Last week I was on my soapbox about bad lawn behavior.

This week I want to talk about how to have a nice, healthy, environmentally friendly, green carpet outside your door.

First, about the chemicals that are used regularly. Have you ever read the labels? It’s scary! If you really read it, you’ll find that a sprayed/treated lawn isn’t safe for humans, or pets to walk on. I like walking barefoot, and I certainly don’t need to be soaking up some synthetic chemical that someone thought I needed on my yard. If you don’t believe me look it up.

You’re afraid of spiders, centipedes, shiny pincer bugs, things that fly, crawl, and look ugly. Get over it. They were here before you, and they’re very necessary in our healthy future. Bottom line: you kill them, you kill us. Learn! Spend some of that online time, learning about the essential nature these critters have to our survival.

Congratulations! You’ve decided to do your own lawn-work. Where do you start? Good tools. Think of the money you’ve spent on chemical addiction, and let that translate to money spent on a good lawnmower. We have a large piece of ground to mow, so we have a very efficient, small riding mower and a push mower, for the tighter spaces. We maintain our equipment, because we want them around for a long time.

• Mow correctly — Never mow on wet grass. It’s damaging to the turf, as well as the equipment. Wait until it’s dry enough to walk through, without getting your shoes wet. As I said last week, mow high; at least 4-inches. This leaves solar panels to feed the roots of the plants, without having to fight through stress.

Don’t assign a “mow day” every week. Check weather conditions and decide, based on that. I haven’t mowed in six weeks now, and my green cover is still green.

Do I have “weeds” popping up? Did you know a “weed” is any plant, growing where you don’t want it? I have native plants, taller than the grasses, and that’s ok. The honeybees, and other pollinators, appreciate my dereliction. See, it’s not about me, or opinions of neighbors. It’s about an environment I’m trying to heal.

This goes so far beyond anything I can do or imagine. The damage was being done before I was born, by my family, in their traditional (based on their teaching) ways. Slowly the soil was depleted, and poisoned. The microbes and fungi and soil bugs were killed … which killed the immune systems of plants and brought on more disease and pest susceptibility. It destroyed the “community” that exists beneath our feet, and with it the nutrients that were possible in what we eat. See, everything’s connected on this planet. We’re all part of the whole. Nature isn’t separate from us.

So, back to the lawn. I never fertilize or water. Things I do teach are things that will benefit, especially on a lawn that’s in the conversion phase.

• Dethatch — For your lawn, dethatching compares to combing a matted, long-haired dog. This lawn-care technique works well on either dry or damp ground. The fingers of the dethatch rake, comb and pull up impacted dead matter, which prevents the penetration of oxygen, nutrients and sunlight into the soil. This combed-up matter makes fantastic compost material.

• Aerate — This can also be done either manually or with a machine, which you can rent. It should be done on slightly damp soil, so it’ll pull a good 3-inch plug, for each plug-pass. Compacted pressure is relieved, the plugs drop onto the surface of the ground, and will be mixed with organics. The holes allow air, water, nutrients, down into the root zone. The two processes alone will strengthen the resilience of your green-cover.

What about plants that just pop up? Clovers, different grass species, daisies, and so much more? Consider yourself fortunate to have many different kinds of plants that come up, because Nature assigned them different jobs, long before us, to begin to rebuild what we messed up. Some of them you’ll see the first year only. Then another succession, followed by another. Eventually the pioneers will go dormant in the seed bank, to wait for another need, and your green-space will be healthy, resilient, and you can walk on it without fear of being poisoned. You’ll begin to see signs of Nature returning … and I think it’ll satisfy your soul.

Sherrie Ottinger, aka “The TN Dirtgirl,” is a regenerative Earth thinker, teacher, columnist, author and speaker. Her passion is all things “dirt.” She may be reached at velokigate@yahoo.com with comments or questions.

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