I know this is a meme, but shit like this is why I allow wild growth on my property. First year I owned my home the ground got muddy as hell from the new build since the ground was all dug up and tilled.
From the second year on I’ve only mowed a path for my driveway and the front walkway and the rest grows wild. Sweetgrass and other native plants anywhere from like 1 to 3 feet tall and the area is high desert (Colorado) so the “weeds” suck up any moisture they can get, no flood, no mud. It’s great. I’ll never understand MFers in the rurals curating lawns.
Plus, it looks nice, and the deer in the area seem to like it as well.
I’ll never understand MFers in the rurals curating lawns.
Basically, it’s a flex. In order to have a perfect looking grass yard, you either need to kill all your free time to maintain it, or pay people a lot of cash to keep it tip-top. And the free time thing also requires money since you probably don’t have your life set up like that unless you’re paying for it somewhere else. Any other approach will yield mediocre results which will immediately mark you as unable to keep pace with your more monied neighbors.
Assuming you’re playing their game, that is. Which you clearly are not. Good job!
How do you deal with native fauna that lives in wild vegetation? Mosquitoes, flies, ticks, etc.?
Mosquitoes need standing water
You know it’s odd. We have no streams or ponds. I make certain we have no standing water around us by ensuring unused pots and other items are upturned, but we always have mosquitoes around. It’s forest around us which is very nice, but the mozzies get very thick. I am sure I miss some water, but not enough for the numbers I see. Don’t know how far they’ll travel, but there’s gotta be some junk somewhere on the neighbor’s property in the forest holding water.
They can breed in a few cups of water. Try what I did this year at our camp in the swamp. Purposefully set stagnant water traps, buckets or whatever. Get Mosquito Dunk. Another user here turned me onto that. Its bacteria that kill the larvae.
This was my first year, but it seemed to work. Hard to say because it’s a swamp with loads of neighbor trash and stagnant pools, but the actual camp seemed better. Didn’t hear a single blood sucker today. I know, it’s October, but it’s still in the high 80s down here.
It essentially all takes care of itself, it’s a whole ecosystem. There’s no standing water for mosquitos thanks to the foliage. There’s also lizards, the occasional frog, birds. The deer eat some of the taller stuff. Even with the deer, there’s at least one mountain lion in the area I’ve seen, which I presume helps keep the population reasonable. I dunno, it doesn’t really need any tending, other than to clear a path where I need.
Aside from that, my neighbor has pine trees, and occasionally pine cones take root and need their root- balls shoveled out. That’s the only big maintenance because I don’t want the big trees on my property. I wouldn’t mind, but for two things:
-
They always seem to root down near the road on my driveway path or walk-down.
-
I have solar panels and can’t have them growing up on the southeast side side of the house, and that’s where they tend to fall.
Besides that, I have to knock down the occasional wasp nest (paper wasps) on the house, but if they nest away from the house I leave them alone. It’s all minimal maintenance. If you let nature do its thing it tends to find a balance. Humans are the ones usually screwing it up.
-
Moskitos live anywhere there is stale water, so either clean it or have it wild enough that other insects outcompet them.
Put your compost pile somewhere you don’t walk past a lot, because that’s where flies congregate.
Ticks aren’t that mobile, they need some animal to carries them there.I live in a decidedly different environment, but have also let my yard go to native plants (the HoA is mad, but the state passed laws protecting my native plant yard so they can get fucked) and it took a couple years for there to be a bug balance.
I had a ton of aphids the first year, but the second year the aphid wasps and lady bugs knew where I lived to handle them.
Nature will balance itself if possible
I was purposefully allowing my grass to grow because my area is in a severe drought and the herbivorous wildlife (groundhogs, rabbits, and deer) have slim pickings right now and they started coming onto my property to eat. I even leave the gates open to the fenced part when I’m not home so the critters can get in easier.
The other day my neighbor mowed half my yard without my consent because he saw a garter snake cross the road and go into my yard. I was, and still am, so pissed. He cut the grass down to the dirt. He didn’t even tell me after the fact. I had to go door to door asking my neighbors if they knew who tf touched my yard while I was out and about. My neighbor admitted to it when I got to his place to ask and had the audacity to get shitty with me about letting my grass grow.
