No Lawns

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A community devoted to alternatives to monoculture lawns, with an emphasis on native plants and conservation. Rain gardens, xeriscaping, strolling gardens, native plants, and much more!

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greatwhitebuffalo41@lemmy.ml

Reminder: Your lawn isn't "being invaded by weeds," it's undergoing natural selection. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml to c/nolawns@lemmy.ml

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Especially ironic when suburbanites rave about how houses are infinitely better than apartments because they're "closer to nature." You want to be closer to nature? Let natural processes work and have a lawn of whatever grows in your area naturally (even an "invasive" species is better than lawn grasses, unironically, and lawn grasses are almost always also non-native species, just ones that can't actually survive in the environment.) Don't water, don't mow, don't fertilize, just let nature do its thing. It will also attract more pollinators, birds, wildlife in general and instead of a lawn, soon you'll have a natural meadow in your yard. That's nature, a lawn that needs excessive water, chemical fertilizers, and poison just to maintain isn't.

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[–] DarthBueller@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No mowing means I can’t walk in the yard without getting covered in chiggers here in the US south. My grass has to be stupidly short. All it takes is 5 seconds of walking in not even tall grass and I’m covered in invisible chiggers that will give me weepy swollen itchy bites lasting for weeks, unless I shower within 30 minutes and immediately wash my clothes. OFF doesn’t make a damn difference. Pants help, but wearing pants in 85+ degrees makes me sweat buckets more than I would otherwise.

I don’t water my lawn or use fertilizers. EDIT: and “natural selection” will absolutely be a field of invasives. The native prairies require fire management and have been outcompeted by invasives many many decades ago. Unless you’re going to round-up the entire yard to kill the grass, rent a seed drill and provide a ton of seed to put enough native prairie seed into the ground to outcompete the invasive seed bank, install erosion controls since we killed the grass off, and then set up an endowment to cover the expense of hiring burners to burn off my field annually, go make ill-informed suggestions to others.

[–] psyspoop@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Yes, you would have to densely broadcast seed/plant plugs with native prairie species or noxious and invasive stuff will take over initially. And you would have to kill all the grass, either with a spray (which helps keep the existing invasive seed bank down), or till or sod cut or solarize or smother the grass.

If you replant relatively quickly, erosion won't be too much of a concern as the natives will establish fast enough to stabilize the soil. Long term, the natives will actually reduce erosion compared to lawn grass. You don't need to burn in an urban setting, mowing once or twice a year (once in earlier spring and maybe again in early summer to help natives out compete invasives) is gonna be enough generally.