Organic chemistry

“Organic” is becoming a byword of our times. Even so, for Hal Seitz, a local garden and lawn care professional, too many people opt for what he calls “a magic bullet” — the choice of synthetic chemicals that promise instant results.

He defies anyone not to find organic as an easier, better and cheaper approach. All it takes is patience — and some work.

Mr. Seitz scoffs at the idea that chemical-free lawns and gardens belong only to green zealots and eco-freaks. A 43-year-old devotee of so-called natural principles applied to tending the earth, he grew up in an apartment in Silver Spring. Most days, he can be found tending his plot in the all-organic Virginia Avenue Community Garden near the Washington Navy Yard in Southeast, where he grows nearly all his own vegetables.

“I’m not some tree-hugger. I’m just an old gardener,” he says, belying his skill at coaxing life from belligerent ground without relying on chemical weedkillers. Chemicals can be harmful to humans and animals even indirectly when leached through soil into the water table.

Mr. Seitz works under the name of District Cityscapes for clients as far away as Howard County and as close in as the 7-Eleven store at the busy corner of Maryland Avenue and Eighth Street Southeast, where seemingly no plants would grow. He discovered his talent almost by accident when he took a job on an organic vegetable farm in West Virginia in the late 1980s.

“Instantly, eating those things, I became so much healthier,” he says. The secret — an obvious one — is taking proper care of the soil, first by what he calls “sterilizing” it.

“Not sterile in the clinical sense,” he explains. “You get the soil as free of roots and weeds as possible. Pull weeds out by the roots, and they are gone forever.”

The general principles employed in caring for a garden can be transferred to a grassy lawn where, again, the first rule is having healthy soil.

In place of synthetic chemical treatment, Mr. Seitz recommends organic soil enhancers that come from TurfPro USA, a Central Florida firm, and those sold by Purple Mountain Organics in Takoma Park, Md. TurfPro is advertised as being able to “free up soil nutrients, making them readily available for uptake by plants.”

“The big thing about going organic is to build the organic material,” agrees Derek Thomas of Thomas Landscapes, a Master Gardener who services the Washington area with his Waldorf, Md., firm. “Get compost in the soil and do that by top-dressing the lawn in the spring and fall. That way, the lawn becomes self-sustaining and resistant to disease.”

The fall is best, he says, because that is when “grass plants are growing new rhizomes and stolons for the next year. It is happening below ground, and we don’t see this. They are getting plumped up. Most people do the opposite of what they should. Then we can do a secondary, much lighter, application in the spring.”

(Rhizomes are white running roots that poke up through the soil to become green blades in the sun. Stolons are stems near the surface of the ground that produce fresh plants from buds on their surface.)

He names a ComPro product that he calls “black gold” as “the best organic composted material money can buy.”

“What people don’t understand,” he says, “is when they have a lawn, [they] put in and add organic material but never think to add it again. Instead, they go to a synthetic regime that kills the Chesapeake Bay.”

A product that breaks down over time is best, he says, enabling the plant to extract nutrients slowly. The content of anything synthetic is likely to be too liquid — watered down — and can soak in too much, resulting in overkill; the plants can’t take it in.

“Plants are like humans; when we are healthy, we are less prone to infection, and we get that way by following good rules of nutrition,” Mr. Thomas says. “Synthetic food fills you up, but eventually your body starts to break down. It’s better to use natural ingredients like seaweed and dehydrated chicken manure — things that are naturally occurring and high in nutrients and which already are in a state of decomposition.”

Organic products cost more, he suggests, but the gardener who uses methods that help clean up and improve the health of the bodies of water where fish live may be paid back by helping lower the cost of shellfish.

It’s necessary to be proactive with weeding, he warns, defining a weed as “a plant existing somewhere that [it] doesn’t belong.

“Remember that one dandelion will produce thousands of seeds. If you dig it up when you see the yellow flower, you won’t end up with 400 of them,” he says.

He recommends using pickling vinegar — “20 percent stronger than table vinegar” — as a substitute for chemical weedkillers because “whatever it hits, it kills. And if it goes into the soil, it is less caustic than commercial products.”

It’s not just a question of avoiding chemicals but of wasting water, Mr. Thomas says. He sees American culture as “obsessed” with picture-perfect lawns, “but in Washington you have to choose when you want your lawn to look good. We are about an inch and a half deficient in rain [annually]. The only people without brown lawns must be dumping gallons of water on their lawns every week. The [Environmental Protection Agency] estimates that 20 percent of the water consumers use [goes] for lawns.”

It isn’t necessary to hire a professional to learn what is involved in going organic. The National Wildlife Federation uses EPA guidelines to give visitors to its Web site (www.nwf.org/backyard) advice on maintaining a chemical-free lawn. However, it suggests first contacting area Cooperative Extension offices for information about local soil content.

“Before declaring chemical warfare on your lawn, consider whether you have taken all possible steps to make your property inhospitable to pests,” the site states. “A great deal can be done to deter pests, much of it going back to the elemental roots of gardening.”

Delicious Organics (www.delicious organics.com), a firm in South Central Florida, spells out the steps involved in having what it calls a “lush lawn,” beginning with choosing the right grass for the geographical area. It also provides useful links to other informative sites. Cockadoodle Doo in Portsmouth, N.H., provides what it calls a “4-Step Organic Lawn Care Program” by season for parts of the East and Midwest (www.pure barnyard.com/cockadoodledoo).

Gardens Off Drugs (www.gardensoff drugs.com), a Canadian citizens group formed in 2000 to encourage a ban on pesticides in Ontario, recommends leaving grass clippings on the lawn as a natural mulch. It says the practice decreases weeds by up to 60 percent and provides 30 percent of the lawn’s fertilizer needs, keeping soil cool and moist. The group also encourages the idea of using a variety of plants and grasses in place of a traditional lawn.