321–330 of 330 posts
And don't clean fallen leaves in the autumn...
> Another tip: Leave leaf litter in place. The dead plant material is an important part of healthy soil and offers protection for insects during the winter, Berenbaum said. They say exactly that in the article.
When 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.
Some of the healthiest old wise ladies I've ever known have had the most vibrant gardens in the neighborhood, whereas the clean/white picket fence guys all seem to be grouc
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Nobody is being forced to purchase property governed by an HOA. If you want the freedom to choose how you maintain your property, just... live somewhere else. To be clear, I'm not advocating for these schemes (and would personally never live in such a place), but the idea that it's _unreasonable_ to have a preference is silly. People are allowed to have opinions. The irony here is that your response violates the very…
I am strongly against land covenants, and support the Jeffersonian maxim that the Earth should belong in usufruct to the living. If you want to control how a property is used in perpetuity, the proper way (in my opinion) to do so is to never sell it , not to carve away slices of ownership rights at every sale. The fact that land covenants were overwhelmingly used for racist purposes is just the largest strike against…
> Barring some legislated community standard that does so, the only truly effective way to keep your neighbors from screwing up your lifestyle is by effectively not having any. Move to the center of your own square mile.
Can you not see that the above is essentially saying, "Either create community standards where you live, or (wait for it...) live somewhere else!"? Your argument boils down to "YOU live somewhere else!"
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I am strongly against land covenants, and support the Jeffersonian maxim that the Earth should belong in usufruct to the living. If you want to control how a property is used in perpetuity, the proper way (in my opinion) to do so is to never sell it , not to carve away slices of ownership rights at every sale. The fact that land covenants were overwhelmingly used for racist purposes is just the largest strike against…
What a diatribe! Unfortunately (and I mentioned this irony in my previous comment), your last paragraph undermines all of the previous. > Barring some legislated community standard that does so, the only truly effective way to keep your neighbors from screwing up your lifestyle is by effectively not having any. Move to the center of your own square mile. Can you not see that the above is essentially saying, "Either c…
Living on the square mile is the hyperbole non-option. Most people can't live on their own square mile with effectively no neighbors, so they have to find some way to get along with the neighbors they will always have. They either can't afford it in money, or they can't afford it in travel time.
Should I have said "go live on the Moon", or "go live on a libertarian seastead", instead? It's supposed to be an unreasonable alternative to being reasonable to all your diverse neighbors.
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What the cow returns trashes streams as it’s high in nitrates. It’s incredibly damaging. New Zealand is a great example of this and the huge expansion of our dairy industry has done huge harm.
Only when the cow is allowed to go in the stream. Have the cow go even a few meters away from the stream and it is great fertilizer for the grass the cow eats.
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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 vin…
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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…
This gets tricky. A weed is merely a plant in the wrong place. We have a corner of garden that we left to nature to get a little wildlife oasis. The nettles and brambles nature added need regular effort to keep controlled, the dandelions are mostly benign in amongst the 6"-foot long grass, they don't dominate like they do on a cricket pitch length lawn.
Nah. A weed is an undesired plant, primarily, but also typically one that grows and spreads aggressively and doesn't play nice with the sort of plants one actually wants to cultivate in an area.
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It is simpler in the sense that there is not really any thought required. I have to mow my small lawn every three weeks or so, true, but I know how to do that, because it's the same thing everybody does and you grow up watching your parents mow the lawn. It requires no judgement skills, and no gardening skills -- just run the mower over all the grass, and you're done. I would actually potentially be interested in hav…
Installing a native lawn does require a startup cost, but it's not too bad. You kill your grass, lay down mulch, and plant the native species. After a few months of watering, your lawn is self sufficient and you don't have to do anything to it ever again. Picking out the native species might seem daunting, but there are many resources online these days to help you pick out a handful of native species that will work f…
I'm personally a huge fan of native lawns, but this is always in the back of my mind and I haven't seen it addressed.
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City ordinances require it. My local ordinances specify that it is to minimize health hazards adjacent to public property. Tall grass allows insect and rodent populations to grow, but they are carriers of diseases that can spread to humans.
> they are carriers of diseases that can spread to humans. However, this has nothing to do with why the city's ordinances require a properly maintained lawn.
Subsection B6 states that "The following are hereby declared to be health nuisances affecting public health ... rank growths of vegetation upon private property [which] ... harbors rodents or vermin". This is one of the first 3 reasons listed.
https://library.municode.com/ok/tulsa/codes/code_of_ordinanc...