81–90 of 150 posts
Right at the very bottom the article suggests the correct way to deal with fallen leaves: leave them alone. They decompose and provide nutrients to the grass.
> shred most leaves with a mower, leaving them strewn on the lawn as mulch.
The shredding is a necessary step. Of course, this too is generally done by power equipment ...
Right at the very bottom the article suggests the correct way to deal with fallen leaves: leave them alone. They decompose and provide nutrients to the grass.
All my life I have hated leaf blowers with all my being, reserving a special place in that hatred for the landscapers working in the middle of the night in Santa Clara on commercial property.
However I have friends who don't share that hatred and as a surprise housewarming gift I received in Dec. a 20V battery electric leaf blower. My gawd that thing works great, and it's not very loud, takes 10 minutes, so problem solved for the driveway, deck, steps etc.
As for the "grass"[1], wherever the leaves had piled up and matted down after the rains, nothing grew. It was just mud. I'm not interested in leaf blowing a half acre so after researching it I got a Honda mulching lawnmower. I mulched for the first time last week. Worked great! This week the leaves have piled up again. I'll keep mulching until the accumulation wanes but I'm optimistic I'll have more "grass", and less mud, next year.
I retain my intense hatred for gas powered leaf blowers. I've got a neighbor across the lake and that mutherfucker likes to blow his deck for I swear to god an hour once a week with a tremendously noisy gas blower. Visions of setting the thing on fire. Maybe I should buy him an electric leaf blower. He also has a very noisy Harley and one of those extraordinarily loud Mustang adjacent cars, so possibly that would be a fail. Oh well.
[1] "grass" Well there's some grassy stuff most places, and it looks like dozens of other species of ground covering plants. All fine with us, what I care about is cover and not growing too fast.
It’s just a symptom of the larger problem of manicured lawns being the number one “managed crop” in America. Eliminating home lawn is probably one of the singular things that would significantly slow down our destruction of the planet I’m sure someone will post some reason why their lawn is different somehow [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lawn-largest-crop-america_n_5... [2] https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisf…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lawns are beautiful and useful. Are we not allowed to expend resources for beautiful and useful things?
Public parks are too. If you've got reasonable access to one, do you need the other? Or rather, is a private lawn something that should be taxed (much?) more heavily where a park is available within 15 mins walk? And should urban planners take that into account, and developments be penalised when they don't?
It’s just a symptom of the larger problem of manicured lawns being the number one “managed crop” in America. Eliminating home lawn is probably one of the singular things that would significantly slow down our destruction of the planet I’m sure someone will post some reason why their lawn is different somehow [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lawn-largest-crop-america_n_5... [2] https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisf…
Why people would put so much effort into growing useless grass is astonishing to me. You can grow anything there and you choose grass? Why? I assume it has to do with an HOA? Or aesthetics? Or it’s easier?
Lots of people do like the aesthetics and perhaps some HOAs are strict about it, but I think most people maintain their lawn because it’s what they think they’re supposed to do.
Personally I think small lawns are great but would love to see more natural landscaping with native plants.
Right at the very bottom the article suggests the correct way to deal with fallen leaves: leave them alone. They decompose and provide nutrients to the grass.
Mulching leaves with a mower would deal with them just fine in many cases. The landscaper in the article doesn't need to cancel all of his fall cleanup contracts. Areas with dense oak trees however, might have so many leaves mulching would choke out the grass.
Surprisingly not, it's actually pretty amazing how massive blankets of dried fallen leaves will get chomped down into a tiny tiny thin layer of powder when mulching, at least when using a sufficiently powerful mower to do a good job of it. I've got maybe 50 acres, mostly dense forest with lots of oaks/maples and then some lawn (more regularly mowed hay field) around main buildings. Before I had one I used to rake (or eventually blow) up leaves and cart them off leaving only some. Getting a quality mulching setup was a revelation (for leave and grass too for that matter). Better for the environment, less messy, and more convenient. Still use an (electric) blower though to gather leaves onto lawn areas from other places for mulching, and in some cases to help spread the leaves out beyond the areas near forest so that they'll add nutrients elsewhere. But once everything is piled as I want onto lawn can just mulch it, though everything in the hay fields can just sit over the winter of course.
So I think there really is no downside, it's all upside, and it can all be electric as well. Just a matter of putting the pieces together with the right incentives, which is something that looks plenty politically feasible.
“40% of homeowners with lawns pay for landscaping services”?!? Wow. I had no idea the number was that large. That seems so … lazy. EDIT: I should say that I'm biased and think green thick pristine lawns are a blight. (Irony noted.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even without lawns people will use leaf blowers to blow leaves, off their driveways or xeriscapes or whatever. So we should ban gas powered leaf blowers regardless.
I think he means that everybody should be made to live in apartments or condos, without any sort of garden, patios, etc. Dense urban living for everybody.
Quite frankly, I think such housing areas look far, far better than your typical grassy suburbia.
It’s just a symptom of the larger problem of manicured lawns being the number one “managed crop” in America. Eliminating home lawn is probably one of the singular things that would significantly slow down our destruction of the planet I’m sure someone will post some reason why their lawn is different somehow [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lawn-largest-crop-america_n_5... [2] https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisf…
Lawns are beautiful and useful. Are we not allowed to expend resources for beautiful and useful things?