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I really fucked up my lawn by putting red clover down in addition to white. Red clover is perineal and grows tall and falls flat on its side. It decays into this horrible straw like shit. I hate it. Horrible horrible decision.
Because it’s sort of fucked for a few years I guess, I’ve been a lot more hands off with leaves. Because hey, even if it kills off some of the stuff there then that’s fine by me. I think I only mowed once this year. I only blow leaves off the driveway and onto the yard.
This summer I’ll see the fruits of my labor. I’m really curious to see if there are substantially more fireflies.
A tree is like a quiet roommate, but makes a huge mess before leaving to travel internationally for half the year.
I deal with 3 massive city-owned (and admittedly beautiful) chinquapin oaks and two privately owned red maples on a 1/3 acre lot. If the leaves don’t get removed then everything dies as a result of the acidity and thick leaf cover that also wont fully decay before the next autumn. There is no room for a compost pile of that size considering that the leaves couldnt make up more than half of it. I’m not a fan of grass lawns but the city and the HOA have to give the ‘okay’ before a lawn change can be made.
Same situation here. We need to remove at least part of the oak leaves. They take years to decompose on their own and they just smother ensuring else that wants to grow there. We try to leave a few piles until spring but if we didn’t manage the situation, the only plants thriving in the garden would be oaks.
How do I know when the queens are out?
If you see bumblebees then you know they’re waking up.
Depending on where you live you may need to be more perceptive. In the southeast US what most people think are bumblebees are actually carpenter bees.
Oh, you’ll know.
Stupid sexy bumblebee butts.
!nolawns@slrpnk.net vibes.
wuht
I always mulch mine with my mower. Only bugs that might be in them is scorpions, grubs, ants, or the odd snake sometimes
As a Brit we were always taught to gently disturb leaf piles before jumping in them or throwing them into the fire, just in case hedgehogs were in there. The habit has stuck, although I now just rake our leaves up onto the mulched beds and leave them. The chickens will then pull them apart and consume any living thing unfortunate enough to live there.
Or realize that there is still tons of land that isn’t maintained and is actually a better habitat for bees anyway. Even in your own neighborhood ther is plenty of places that don’t get tended to. This is really just a diversion to redirect people from all the things the ag industry does that harm the bees on a scale us individuals, even collectively can’t hold a candle to. Remember when they tried to convince us that leaving the water running while we brush our teeth was a major usage of fresh water. But again, compared to the ag industry, all household water use is a drop in the bucket.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the data, but isn’t the American lawn considered a major biome now? At least compared to wildlands.
Between lawns and monocropping in the US, yes we need to fight back against those activities and favor rewilding.
For those reading, start by introducing native plants to your parcel. Let nature do it’s thing. Then, consider going vegan since animals need multiple times the amount of land and water to grow: resources to grow the plants, then resources to grow the animals. Then, consider donating to organizations like The Xerces Society, the Wildlife Conservation Network, or MarAlliance. Better yet, find something local to you and join up!
For insects, pristine lawns are a huge problem. This isn’t quite comparable.
Sure but… It’s still a really good advice and I’m glad someone posted it. I rarely rake away leaves for reasons like this, and this gives me one extra reason to not do so.
That doesn’t mean you’re wrong, but we can all be right : fight the important battles for large scale effects while enjoying the small scale effects of individual actions.
I think that they’re just railing against the smoke show that would have us believe that our individual actions are more to blame than industry as a whole. You can recycle, you can drive a electric car, you can even generate your electricity and store it locally in a battery and not even use the grid but even if we all did that without change to heavy industry we are still screwed.
One small example of this is how big tobacco and big oil have used exactly the same tactics to distract us from what’s really going on and protect their profits regardless of the harm to us as a species.
Would you like to know more? https://www.eenews.net/articles/big-tobacco-had-to-pay-206b-is-big-oil-next/
Brings nutrients into your soil so you have a healthier lawn
That has not been my experience. The leaves wreck the ph of the soil and block light from letting grass grow.
Not much grass growing when it’s -20 out but you might have too many leaves so they don’t decompose fast enough during your winter
Yeah that’s definitely the issue here. There’s still a layer of wet leaves by the time the grass wants to start growing in the spring.
Let those leaves kill the grass and replace it with moss, clover, walkable thyme, native grasses, or any number of more interesting ground covers. I’m working towards a no-mow lawn. It’s fun finding creative ways to thwart a pesky city ordinance: “A minimum of fifty percent (50%) of all yard areas shall be comprised of turf grass”.
The layer of leaves kills that stuff too, right?
Probably. With a clover lawn you’ll probably need to reseed annually anyway. $4 per 1lb bag covers ~10,000 sq ft so not really a bank buster there, just a little work in the fall and spring.
I’ll (electrically) blow leaves off of walkways, but the vast majority of them stay put. Fuck a fucking lawn.
Fuck a fucking lawn.
Is that kinda like a putting green but for…?
every lawn is a f-cking lawn if u f-ck lawns
I thought that’s what couches were for…?
I’m pretty sure if I didn’t do any yard work by May I’d have the city repossessing my home.
absolutely insane law there.
You could try a no-mow lawnternative: https://www.thespruce.com/lawn-alternatives-8657762
Start a movement to stop the city from forcing people to cut their yards. It creates smog, kills the insects we need for food, damages the native plants, wastes money, and looks ugly. Natural yards are awesome.
How does cutting a yard contribute to smog? The Lawnmower?
Yep, all mowers are not required to have any capture equipment on them. They literally just exhaust unspent fuel and exhaust right out into the atmosphere.
until it snows, then it becomes a slip-n-slide for all.
our yard and sidewalks / pavement becomes slime slick if they’re left around. I doubt there are many bees in my leaf piles, it’s been raining for a month straight.
I don’t view this as a “pick up the leaves or not” false choice. I leave the leaves in some areas and mow over/pick them up in others. They’re literally free mulch and compost
Go to a farm, ask for stall muckings…free compost.
You will want to be sure to sift them a little, as there will be a lot of stones in them, in my experience.
If you leave them all in place they all turn into free mulch and compost anyway. And you avoid using the fossil fuels to power the mower you don’t need in the first place.
I have a battery powered mower and utility has done a pretty good job of incorporating renewables into their mix
I also have some small spots where I want grass
That’s probably the least efficient way to mulch that stuff, don’t just leave it out like that
And you avoid using the fossil fuels to power the mower you don’t need in the first place
Ah, should we all be using the push powered ones, then, cuz those are fucking terrible. Not having grass is nice for those who don’t live where it’s a legal requirement, but that’s out for many people, and you do have to cut it or you’ll get a different law visit instead
And now I’m even more glad that where I live they leave the leaves under the tree. Didn’t know that bumblebees live under that leaves left under the tree. Now I wanna leave a commest about the cute bumblebees that live under the leaves that someone left under the tree.
P.S. sorry, couldn’t hold myself, sorry:)
