A Healthy Lawn and a Beautiful Lawn Are Not Opposites

The worm farm is blowing up.

At the beginning of last week, I had plans to apply biological treatments to about 60,000 square feet of turf. By the end of the week, that number had grown to more than 250,000 square feet. I’m going to sell out of my immediate supply of worm castings and will need to call in backup from my parents.

I’m excited. Grateful too. And if I’m being honest, a little surprised.

For the past 18 months, I’ve been trying to build a market for our worm castings while staying rooted in the original mission: keep more organic matter out of the landfill. Every gallon of worm castings helps divert about 3 pounds of food waste.

That still matters deeply to me.

But along the way, the work has expanded. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say my thinking has expanded.

What started with food waste and worm castings led me deeper into soil health, and eventually, into my own yard.

My kids are still young, and we spend a lot of time outside. I want my lawn to be a safe, healthy place for them to play. At the same time, I want it to look good.

For most of my life, I assumed those two goals were in conflict.

If you wanted a nice lawn, you used fertilizer, herbicides, and whatever else the bag told you to use. That was just normal. The pallet of lawn products at the hardware store each spring. The 4-step program. Buy the bags. Put them down. Have a beautiful lawn.

I never questioned it.

I was the guy buying the bigger bag without even knowing the square footage of my lawn. Turns out I have 11,163 square feet of treatable lawn. At the time, I didn’t know that. I just assumed more was fine.

I also never stopped to ask a basic question: what does my lawn actually need?

Not what the bag says.
Not what the marketing says.
What does my lawn need?

That question opened a much bigger door for me.

A few years ago, I started paying closer attention to my own health, especially my gut health. Once I became more intentional about improving my microbiome, I started paying attention to what I put into my body. That led me toward soil health and the biology around plant roots. The more I learned, the more the connection stood out to me. Many of the microbes are the same or similar.

Once I saw that connection, I couldn’t really unsee it.

I wouldn’t knowingly put something into my body for a short-term result if I understood there could be a long-term cost to my health. So why would I think differently about the piece of land my kids play on?

This is now the fourth season our lawn has gone without chemical or synthetic inputs. I’ve watched it go through a natural progression. I’ve learned a lot. And one of the most interesting parts has been seeing what happens when the natural cycle starts to come back online.

Things grow.

There are thousands of seeds lying dormant in a lawn, waiting for the right conditions to germinate. When you stop suppressing everything and start increasing the natural cycle of the soil, guess what happens?

Things grow.

Some people see that and only see weeds. More and more, I see information.

When dandelions show up, I don’t just see a nuisance. I see a plant with a deep taproot mining calcium from below and bringing it closer to the surface. When that plant breaks down, it returns that calcium to the system where other plants can use it.

That’s amazing to me.

Nature is not random nearly as often as we think it is.

And yet so much of modern lawn care starts from the assumption that nature is wrong and needs to be corrected immediately.

Spray this. Suppress that. Feed this. Kill that. Repeat four times a year.

I’m not writing that from a place of judgment. I’m writing it from experience. I did it too. I overapplied products without knowing my square footage, without understanding my soil, and without asking better questions.

Then I stopped.

And here’s the part I can’t ignore: my lawn looks the same or better than it did when I was applying fertilizer four times a year.

Explain that.

I think the explanation is simpler than we often want it to be:

A healthy lawn and a beautiful lawn are not opposites.

We’ve just been taught to think they are.

We live in a world full of messages designed to save us time. Buy this. Apply this. Follow the program. Don’t think too hard. But sometimes the best answer isn’t the fastest one or the most obvious one. Sometimes it takes more observation, more patience, and more willingness to question the incentive behind the information being shared.

That’s one of the things I hope my kids learn if they’re watching.

Sometimes the best answer isn’t the most obvious one. You have to pay attention. You have to think for yourself. You have to be willing to question what “everyone knows.”

I can tell you my motivation.

I want to leave this planet a little better for my kids and their kids.

That may sound corny, but it’s true.

I’ve spent my whole life in sales, and I’m proud of that. But there’s something deeply meaningful about building a company that gets to be driven by doing the right thing. I’m in a blessed position where I don’t feel forced to sell a product just to pay my bills. That gives me freedom, and I’m proud of that freedom.

I’m proud that Iowa Worm Farm can be aligned with my values.

Yes, we make worm castings. Yes, we divert food waste from the landfill. But more and more, I see the mission as helping restore natural cycles in the places we live.

The tide is changing.

I can feel it.

More and more people want to do the right thing. They want healthier soil. Safer lawns. Better systems. They just need information they can actually access and trust.

That gives me a lot of hope.