I’ve had something similar happen too. There’s some shitty fucking people out there.
Right?? Like this neighbor seemed pretty damn cool until he pulled that shit. He lost a bunch of weight and he suddenly became the biggest dickhead on the planet…🙄
that’s so fucked up for them to do that
It really was. I had to pay my usual grass guy the price of a full cut to finish it, too. Apparently making the drive to my place for less isn’t worth it for him, which I totally understand. I could not afford a full cut on my own, so I had to borrow money from my mom. My usual grass guy is really great and he uses my yard to teach his kids yard work, so my mom didn’t mind helping me out.
Still super bummed about the wildlife needing food though. It’s super illegal to actively feed the wildlife where I live, so I can’t really provide for them.
Better idea, aerate it. There are loads of tools for that
Source: https://www.crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com/kill-your-lawn
Look, this guy is a phenomenon and worth at least some of your time. Not just for the kill your lawn stuff, but for making botany actually interesting. There’s a whole-ass youtube channel that is sure to entertain if not educate.
ITT lots of people who blessedly have no idea what an HOA is.
Or we know all about them and avoid them at almost all cost.
Benefits of living in bumfuck. Though to be real, I’d never buy or build in a HOA. It’s a choice. Renting in HOAs was bad enough in the past.
I think it’s a curse to know what HOA even are. Rest of the world is just normal.
I had a house with shrubbery growing around it. the roots were dense but light, so no real danger to the foundation. I had mentioned to my wife a couple times about removing the shrubs to replace them with flower beds with smaller shrubs to make it easier to maintain.
one day I came home from work and her dad and her had completely ripped up every shrub along the back of the house.
I was livid. I asked her what she was going to do next because money was tight. She shrugged and said we can save up to plant something for next year.
I explained to her that those shrubs were protecting the foundation from water egress and by removing them we would have water in the crawlspace. she dismissed me and said I was overreacting.
this was just as spring started. guess what happened next? yep, water started to seep into the foundation and the walls were clearly wet. I showed her, explained that in 5-10 years the mortar between the blocks would soften and begin to break down and fall apart.
for context, the house was built in the early 50s and the foundation was just raw concrete blocks without any moisture barrier. the shrubs had been there since the house was built (or at least very nearly the whole time). there was one corner that had a downspout that dropped right on top of the foundation that had some pretty bad spalling but was otherwise in perfect condition.
she listens to me now.
I don’t know what kind of logical fallacy it is in us humans, but we really think in the present that we live in a time where we’re above nature like that, as if there’s a solution to everything. And not to talk ill of you your wife, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she thought: “oh well, I’m sure we’ll figure something out before anything bad happens” once you told her. And maybe she just trusted that her father knew better, that’s also not out of the question.
One thing has always been true though: Don’t fuck with water. Just look at the Grand Canyon after all.
Roundup doesn’t want you to know this. In their eyes… Dandelions are weeds, which is such a sad opinion.
When dandelions pop up they let you know to start looking for morels in a week or so. Thank you dandelions.
Dandelions are awesome! You can make a salad of them with great health benefits and dandelion honey is also great! And the latex milk it has can be used to make rubber!
You can also make tea out of the leaves, root, and flowers (all together, or some combination of the three).
Dandelions have a lot of vitamin A and C, some B vitamins, calcium, magnesium, potassium, iron, copper, and zinc. It’s good for the skin, liver, and digestion. It’s a diuretic and can help with cramps.
We tore our front lawn out this summer. By the time we were working in July the (clay) soil under the sod was brick hard for 18 inches before it got workable again.
The yard is now 70% native and the area with high sun is drought tolerant. It’s only been a few weeks and already the pollinators are here in force and there’s a pair of mourning doves that come by to hang out most mornings.
eh, there’s a shitton of clay about an inch down here. turf ain’t the problem
Is there an alternative to grass that covers well, and doesn’t spread fast like an invasive plant?
I’ve read about clover but it does spread fast.
Why is it someone hasn’t modified the dna of grass to give us one that has both deep roots and works like lawn grass on top.
