The secret to a healthy lawn lies within the soil. You simply can’t have the thick, green lawn that you want if your lawn soil health is struggling. But how do you even begin going about improving lawn soil?

This is something that we talk about a lot at Oasis Turf & Tree, and if you have read any of our blog articles before, you probably know that our program is centered around lawn soil health. But if you don’t know much about us or our program, you might be wondering why all of this really matters.

In this article, we’ll dive into how to improve soil quality for a lawn as well as why it’s so important.

Table of Contents

Why is Lawn Soil Health So Important?
What Benefits Will You See From Healthy Soil?
What is the Soil Like in Cincinnati, Dayton, OH, and Northern Kentucky?
How to Improve Lawn Soil
Choosing Lawn Care Services in Cincinnati, Dayton, OH or Northern Kentucky

Why is Lawn Soil Health So Important?

The healthiest lawns are those growing in healthy soil. The soil is where nutrients, water, and oxygen are retained and pulled up through the roots to be used. Everything from the soil structure, to the pH, and even the biology is critical to the success of your lawn.

Healthy soil is full of beneficial microorganisms like fungi and bacteria, which help a plant to digest nutrients. These microorganisms also help strengthen your lawn against disease and pests. Healthy, biologically active soil has a highly diverse array of this microscopic life.

While fungi and bacteria are the most well-known, it also includes protozoa, mites, and micro arthropods, to name just a few. There can actually be as many as 50,000 species in just a teaspoon of soil. It is this healthy blend of living organisms that helps create optimal growing conditions for the lawn.

What Benefits Will You See From Healthy Soil?

You’ll be able to see the difference between a lawn that has healthy soil and one that does not. Over time, a lawn care service that is focused on the biology of soil health will have less weeds and a thicker, greener lawn. All of this is thanks to a stronger and healthier root system.

Lawn with healthy soil will also need less water…as much as 20 percent less.
That’s because healthy soil retains moisture better. By increasing good bacteria and allowing it to dominate the root zone, you can improve plant growth and boost its ability to fight off pests. Your lawn will have deeper and healthier roots and also become more naturally resistant to disease.

What is the Soil Like in Cincinnati, Dayton, OH, and Northern Kentucky?

In our region, our soil tends to be heavy in clay and has inadequate drainage. According to Ohio State University, this can result in slow water movement through the subsurface level.

With this soil makeup, it’s not uncommon for soil in our region to become heavily compacted. Our clay soil tends to have small pore spacing, which can make the movement of water (and oxygen) difficult. As a result, the soil becomes compacted.

This is one of the reasons why an important way to start improving lawn soil is to aerate your lawn annually.

There is simply no better way to help break up soil compaction than mechanical lawn aeration. Core aeration helps to improve the penetration of oxygen, water, and nutrients to the lawn’s root zone, where these elements are needed most.

How to Improve Lawn Soil

As discussed above, aerating your lawn is one important component of improving lawn soil. In this case, aeration will help improve the structure of the soil by breaking up compaction.

Another important step to improve soil health is to invest in high-quality fertilization. The quality and the makeup of these fertilization products is crucial to the overall health of your soil.

At Oasis Turf & Tree, we use organic-based fertilizers that help feed vitally important biological material into the soil. A bio-nutritional lawn care program like ours is focused on regularly introducing those beneficial microbiological organisms into the soil, throughout the year, to help the lawn naturally thrive and adapt to its conditions.

It’s important to keep in mind that this is a process. With every application, Oasis Turf & Tree is out there feeding your lawn what it needs to be healthy. But just like eating healthy, it can’t be a one time thing. It must be a lifestyle in order for you to see a difference. The same goes for your lawn.

Choosing Lawn Care Services in Cincinnati, Dayton, OH or Northern Kentucky

When you are choosing a lawn care service, you should think about how they approach lawn soil health. Unfortunately, very little thought is often given about how to improve lawn soil. In fact, most lawn care companies don’t focus on soil health at all.

Instead, they treat symptoms only, practicing reactionary lawn care. This may keep your lawn green and address problems as they arise, but also has you stuck in an endless cycle of treating the symptoms of underlying problems instead of achieving true health so that less chemicals are needed.

Even worse, too many chemicals on your lawn can actually begin to destroy the soil’s beneficial microorganisms, depleting the soil of what it really needs to thrive.

If you’re talking to lawn care companies in Cincinnati, Dayton or Northern Kentucky, ask them specific questions about their approach so that you can discover whether they care about lawn soil health. You can ask questions like:

• How does your lawn care program address the health of my soil?
• How many times will a technician go over my lawn in each visit, and what is being applied? Is it all mixed together? Do you just treat the whole lawn with everything?
• Then at the end ask them, “What do you know about bio-nutrition and soil biology?”
• What is your long-term approach to weed control?

If a prospective lawn care company can’t explain an approach that sounds different than traditional reactionary lawn care, keep looking. Their representative doesn’t have to be a soil biologist, but they should know why soil health is important and what their program does to address it.

How Oasis Turf & Tree Does it Right

At Oasis Turf & Tree, our lawn care service uses a two-step process that includes an organic base as well as bio-nutritional materials over the entire lawn so that the soil is getting what it needs to thrive naturally. Then we inspect and treat areas of the lawn and apply control materials on a second pass over the lawn, only where they are needed. It may cost a little more upfront, but the investment in your lawn’s soil will pay off for you in the long run.

Our lawn care program puts the secret of amazing lawn care into action on the homeowner front. By focusing on soil health, our clients’ lawns get those professional green results that you might have only thought possible on the golf course.

If you live in the Cincinnati, Dayton, or Northern Kentucky areas and are ready for your lawn to be its very best, give us a call at 513-697-9090, or let us provide you with a free estimate.