc.
Dinelli uses both sophisticated and simple methods to track field conditions. On this hole, Dinelli has installed a Turf Guard® Soil Monitoring System to track daily moisture levels, salinity and soil temperatures.
North Shore Country Club’s indicator garden. Any diseases or pests that pop-up in this field will indicate a potential problem to North Shore staff.
Dinelli’s IPM toolbox that his employees use to monitor course conditions.
Pesticide Selection Protocols
Incorporating pesticide selection protocols into NLC and IPM policies guarantees consistency in choosing the least amount of the least toxic product. Midwest Grows Green recommends including the following in a pesticide selection protocol:
- Not applying any pesticide with the EPA signal word of WARNING (moderate toxicity) or DANGER (high toxicity).
- Avoiding pesticides that the EPA, IARC or California Proposition 65 have listed as a probable, possible, known or likely carcinogen, reproductive toxicant, endocrine disruptor or nervous system toxicant.
- Choosing pesticides where all ingredients have a soil half life of 30 days or less.
Case Study
Chris Geiger, Manager of Integrated Pest Management, San Francisco Department of the Environment
In his time with the San Francisco Department of the Environment, Dr. Chris Geiger facilitated the creation of a Reduced Risk Pesticide List. The list groups products into one of three tiers based on factors such as acute toxicity, carcinogenicity and soil half life: Tier 1 (Most Hazardous), Tier II (More Hazardous) & Tier 3 (Least Hazardous).
“We go through each product one by one and ask ‘Is it necessary? Does it work? Is there a safer alternative?’” Dr. Geiger explained.
Development of the list occurs each year. IPM coordinators from each of the City Departments start the process by meeting to draft the list and submit the list to the Commission on the Environment for approval. The Commission’s review brings in opinions and values of the public to the process.
The reduced risk pesticide list has achieved impressive results. Since 2010, which is San Francisco's baseline year, the city reduced the highest hazard chemicals by 97%.
“It takes a certain level of expertise to apply our tier system, but not a huge amount,” said Geiger. “You don’t need a chemist to do it, you just need to know which websites to look at.” For those pursuing the Tier system, Geiger recommends looking at databases developed by the Pesticide Research Institute or the Pesticide Action Network of North America.
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Recordkeeping
Accommodating monitoring with regular and detailed recordkeeping provides an account of past experiences and allows for fine-tuning of the IPM/NLC Program. Managers should keep records of pest and weed scouting, cultural management practices, weather, pesticide applications and soil moisture and drainage. We recommend downloading the following "Product Application Data Sheet" for any pesticide or fertilizer applications.
Evaluations
Evaluations ensure continual improvement by reviewing the effectiveness of all pest and weed control practices (cultural, biological, cheimical, etc.), identifying any new control strategies available and replacing or eliminating unnecessary treatments. Contact Midwest Grows Green for an independent audit or evaluation of your authority's IPM or Natural Lawn Care program.
Case Study
City of Evanston
Evanston resident Susan Kaplan first engaged with the City of Evanston and their IPM work as a member of the City's Environment Board during the development of the City's first IPM Policy.
Adopting the policy in 2010 was the easy part, according to Kaplan, "Implementation is always the bigger challenge, because you have to have someone focused on it and you have to be concerned about costs."
In 2018, Kaplan and others involved an Evanston Alderman who had the environmental experience and recognition in the community to convene the necessary stakeholders to evaluate and improve the city's IPM program. Following a year of meetings, the City of Evanston issued a reprot to the city council detailing the city's IPM program in April of 2018. "The report pulled a lot of information together and was multidisciplinary in the sense that it brought together people and information from different city departments," said Kaplan.
Some of the more notable results from the report included the fact that the Evanston Parks and Recreation Department reduced its use of pesticides by more than 60 percent in five years and halted use of RoundUp on all lakefront parks. To ensure continued progress, the end of the report identified Pesticide Reduction Goals for 2018-2020, such as eliminating the use of Glyphosate products on all city properties and sharing IPM best practices with local institutions in the community such as Northwestern University.
