Wheaton business teaches organic lawn care

Kenneth King doesn’t look at the dandelions in his yard as simply weeds to be rid of anymore.

Not since the Wheaton resident learned that dandelions have their benefits: attracting insect pollinators such as bees, putting down a three-foot tap root to pull up nutrients from the soil, and telling him when his yard needs some extra nutrition.

“Dandelion is actually an indicator to tell you your lawn is lacking in calcium,” he said.

King gained his knowledge of dandelions and their benefits from Bill Scheffler, owner of Pure Prairie Organics, an organic lawn care company. Scheffler started the company in 1994 in Wheaton and has watched it spread to suburbs north, south, east and west of there.

King, the co-host of a Green Drinks sustainability group in the Naperville area, said he first met Scheffler as a speaker for the group. He started consulting with Scheffler about his own lawn last year and has seen a difference, he said.

“It’s definitely greener. It has less weeds than it used to,” King said. “I get compliments from my neighbors who are now picking up some of my habits.”

Scheffler, a frequent speaker at garden clubs and environmental groups, said educating other people on how to care for their lawns and gardens is a big part of what he’s about.

“It’s as much a consulting business as a service business, I get so many questions,” he said.

Natural approach

Scheffler says he has the only lawn care company he’s aware of in the area that uses a natural approach — eschewing what he calls killer chemicals except for occasional spot applications if the customer agrees. Many of his customers have signed on with him because they are concerned about their pets or children being exposed to chemicals, he said.

“I control insects and disease with nutrition,” he said. “I grow things really well. I don’t kill things really well. There might be a weed or two. We’re pretty laid back about that.”

Along with applying high calcium lime to the soil, Scheffler said plants love carbohydrates and can’t get all the carbon they want from the air. He uses fertilizer that contains a large amount of molasses, causing plants to produce a sap that encourages bugs to move on.

“It doesn’t taste good. It gives them an upset stomach. Insects don’t have a pancreas so they can’t handle complex compounds,” he said.

His lawn care costs about 10 percent more than the average service because of the amount of organic fertilizers he uses, Scheffler said. But he estimates customers more than make up that difference because they pay little or nothing for chemicals.

For example, he tells them a good way to keep out weeds is simply to let the grass grow at least three inches high. The longer grass prevents weed seeds from getting the sunlight they need to germinate, he said.

“We get 50 percent weed control just for that,” he said.

Horticulture heritage

Born into a horticultural family, Scheffler didn’t always take the organic approach. His grandfather bought two greenhouses in 1910 and started Scheffler’s Flowers in Wheaton. His father carried on the business, and his brother later ran a store in Winfield.

“I was a sophomore in high school and I was managing an acre of greenhouses,” he said.

Scheffler studied horticulture at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, but didn’t stay with the family business. He knew he wanted something else, but didn’t discover it until 1990 when someone introduced him to Acres U.S.A., a publisher of a magazine and other materials on sustainable agriculture.

“I learned more in two issues than I did in four years at Champaign,” he said. “This is what I was looking for. This is what I wanted to know.”

All things organic

Since delving into organic plant care, Scheffler has continued to expand.

In 2000, he started Pure Prairie Farm to grow organic vegetables that he sells to some local restaurants and in farmers’ markets in Geneva, Batavia and Oswego. A resident of Oswego, he now has a plot of land in Dundee and five greenhouses in West Chicago.

Bradley Cahill started serving as an apprentice to Scheffler last year so he could learn organic farming. Since then, he has harvested 15 to 16 pounds of spinach he planted last fall from his greenhouse and outdoors.

“Last year, I barely got a salad bowl full,” he said. “My yield has gone up exponentially.”

Scheffler, who runs his two businesses with only two employees, said he keeps in touch with clients through Facebook and may field phone calls at 8 p.m. on a Saturday. His websites, pureprairieorganics.net and pureprairiefarm.com, also offer lawn care tips and information about what vegetables are in season.

He recommends clients water their grass no more than once a month in the summer if it hasn’t rained. The grass may go dormant, but will push its roots deeper and ultimately be healthier, he said. Although grass needs little watering in the summer, it should be watered in September and October, when it is storing nutrients for winter, he said.

Scheffler also recommends a blended approach of using some man-made fertilizer in the spring and fall because organics do not work in cold weather.

“When you work with the biology, when you work with the weather, it’s amazing how easy it is to take care of plants,” he said.

Scheffler may be reached at (630) 510-2483, pureprairiefarm@gmail.com or pureprairieorganics@gmail.com.