Major League Baseball and Scotts Seed Team Up

The Scotts Miracle Grow Company and Major League Baseball Properties (MLBP) have teamed up to offer fans a season opener in their own backyards. In the agreement from the dugout Scotts, a long-established company in lawn and garden products, will be known as the ‚”Official Lawn Care Company of Major League Baseball.”

Major-league Lawn

Fans will now be able to pitch grass seed blends formulated for major league ballparks at their home base address and be the first on the block with a major-league lawn. Scotts developed grass seed blends in consultation with the director of grounds at each selected ballpark. Seed is specific to the climate and hardiness zone of each ballpark.

By opening day of the 2010 baseball season grass seed blends will debut for fans of five teams: the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ballpark, Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park, and St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium.

If the trial run of lawn seed in the 2010 baseball season brings emerald green lawns to fans and an equally green profit scoreboard for sponsors, Scott’s will spread its stadium blend seed to other major league ballparks and fans across the country.

The Carbon Footprint and Your Ballpark Lawn

How will Scotts latest pitch on lawns influence the environment? At a time when the great American lawn has been benched from the lineup of environmentally correct landscape practices for guzzling water, contaminating groundwater and streams with toxic fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides, and polluting the air from gas-powered mowers, can fans rally its comeback?

Furthermore, ballpark maintenance crews work as many as 80 hours a week to achieve and maintain the envied turf at major league fields. What appears a field of dreams to the spectator becomes a nightmare for homeowners who work alone or must hire lawn care assistance.

However, given the breadth of information available on grasses and well-managed lawns, eager and informed baseball fans could become the team to watch at home plate.

Researchers find that well-managed lawns capture and store a great amount of carbon from the atmosphere in grass blades and root mass. Gas-powered mowers counteract the carbon sequestering work of grass since they have their bases loaded with emissions like hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and particulates. A reel mower is the only mower leaving no carbon footprint.

Maintaining Your Ballpark Lawn

Author and horticulturist Warren Schultz suggests homeowners think of the lawn as part of the garden, a garden of grass. He offers methods to detox lawns from chemical dependency. He believes that most turf problems are due to planting the wrong grass in the wrong place. His suggestions for a natural lawn include:

• Feed grass slowly and steadily through the growing season with natural sources of nitrogen like cow manure, bloodmeal, cottonseed meal, dried poultry manure or leather tankage
• The use of natural fertilizer slows growth of grass
• Mow high to reduce stress on the grass and to allow blades to shade soil and reduce weed seed germination
• Leave grass clippings on lawn to contribute nitrogen
• Invest in hand weeders and weed poppers to control weeds
• Learn lawn dwelling insect pests and control with biological and physical methods
• Top-dress lawns with organic amendments like peat humus, topsoil and compost to thwart diseases
• Home lawns can prosper without indulging in sprinkler or watering systems

Foul Ball or Home Run

How the 2010 baseball season plays out at the stadium and on home lawns will reveal if grassroots marketing by Scotts and the MLBR was a foul ball or a home run.