231–240 of 277 posts
The 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…
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this attitude, generally, is why we're never going to solve climate change
My lawn has no to very little effect on that. If anything it’s probably a carbon sink. Mower is electric and I use organics.
mowing twice a week on what is almost certainly a two-cycle engine is very, very unlikely to be a carbon sink.
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What's the point? How does that enhance your life?
Might like going barefoot and not stepping on bees.
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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.
I don't know about op but keep in mind it's a big country. Very close in size to continental USA. With as much climate variation. Sydney for example has a higher annual rainfall than places that Americans consider rainy (eg. Seattle). Combine that with warmer temperatures and in many parts of Australia you are fighting a potential jungle more than fighting desertification. Canberra, the capital, on the other hand reg…
a surprising amount of the US gets more rainfall than Seattle
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-17/this-simp...
Last year I mowed only 2 or 3 times in the whole year because my automower died and I wanted to try what happens. The increase in insects and birds was incredible. I therefore do not repair or replace the mower. Instead I only regularly mow paths through the garden so I can walk through it and a "central place" where I really need and use low grass. Only 2 or 3 times a year I mow all of the garden with the scythe.
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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.
But people like coldplay and voted for the Nazis! If you don't want a weed on your garden, fair enough, but what's the point of the homogenous-lawn ideal Americans seem to have? It feels like a holdover from something like cold-war cultural propaganda.
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Are you implying that not having a lawn means not having greenery? I would argue the opposite is true. While a monoculture lawn may be "green" it's about as barren a green space as you can imagine.
Are you construing a requirement to have a lawn as prohibiting more intensive gardening? I have never heard of that. What I do see all the time is the front setback given over 100% to driveway and parking. These neighborhoods become very drab, even though if you look on satellite view there’s plenty of plant life - it’s just all locked away in private backyards. My personal preference is neither. Pull the buildings r…
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My lawn has no to very little effect on that. If anything it’s probably a carbon sink. Mower is electric and I use organics.
and you have no ability to project this out to a larger number of people? mowing twice a week on what is almost certainly a two-cycle engine is very, very unlikely to be a carbon sink.
It’s hard to find 2-stroke gas engines today. Even cheap gas mowers use 4 stroke.
Wait, what? Weekly mowing? What the hell? Who does that? This sounds absolutely disastrous for grass and its ecosystem. I don't see a reason to mow more than a few times per year .
The grass in Ontario for instance grows very fast. Plus, weeds. Most people here cut weekly to keep it trim. They're also usually gas-powered.
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Do you have a picture of what it looks like in full display? I have been thinking of trying clover on mine.
Not OP, but here was my yard a few years ago. I never planted any, it just spread itself I guess. Very beautiful and attracted bumble bees and rabbits. Apologies for the quality, cheap Android cam 4 years ago, zoomed in at that. https://ibb.co/nsB7fFT