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!
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.
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.
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