City of Evanston's Environmental Bureau Chief, Paul D'Agostino, said that getting Evanston staff on-board with the changes presented the largest challenge to implementation of the policy. The report helped overcome this challenge according to D'Agostino, "The report helped us learn about what we were doing, what we needed to change and how best to get there."
The policy requires D'Agostino to produce this report every other year. Meanwhile, Kaplan has taken on a leadership role in advancing pesticide reduction across the Evanston community by holding quarterly IPM/NLC meetings.
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Case Study
Anthony Nied, Owner, and Founder of Safe & Simple Organic Lawns
People think they need a perfectly green lawn with no weeds. That image is due to TV, magazines, and advertisement. Safe and Simple Organic Lawns wants to create a healthy environment where grass can thrive and outcompete other plants. Anthony is “committed to going truly organic for the safer products that are effective for sustainable management of lawns”. By going organic you risk no harm to pets, animals, children, groundwater, and the environment. At the same time, the homeowner is getting a healthy lawn and healthy soil with no negative side effects. By going organic you create a healthy environment where grass can thrive and outcompete other plants.
When implementing organic lawn care, it can sometimes be met with concerns from people who are used to traditional lawn care. When concerns arise his first step is to educate his clients on proper cultural practices such as watering, mowing, and types of fertilizers, as well as the hazards that pesticides and synthetic fertilizers carry. He makes sure to include that healthy organic lawns can look just as good as traditional lawns treated with pesticide and herbicide.
Anthony stressed that it is important to go all-in with organic lawn care; that it does not work for homeowners to slowly transition. At a previous employer, he saw firsthand that doing a blended or hybrid program of some pesticides or some synthetic fertilizers does not create the results homeowners want. He explained that it is because it risks sterilizing the soil with those products. Additionally, it does nothing to build up the beneficial enzymes and soil microbiology that are key for healthy soil that grasses need to thrive. By transitioning to all organic at once this will create “the best results as fast as they can”.
The first step with transitioning a new property is to assess its current state. Anthony does this with a free, comprehensive assessment of the property. He starts by doing a physical site inspection looking at the lawn and soil. One of the first questions is if the environment is even the right place to have a lawn. To determine that, he looks at the microclimate of the lawn. That includes if it is sunny or shady and moisture profiles, such as if it has low laying areas that get more moisture. If it is a shady low laying area it might be better suited for other types of plants such as moss. The other crucial component of assessing a new property is to do a soil analysis. That includes looking at the thatch layer, soil horizons, amount of topsoil, root depth, root vigor, composition of soil, infiltration rate, and then use all those components to create an ideal growing program for that specific lawn. The program will improve the soil health through organic soil amendments like concentrated compost and aerating the soil.
Transitioning and maintaining an organic property only requires two appointments a year. They occur in late spring and late summer. These visits are when the organic fertilizers will be applied; they last up to three months per application. They will also do the aeration. This is beneficial for managing the thatch layer and will reduce it if it is over a quarter inch to alleviates soil compaction. This will allow water and nutrients to get down to the roots.
In between visits, key cultural practices come into play. Organic lawns are a team effort between lawn care professionals, like Anthony Nied, and homeowners. Watering correctly is one of these key steps. Anthony said homeowners should water less often, but deeper. Therefore, Safe and Simple Organics will calibrate the homeowners rain system if they have it as part of their irrigation system. They want to make sure owners are not over watering the lawns. If they do not have one, he recommends watering as minimally as possible to supplement mother nature’s watering. He advises to water about a half inch of water a week. Another key cultural practice is mowing at the correct height. Mowing when the lawn when it is high, at least 3 ½ inches, keeps the soil cooler and more moist. It also prevents the weeds’ seeds from reaching the surface to grow. The grass and crowds out existing weeds from taking over the lawn.