Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the point? How does that enhance your life?
Might like going barefoot and not stepping on bees.
Lol ok.
Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)
211–220 of 277 posts
Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
In mosquito environments limiting lawn height definitely helps.
I do not doubt you. But I would like to know why?
Purely anecdotal but i used to live in a mosquito heavy country. What I've noticed is male mosquitoes tend to hand around densly packed tall plants. Especially under the leaves. Not sure if tall grass also have the same effect
Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
In mosquito environments limiting lawn height definitely helps.
I do not doubt you. But I would like to know why?
The tall grass gives them a place to hide. In theory they can even use small amounts of water under the tall grass to reproduce (the tall grass prevents evaporation that would happen with shorter grass).
Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)
#214The previous owner of my house was maintening a picture perfect green. With the kids and the jobs, I didn't want to follow that practice. Too much time for a soil not made for this, lots of fertilizer, various chemicals... I fix the dead patches every spring and autumn with clover seeds and compost made from grass clippings, egg shells and vegetables/fruits peels. Zero fertilizer or weed killers, I remove by hand the…
Would love to see a couple of photos of what’s possible! Any maybe some info about where you’re located?
Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)
#215Also stop using herbicide and plant some clover. My neighbors hate me but I (and the bees, bunnies, and other critters) love my almost white lawn in July. It smells great, and the clover keeps the grass healthy.
I consider clover to be a weed and go to great lengths to eradicate it. People underestimate how many people just want lawns of perfect, green, undifferentiated grass.
> I consider clover to be a weed ...
You and Dow chemial, who demonized this Nitrogen fixing wonder in order to make more money.
Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with trying to reduce ticks and mosquitoes in unnatural ways is that we often harm the things that eat them too. Since ticks and mosquitoes feed on us and other larger animals, they're the first to rebound their population, while their predators take longer to come back to keep their numbers down.
I live surrounded by hundreds of acres of forest. Wildlife is abundant, but there is absolutely no keeping up with the mosquito and tick population. Using deet and grooming ourselves and our dogs after they come inside every single time is just a fact of life.
It's a slow moving solution, but abundant bat boxes do wonders for mosquito control. Of course you'll never get rid of them entirely, but the population can be kept really low. Also promoting dragonflies helps a ton.
For ticks, wolves are actually really important. They keep deer and coyote populations in check. Deer of course feed ticks, but what's really interesting is that coyotes have a two fold effect on ticks. First they eat some of the tick predators like opossums. And second they eat mouse predators like foxes, with mice being a major part in tick reproduction. Wolves don't usually eat these smaller animals. So wolves help keep a balance.
Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Add rabbits. Wild rabbits look after themselves (no need to cage them or anything), and will keep grass down to a height of about 2 inches. They stay within about 50 yards of wherever their 'home' hole is, so they won't run off (although their offspring may!). You still need to mow about twice a year to get rid of plants the rabbits don't like to eat, which will otherwise grow into bushes.
Do rabbits follow the don't shit where you eat mantra? i.e. will there be rabbit poo all over the lawn?
No, but rabbit poo is tiny and isn't too nasty. It won't stick to your shoe if you stand on it for example.
Your biggest headache with rabbits is they'll eat other plants you might want (vegetables etc), and will dig burrows in random places. But in my opinion, both those are well worth it for having a lawn that mows itself.
Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)
#218Lawn mowing is among the top most useless energy wasting human activities. It's noisy (of course nobody syncs with neighbours to mow so you can be sure to hear mowing noise every day), polluting, and so fucking useless.
In some areas you have no choice, otherwise your entire house will be swallowed by tall weeds and other stuff. It also can create safety issues with snakes and other creatures coming close to the house. I can't imagine living in a house totally surrounded by 4 foot high grass!
Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here in suburban Australia, in my street anyway, there's several households that do it multiple times a week. My neighbour mows every other day. I had a neighbour in another place who was on his ride on mower every afternoon at 5pm. There isn't a daylight hour of the weekends where you can't hear a mower or whipper snipper (weed whacker in American) in the vicinity. I've really grown to hate lawns.
How hot is it there and how much does it rain? I grew up in Idaho, where in the summer it'd get to 42-44C relatively regularly. And there was at most 200mm of precipitation a year. Most of the grass in my parents' neighborhood was Kentucky Bluegrass. Mowing the lawn weekly was something that happened to help a bit with water retention. My dad always insisted on mowing every 4 days though.
Where I live is subtropical, and there are times in summer where the grass seems to grow tall overnight. For the rest of the year you can get away with mowing every two or three weeks to keep it under control. It's the striving for constant perfection that bothers me, instead of just waiting till it needs to be cut. I know these people probably enjoy it and have a lot of pride in a manicured lawn. I just want to live somewhere with less of them around.
Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, weirdly, here in the Canadian “frozen tundra” West of Alberta, there’s about 2-3 months where my grass goes into overdrive and I have to mow it once a week. Seriously considering landscaping to not need to do this. Wife and I have thought to turn the whole front and back yard into other greenery.
Other do better at hosting butterfly caterpillars, bees, etc, which helps feed birds and other wildlife, so I think that’s a great idea that everyone should consider.
Agreed, I want my yard to contribute to the ecosystem instead of contributing to my “status” in suburbia.