‘No mow’ movement could transform our lawns

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2023/04/22/long-grass-helps-bees/

by bookofjoe • 3 years ago

36 47 3 years ago

washingtonpost.com

bookofjoe• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/dQZOc

brucethemoose2• 3 years ago

This is going to vary by climate.

Here in south Florida, if you can see the grass growing in the rainy season. Its insane. If you don't mow your lawn for a month, it will turn into a knee deep bug and snake infested jungle... its literally a health hazard.

In some dry, hot places, it would actually be good for the grass itself. Everyone I knew in central Texas cut their grass too short, as it stays greener and needs less precious water when long.

thenerdhead2• 3 years ago

Well you don’t ever want to cut your grass too short in one go. Always 1/3 of its blade length until its lowest recommended height. Otherwise you put the grass in shock when it’s already finding water hard to come by.

Central Texas grass and generally any warm season grass is more drought and sun tolerant.

technion• 3 years ago

Same here in Australia. I've had about six weeks not mowing due to a few weekend projects and now it's leech infested.

thenerdhead2• 3 years ago

By manipulating lawn mowing frequency, we established that lawns with the three-week mowing treatment had significantly greater floral abundance than the one or two-week treatments, and that the two-week mowing regime supported the highest bee abundance yet the lowest bee richness and evenness (Fig. 2; Fig. 4b, c, d).

So mow every two weeks and you’ll support the bees.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...

nimbius• 3 years ago

Speaking from experience, if you live in the united states you should be very cautious with this.

Many municipalities and hoa's have pretty draconian expectations for your landscaping. Municipalities in Florida and Ohio have litigated and fined homeowners for that which they perceive as nuisance plantings or general nonconformity.

My former residence, while not under a hoa, did have a township restriction that inundated me with calls and mail from the city demanding I remove my front lawn herb garden and tomato vines. I had to fight the city for nearly four months before they dropped the issue, but they even went so far as to send landscapers to my doorstep to "confirm" an appointment I never made.

vuln2• 3 years ago

but they even went so far as to send landscapers to my doorstep to "confirm" an appointment I never made.

Do you know this for a fact? I wouldn’t be surprised if some enterprising lawn engineer decided to use publicly available list of “ordinance violators” as a lead generation tool.

kortilla5• 3 years ago

They don’t even need a list, they can just drive around and look for violations.

I can always tell when my weeds are getting unkempt because I start getting unsolicited landscapers coming to my door and leaving business cards.

InfamousRece• 3 years ago

My HOA once fined me $39 per dandelion on my lawn. They claimed there were 6 dandelions although I counted only 4. Lawns are serious business here and they must be kept in perfect condition.

1letterunixname6• 3 years ago

Having an HOA is an open invitation for the most sociopathic neighbors or for-profit management company to tell you what you can and can't do with your property, even more so than city and county code enforcement.

"John Oliver on homeowners associations: ‘Glorified debt collectors with the power to upend your life’" https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/apr/10/john-ol...

superchroma• 3 years ago

I don't mind mowing my lawn. We compost the clippings, and it's a non-trivial amount every fortnight. I recommend this. Make sure you don't use herbicides on your lawn if you choose to do this.

fnordpiglet2• 3 years ago

I mulch my beds with my clippings. Composts and retains moisture

1letterunixname6• 3 years ago

I recall having to mow fertilized, borderline over-watered (3:30-:45 am every day), Kentucky blue grass 2x/wk in the peak of summer. 2-3 ancient circular tin trash cans full of clippings, perhaps 100 lbs / 44 kg / 7 stone. The water content was high enough that it wouldn't self-ignite like hay, but it sure would get warm, mushy, and consolidate quickly.

pvaldes• 3 years ago

Spending valuable gasoline and resources to have grass extra short and the soil dry is stupid in our current situation of climate emergency.

Cities should let the grass grow three times longer than now, save water, and use the scarce resources in neglected projects that are much more urgent.

codalan3• 3 years ago

Or just get rid of grass entirely.

Part way through a project to replace part of the yard with gravel and native plants, mostly because I hate mowing.

hombre_fatal2• 3 years ago

The worst part about mowing is that you can’t even listen to a podcast because the engine is too loud. Otherwise I wouldn’t mind the chore.

toomuchtodo2• 3 years ago

Consider replacing your grass with clover if your local jurisdiction will tolerate it.

https://germination.ca/need-a-bit-of-luck-turn-to-a-clover-l...

https://www.bobvila.com/articles/clover-lawn/

https://www.outsidepride.com/seed/clover-seed/Clover-Seed-Pl...

https://www.bhg.com/how-to-plant-a-clover-lawn-6750469

Your local Extension office is a valuable resource.

https://extension.org/search_gcse/

flangola7• 3 years ago

Where I live it's actually illegal for HOAs and local jurisdictions to forbid your from having natural/non-grass yards.

toomuchtodo2• 3 years ago

Tremendous, you love to see it.

