Organic Lawn Treatment

[Terence Nicholson]

I run a lwan service business in the U.K.
The market here is not as developed as in the U.S.A.
What is the situation re Organic lawn treatments over there...is it a big issue.
Does anyone know what the Organic treatments companies are using to treat weeds and fertilise lawns.

Thjanks for your help.

regards



Terry

[Phil Nilsson]

Hi Terry,

I'm sorta in tune with the organic thing because I worked on helping to develop a company that offers it, not as owner but as consultant.

Here's my take on its current status in the U.S. Organics have not yet become a big seller, most people are sticking to the traditional lawn treatments so organics hasn't at this time shown big sales numbers, hasn't made fast inroads to displacing the other programs. Customers want it "green" more than they want it organic and it seems that many will not buy it unless it's priced the same as the traditional programs. In addition, you have to spend time educating the customers to the virtues of going organic, a learning process that takes up sales time.

After being involved with organics given a choice and if I were to go into a lawn treatment program today, I'd stay with traditional programs ... major companies haven't made a switch which tells me that it could be that organics just isn't that big for market demand for the stuff.

Is organics better? ... I'd say yes but you still have to sell people on it and I think it's a slow process. From a horticultural point of view yes, I'd say it's better to feed & condition, maintain the soil that in turns makes for healthy roots and grass plants but ... I think it's still a long way in gaining large market share. I think if you offered it you'd get customers for it, and who knows if traditional pesticides continue to lose favor, get banned ... then maybe markets will "boom"? I don't know.

Hope this helps.

Phil