Where I live, getting rid of your lawn is a fantastic way to get Lyme disease. No thanks, been there, done that.
Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
261–270 of 330 posts
Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're going for a perfectly maintained look to wild plantings, then yeah, that's a a lot of work. We've replaced our lawn with wild savanna, and it's zero work. We just let it go. It looks totally wild, and I'm happy with that. (Getting it in place - removing the invasives, improving the soil, planting trees, and spreading native wildflower and grass seeds was a lot of work - but since its established its very li…
In New England letting grasses flourish would also provide a home for ticks and Lyme disease. I try to be friendly to pollinators but unfriendly to ticks.
Yup. Prior to spraying our yard, the majority of my family contracted Lyme disease.
Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I appreciate your general design point. My neighborhood probabbly isn't going to be reconfigured anytime soon... so that really didn't change anything.
My neighborhood probabbly isn't going to be reconfigured anytime soon The problem is new neighborhoods are being put up literally every day across the country and we are cookie-cutting them out the same way we've done since the 1940s because everyone has the same attitude you've exhibited of "Don't care, want my lawn."
>everyone has the same attitude you've exhibited of "Don't care, want my lawn."
I mean here I am reading the article and obviously interested, I talk about the practical impact of what it would mean to change existing lawns, the fact that I leave a bunch of my lawn wild, and you basically ignore that and boil down my point of view into something it isn't.
It's not surprising we have such a divides about such issues.
Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
In New England letting grasses flourish would also provide a home for ticks and Lyme disease. I try to be friendly to pollinators but unfriendly to ticks.
Get a couple chickens? I'm only partially joking, they do eat a ton of ticks.
Chickens actually don't. They kind of eat indescriminately. But guineas supposedly will hunt the ticks. But be prepared for some weird, loud sounds.
Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
#265Well it's been 5 years of no grass, it is the worse. The weeds are everywhere I have to use roundup to kill them or they will take over the yard. There is just too many to uproot. If you live in an area where people live close by and use leaf blowers to clean, keep the grass and your sanity.
Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're going for a perfectly maintained look to wild plantings, then yeah, that's a a lot of work. We've replaced our lawn with wild savanna, and it's zero work. We just let it go. It looks totally wild, and I'm happy with that. (Getting it in place - removing the invasives, improving the soil, planting trees, and spreading native wildflower and grass seeds was a lot of work - but since its established its very li…
You're telling people that they "need" to change their subjective appreciation of what constitutes beauty and aesthetic pleasure? I mean this as sincere constructive criticism, you will not win support for sustainability with such a demand. People don't enjoy being told how they "need" to feel about something as personal as aesthetic experience. Focus on how sustainability is good for people and how it will improve t…
They also need to recognize that asthetics is not the only factor. You can't kick a soccer ball on a lawn covered with shrubbery. While a natural landscape can be fun for kids to play in, it's not very versatile when you just want space to roll around and have fun with kids. But sure, if you never go outside and never set foot on your lawn, then a maintenance free lawn is fine. All the rednecks in trailer homes where I come from think so too. You could even store your older vehicles that no longer run on the lawn in case you need parts later.
Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
#267Are scientists often in a position to provide advice with holistic value? I'm usually quite skeptical of advice like this when it comes from someone who is laser focused on a specific domain.
Holism has become something of an abomination. When Jan Smuts coined the term [1], he was unfortunately at a too immature scientific stage to pave the way for a careful and thorough academic field of study. Moreover, due to his political full time occupation he never got to the stage of forming a precise idea of what he wanted his book to be about. I personally think that his book should have been a fine ecological a…
For anyone else curious and bad at wikipedia language swapping, [2] in english: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichrostachys_cinerea
Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
#268Get rid of HOA’s first :/
It's not so much HOAs that are the problem as the priorities of those who actively participate in framing and enforcing their aesthetic conformity rules.
The perfectly manicured lawn, in many places in the US, is a strong signal associated with middle to upper middle class status. It's a signal that you have the expendable income and time to spend on something non-essential.
Many HOAs are used to enforce that signaling, rather than limiting themselves to ensuring physical safety through proper maintenance of homes. You can see this in HOAs that disallow front yard vegetable gardens (though that was recently banned in FL[1]).
HOAs are actually necessary when homes occupy a shared parcel of land, like with townhouses or condominiums. In those arrangements, the landscaping is commonly owned.
The aesthetic enforcement of things like lawns vs native grasses happens more in HOAs that govern large areas of suburban tract housing, where the HOA enforces rules on property that isn't actually held in common.
1. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-p...
Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
#269When I was in China there were certain places where they made jokes about how Americans are so rich they use their lawns just to make their home look pretty (they were growing stuff).
That is in fact the purpose of lawns: to show you are rich enough to not surround your house with food gardens. The poor had to plant food anyplace they had legal rights to soil, the rich can plant non-food to show off.
The original purpose of lawns was to provide sight lines for castle defense. The forest was cut down, and native ground cover dominated the cleared regions. It was kept short by grazing animals.
It was our old pal Louis and his Versailles palace that introduced the close-cropped grass lawn. It was kept short by grazers and gardeners. The poor used their near-house property to grow vegetables and culinary herbs. The rich used it to feed cows or sheep.
It wasn't until the mechanical lawnmower that the grass lawns became entirely useless. Grass is ruminant food, and ruminants are meat.
But we don't keep herds of sheep and cows in the grass-friendly suburbs now, because we don't like stepping in or smelling ruminant poop. And all the pesticides and herbicides would be dangerous for the animals and anyone who ate them.
Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Japanese barberry runs rampant in the woods, though. That will take some effort to get rid of. Careful, it has more ticks than anything else, and the first time you get bitten you’re not going outside for 21 days.
Yeah, we're Lyme Disease Central. We're militant about DEET, footwear, and taking showers when we come inside. I really hope some kind of vaccine comes out soon, though.
> I really hope some kind of vaccine comes out soon
It would be nice for the vaccine to come back - I was able to get the vaccine (and a booster a couple years later) when the vaccine was available (quite some time ago).
I've also actually gotten Lyme disease (which I was able to catch early thanks to the bullseye rash and treat successfully with antibiotics, so did not progress to the bad symptoms).