MandieD• 3 years ago

And where is this slice of sensible?

angry_moose• 3 years ago

It varies by region what you "should" plant and is worth checking with your local organizations.

University of Minnesota has developed a low maintenance bee mix that's pretty great - mix of fescue, creeping thyme, self-heal, and clover. https://turf.umn.edu/lawn-info/purchasing-seed/bee-lawn-seed

Ours should pretty much take over this year and choke out the rest of the bluegrass. Last year was dramatically better already and it was only half established.

orobinson• 3 years ago

My grandfather was famously anti-lawn-mowing[0]. His un-mowed lawn eventually sprouted some rare bee orchids among a vast array of other wildflowers. It always looked beautiful when we pulled into the drive when we went to visit.

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-ga...

fnordpiglet2• 3 years ago

I always seed my lawn with clover every spring and only cut every three weeks. Clover not just helps pollinators but also fixes nitrogen in the soil. My soil was a blasted waste land when I bought the house. Now it’s a rich soil with plenty of life in it.

dieselgate• 3 years ago

Interesting perspective how the article seems to recommend mowing less and to a taller height rather than not mowing at all. Fair enough. Not mowing ever at all Can be dangerous for fire risk, ticks, and fox tails for dogs/animals/livestock, etc.

Edit: grew up in a rural area where we would mow acres of fields so may have a different background than others.

andrewmcwatters4• 3 years ago

Yeah, no. Absolutely not. Some jerk in my historic district reported my home to the City of Phoenix because among battling various other renovation challenges and taking care of family, our grass had grown past city ordinance height.

You know what the punitive fine was? $1,000/day.

I don't even live in an HOA, thank heavens.

crazygringo• 3 years ago

If you choose to live in a historic district, you know very well you're going to have to follow a lot of rules about appearance, including grass height. You knew that going into it, or should have.

I don't know why you're calling someone a jerk for reporting it. The whole point of historic districts is to maintain an incredibly strict appearance. If you don't want to follow the rules, don't live there.

andrewmcwatters4• 3 years ago

City ordinances apply to the whole city, not just historic districts. You're thinking of HOAs. What you're describing doesn't actually apply to historic districts. They're historic for their architectural significance and variety compared to modern construction and design practices, not an attempt to keep up on street-side appearances.

I think it would have been nice to offer to help with lawn issues, because they happen to everyone. Our lawn mower was stolen at the time.

Threatening someone with a $1,000/day punitive fine isn't being a good neighbor.

Thinking it's OK to do that is morally deprived.

1letterunixname6• 3 years ago

How do you get overgrown lawn in sun-scorched Phoenix without using absurd quantities of water in a desert that's running out of water?

kadoban2• 3 years ago

Depends on the time of year. For maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the year, most of winter and anywhere near monsoon season, your grass will grow regardless of if you water it or not.

kortilla5• 3 years ago

If op is in Phoenix proper (which is implied by the historic district), the water comes from the salt river, which now has all 3 reservoirs full upstream of the city.

Additionally, the Sonoran desert is a monsoonal one, so it receives a deluge of water during particular times of the year.

There is a massive amount of water waste in Arizona, but it’s in agriculture, not lawns.

andrewmcwatters4• 3 years ago

I don't water my lawn. It still grows. We get rain and it's more than enough for the grasses that grow here to prevent lawns from turning into dirt yards. It's not like a cartoon out here where everyone lives on sand dunes.

They won't be healthy, but they absolutely will grow, and very tall.

I'm actively trying to kill it. It's difficult and takes weeks to turn it into a dirt yard. You still have to dethatch and do everything anyone else has to do across the country.

You're also encouraged to participate in water conservation as a Phoenician, or an Arizonan in general.

1letterunixname6• 3 years ago

The idea of a massive field of blue-green Poa pratensis Kentucky blue grass lawn is passe and absurd. It was a leftover of the French demonstrating how rich they were replacing farmland with manicured meadows. In the era of climate change and megadroughts, having a lawn has jumped the shark.

ktosobcy• 3 years ago

USA is amusing with the whole lawn debacle :-D

codalan3• 3 years ago

Amazing what our priorities are. But it shouldn't be surprising to outsiders, either.

‘No mow’ movement could transform our lawns

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