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Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

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Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#171

Post by foxhop »

core-questions wrote: post #56
freepor wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the parent of a toddler I love dandelions because he loves to pick them and blow their seeds into the air.

Your neighbours may not appreciate this as much as you do. I have my toddler gather me the flowers pre-puffball as bouquets for Mummy which helps prevent them from getting a chance to go to seed.

You should at least brew the dandilion flowers into a tea using a French press. Super tasty and very nutritional.

Upvoted to try to fix the balance of downvotes.

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#172

Post by foxhop »

core-questions wrote: post #55
ravenstine wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's sad is dandelions are neither ugly nor bad for your lawn. They feed bees and the tap roots draw nutrients from deep in the soil, which also benefits the grass.

Dandelions are definitely ugly. The problem is that they're weeds: they will grow with abandon and fill up every single possible spot on your lawn, crowding each other out in their rabid attempts to get some delicious sun. Mow them down and you're just acting as an evolutionary selection filter for short, creeping dandelions instead. It only takes a month or two of mowing to end up with a totally different, fully ada…

Dandelions are food. Try picking all the yellow flowers and steep them for 10-20 minutes in a French press.

This is the easiest way to prevent them from multiplying while not wasting them.

Dandelions are pioneer species, they out complete grass but they have a really long tap root and are pulling up minerals from deep and bring them to the surface. They are very short and cannot complete with the shrub layer, the vining layer, and tree layer, and the canopy layer.

Heck they cannot even complete with normal prairie plants which grow 4 to 8 feet tall at my house.

A lot of dandelions taking over an area is a hint that that area is lacking a lot of basic needs of other plants. The dandelion fills a void to make the place more suitable for other life, not the other way around.

Steam the leaves to reduce the bitter taste. Wash the white latex from leaf stems which is also bitter.

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#173

Post by somesortofsystm »

There are few greater joys than to be perched under ones favourite pear tree, across from the cherry, having just had salad from the beds for lunch, a food coma settling in, and in the sunshine the bees and bugs flitter and float, while the garden grows green and green.

A lawn is a terrible waste of land. In most such plots, let food gardens grow. The work is worth it.

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#174

Post by Sean1708 »

krageon wrote: post #117
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does she play ball games, set up a paddling pool, and wrestle? I'd agree if you have a house big enough to have a playroom, and have open space close by, it's probably easy enough. Our lawn is kinda a tiny, tiny, wildflower meadow, ie it's not cut much. The bees love the Clover.

In what decadent universe is a pool expected or even necessary?

One where everyone has at least a fiver: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bestway-BW51009-Ocean-Paddling-Mult...

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#175

Post by Sean1708 »

ginko wrote: post #134
EdwardDiego wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can run around on it, play ball games with their mates, you can put down a slip 'n slide in the summer, there's room for a trampoline etc. etc.

I'd guess you could do all of this on a meadow as well.

What's the difference between a meadow and a lawn? In relation to the article that is, obviously I could tell the difference between a meadow and a lawn.

Edit: To add a bit of context here a lot of people are talking about pesticides and fertilizer and stuff like that but we don't do anything like that, we just mow it when it gets a bit long. Does that mean our lawn is technically a meadow?

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#176

Post by foxhop »

hvidgaard wrote: post #159
MattRix wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintaining a lawn is more than just mowing it. There's aerating/seeding, watering, pulling-weeds/pest-spraying, etc. The mowing is the easiest part, at least for my relatively small lawn.

Let's say we have a super well maintained lawn here in Denmark. You would have to do the following once every season: * Aerate/seed (realistically not necessary to do every year). * Fertilize. * Pull weeds (mostly dandelions). For a normal house that amounts to at most one weekends work. Compared to a well established bed of flowers, which every season at the very least needs: * Fertilize * Trim plants that begin tak…

The traditional vegetable garden is slightly more human work than a lawn, but the perennial food garden is significantly less work than a lawn (for example apple trees with mulch, requires only harvest in the fall and pruning during winter)

A woodchip mulched strawberry patch uses requires zero human labor except from harvest and the occasional propagation of runner plants which 4x each year. All you have to do is cover with leaves, straw, or evergreen branches to help the crowns over winter and they will be back each year.

