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Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)

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Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)

#111

Post by worik »

masklinn wrote: post #50
jeromegv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many cities in canada and US have laws that force you to cut your lawn. It is pure insanity but America has a weird fixation with lawn. Good article / podcast on it https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/lawn-order/

> It is pure insanity but America has a weird fixation with lawn. It's classism. The entire point of requiring large setbacks with front lawns is to discriminate for homeowners who can afford to maintain a large completely useless surface.

Perhaps. I cannot argue, I live elsewhere.

But I have a lawn that takes me an hour of hard work to mow. It is not visible to the public. I adore it. The dogs adore it. The children are too little to appreciate the effort, but they like it too.

There are other reasons to have lawns.

Also maintains an area around the house that does not burn

Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)

#112

Post by zdragnar »

goda90 wrote: post #98
masklinn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF one of the issues with long grass is they also favour ticks: ticks need a relatively wet environment, short grass prevent moisture retention which is an issue for all sorts of good critters... but also for ticks.

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.

Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)

#113

Post by mhh__ »

hanniabu wrote: post #53
cinntaile wrote: post #11

I don't understand why a lot of people have a lawn in the first place, most don't even use the lawn (besides mowing it on a regular basis hahaha)!

What would you have instead? Seeing greenery is good for mental health.

To my that implies wandering around in a forest or tracking the edges of farmland (this is a very British thing keep in mind, YMMV), I don't think I'd get the same effect from some grass.

I count myself fairly lucky that I can walk from the sea to a suburb to a field full of cows in less than an hour where I live.

Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)

#114

Post by pid-1 »

popol12 wrote: post #28

Lawn 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.

A friend of mine started raising chickens for eggs last year. One of the unexpected upsides is that they will prevent grass from growing too much.

Not for everyone, but sure an interesting solution.

Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)

#115

Post by swayvil »

odonnellryan wrote: post #70
candiddevmike wrote: post #24

Also 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.

What clover? Would love to do this even though clover is really expensive. I planted some last year but it only half kinda took.

Where I am, having a lot of clover in your lawn is considered to be a sign that the soil is short some nutrient. Nitrogen or potassium or something.

My lawn is about 1/3 clover. Just grows wild.

The dirt here is mostly clay, if that significates.

Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)

#116

Post by gordaco »

nsxwolf wrote: post #40
candiddevmike wrote: post #24

Also 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'm going to be that guy and point out that clover wasn't considered a weed until a chemical that killed clover, but not grass, was developed by Dow Chemical and the company wanted to sell it as a weed killer, so they ran a campaign about it.

https://laidbackgardener.blog/2020/11/04/clover-in-the-lawn-...

The secret was to turn clover from a friend into an enemy. Pesticide companies decided to launch an intensive advertising campaign to convince homeowners that white clover was a weed that needed to be destroyed. They spent literally millions on advertising to persuade unconvinced gardeners.

Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)

#117

Post by coryrc »

goda90 wrote: post #95
nsxwolf wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's the point? How does that enhance your life?

Might like going barefoot and not stepping on bees.

Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)

#118

Post by thenerdhead »

I'm actually building a DIY lawncare app right now. One of the features is having the right frequency of mowing depending on how much rain & fertilizer product plan you follow.

It would mean a lot to me if you took a quick survey so I could understand if there's value in the idea:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XF8RZJF

Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)

#119

Post by emj »

ghaff wrote: post #78
cableshaft wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who tends to be a super inconsistent lawnmower and often goes 3+ weeks in between mowing, I'm not sure I totally agree. Leaving the lawn to grow out for more than three weeks makes it pretty unusable, especially for our dogs, with giant weeds (with spikes that hurt the dogs' legs) and thistle bushes and whatnot, and when you do mow it takes 2-3 times as long and the mower tends to get clogged up a bunch, a…

And where I live in New England, it will grow to very tall grass, brush, and eventually trees which you really don't want right up to the house because it's a potential fire hazard and you can't easily even walk around the house through it after a while. I don't have most of my property mowed (just basically a band around the house) and I don't apply weed killer/water to it. I do have someone knock the field down wit…

I maintain a forrest around the house with just enough shade to make the undervegation grow with berries and such. Once per year I just walk around, remove small saplings, do some chainsawing of larger things and take down one tree. That's all. The tree is a quite a lot of work when you do not know how to handle it but it gets easier every year in the beginning.

This is not considered a fire hazard here, but yeah we do not have that many trees close to the house.

Re: Lawn mowing frequency affects bee abundance and diversity (2018)

#120

Post by watwut »

hanniabu wrote: post #53
cinntaile wrote: post #11

I don't understand why a lot of people have a lawn in the first place, most don't even use the lawn (besides mowing it on a regular basis hahaha)!

What would you have instead? Seeing greenery is good for mental health.

The odd thing to me is that grass fields I see in nature are not arbitrary high. It naturally stays small in a lot of places. And there are even small flowers in it. Nature had also high grass, but why do people put the high one into gardens is weird.
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