Because releasing genetically modified organisms into the wild can have absolutely disastrous consequences on an ecosystem. I think there are cases where the benefits are worth the risks, but pretty lawn is not one of them. Might be nice in the future when we have a better grasp on what we’re doing.
Thats a great talking point, but it is BS. Humans have been genetically modifying organsims through selective breeding for millenia. Any animal or plant you eat is nothing like it natural origin.
And they also have plenty of issues.
And yet, not disastrous.
Sure. The chickens that we get from Costco that can’t walk on their own isn’t disastrous to me. Especially since I don’t eat them.
But I get your point.
The chickens that we’ve modified to not walk on their own have not yet blown up our world so we accept their mutation.
Yes, the point I was replying to was basically referring to unintended runaway modifications that could be disastrous like horror movie level. Chickens that can’t walk is not runaway because… well they can’t run, lol, so they also can’t breed. If humans died tomorrow, thoses chickens wouldn’t be far off.
That said, I support lab grown meat research. So we can stop with the chickens that can’t walk. But that won’t save the dogs that can barely breath due to selective breeding.
As others have said, the size of roots is pretty directly tied to the size of foliage. Roots store energy(calories) in case something happens to the foliage or sunlight is low. The more energy they can take in, the more storage they need, as well as the stability that larger plants need from larger roots.
But how do you keep feeding the larger roots if the photosynthetic engines have giving them energy have been damn near removed?
Hm, this doesn’t fit. You are saying the roots store energy in case the foliage is lost, then saying the roots can’t exist without the foliage. Which is it? I get that they are energy storage. So the foliage in all plants must generate an excess of energy to fill the storage. That should mean that once the storage is full, extra energy can be spent to extend the roots, then fill with energy, rinse repeat.
It makes perfect sense. When the foliage is cut, it takes energy to regrow it. If there’s not enough greens or sunlight for photosynthesis to account for the plant’s total needs, it will draw those nutrients from the roots into the rest of the plant.
And there’s a whole lot of other things going on in the soil around roots as well. For example the interrelationships between plants and microbes has a tendency to start with the roots exuding sugars into the soil in order to attract those microbes. And that’s just a start. I think it’s really interesting stuff. If you wanna learn more, Regenerative Soil by Matt Powers is a fantastic book on the subject.
It is really interesting stuff. But it doesn’t explain why the roots can’t be bigger. You can take a small power source and charge a big battery or a small battery. It just takes longer for the big battery.
Well, to some degree it might be possible to selectively breed plants to prioritize root production a little more. I’m not sure to what extent that’s feasible though. You also have to understand, plants have evolved to actively want to be as big as possible. If you’re a small plant, your neighbor is more likely to grow larger than you, which blocks the sun from getting to you, which will cause you to die. So trying to make plants smaller in and of itself has ecological risks. Or at the very least, such naturally short lawns would be a lot more susceptible to weed encroachment.
I see that as a good thing. It’s like a check against uncontrolled spread. They would lose in natural competition. But a lawn of today already would. Yet the deeper roots would be good for the soil, flood control, drought management. Probably just not enough profit in the idea though.
Also, you can totally have a lawn. It’s a great place to Do Things in your garden, and it’s better than bricks or concrete. I can’t host a bbq in between the shrubs after all.
Just, turn the bits where you don’t Do Things into some other plant than lawn grass. At the very least you don’t really need those corners, and come on, a natural zone is way easier to maintain than a lawn too!
Right with ya, what I’m doing now. We have a tiny house on an 80’x200’ lot and the back 30’ was already left wild. LOL, now the whole backyard is an impassable mess. :)
I’m thinking clover next year if I can afford it. My 70s elementary playground was mostly clover and we beat the shit out of it, 3 times a day. (For you younger folks, “recess” was a time in the morning, at lunch and afternoon when we ran outside and did whatever the fuck we wanted.)
Ironically, they used to adulterate grass seed to clover to make it cheaper. Now we gotta pay a monstrous premium for clover seed. Go figure.
I have clover in an area where sometimes, maybe once-twice a week, a car parks. It doesn’t hold at all, I’ve been re-sowing it many times, even tried growing it in pots and planting once it matured.
Sounds like I need to study on the different types of clover.