Raspberry canes will literally walk all over your property and only need to be mulched (with leaves, grass clippings, or woodchips) to keep them looking tidy)

The gas used to power mowers is a huge subsidy. A vegetable garden bed uses a lot less energy and time. Remember to cover vegetable garden beds in fall and winter.

All of the bullets on your list are optional in a veg garden and perennial garden. I don't rotate my crops unless I have a compelling reason to do so (like a pest eating all my potatoes)

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#177

Post by zip1234 »

Thlom wrote: post #121
lysium wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a consequence, not the intention. I don’t see how you can avoid street canyons otherwise.

Don't you have to seek municipality approval for structures? At least where I'm from we have to seek approval from the municipality to build anything bigger than a certain size on our own land. Anything that is close to a public street or neighbor also have to be approved.

When you say seek approval, in the US at least there is 'by right' zoning. Meaning that anything can be built by right as long as it follows certain rules. The approval is generally not an approval so much as a check to make sure it is following the rules. Anything not in the rules usually has to go through a special approval of a planning commission and neighbors may need to ok it.

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#178

Post by floatingatoll »

larnmar wrote: post #40
_qwfv wrote: post #25

Getting rid of our lawn and growing other stuff has been amazingly fulfilling. I have fresh produce most of the year, I've got honeybees and bumblebees and mason bees coming around. I have to do a lot less maintenance, and when I do it's more varied and interesting. Everything from fruit trees to berries, flowers to vegetables, herbs to herbal teas like chamomile. Strongly recommend looking at what will grow in your…

Since having kids I’ve been realising that a lot of the things in life that other people do, that have never made sense to me, suddenly make a whole lot more sense in the context of kids. With a kid, I’m suddenly super grateful for my little lawn.

We had a front lawn, a back lawn, and a dog. The back lawn may as well have been a concrete slab for playing purposes due to the statistical likelihood of dog. The front lawn was exposed to all the neighbors and thus similarly unusable for a social anxiety kid. Would have given up that lawn in a heartbeat for wilderness, which I spent years hiking and exploring.

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#179

Post by hvidgaard »

foxhop wrote: post #176
hvidgaard wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say we have a super well maintained lawn here in Denmark. You would have to do the following once every season: * Aerate/seed (realistically not necessary to do every year). * Fertilize. * Pull weeds (mostly dandelions). For a normal house that amounts to at most one weekends work. Compared to a well established bed of flowers, which every season at the very least needs: * Fertilize * Trim plants that begin tak…

The traditional vegetable garden is slightly more human work than a lawn, but the perennial food garden is significantly less work than a lawn (for example apple trees with mulch, requires only harvest in the fall and pruning during winter) A woodchip mulched strawberry patch uses requires zero human labor except from harvest and the occasional propagation of runner plants which 4x each year. All you have to do is co…

Having greenhouses, vegetable garden, perennial food, and a lawn - the lawn is what requires the least amount of work for me, and I don't even have a robotic lawn mower.

For perennial crops, you still need to do more work. Manure (and you have to source it too), mulch and pruning is a bare minimum. If you care about the harvest, you have to continuously keep an eye on it and treat various problems. For apples in particular it's imperative to remove monilia infected fruit continuously, and especially after harvest. You also have to prune the crop to ensure a larger harvest.

A garden is as much or as little work as you make it, but a lawn is probably the lowest bar of minimum work if you get enough rain to water it. It didn't become popular because it's more useful that everything else, but because you really don't have to do much work to keep it.

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#180

Post by oauea »

hvidgaard wrote: post #159
MattRix wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maintaining a lawn is more than just mowing it. There's aerating/seeding, watering, pulling-weeds/pest-spraying, etc. The mowing is the easiest part, at least for my relatively small lawn.

Let's say we have a super well maintained lawn here in Denmark. You would have to do the following once every season: * Aerate/seed (realistically not necessary to do every year). * Fertilize. * Pull weeds (mostly dandelions). For a normal house that amounts to at most one weekends work. Compared to a well established bed of flowers, which every season at the very least needs: * Fertilize * Trim plants that begin tak…

You don't really have to do any of that if you just want to support the environment. Plants have managed just fine so far without human intervention.
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