16 ms·

I think the American suburban yard may be equally responsible with agriculture for a lot of this in the US. The use of herbicides and pesticides is completely

by gmoes 8y ago

I think the American suburban yard may be equally responsible with agriculture for a lot of this in the US. The use of herbicides and pesticides is completely unregulated. Additionally lawns are an unnecessary waste of time for most people and have a large carbon footprint. I had a small native plant yard that attracted hundreds of pollinators and arachnids. I was treated like and criminal forced to cut most of it down. I still get a fair amount of terrestrial arthropods but not as much. It sickens me when I see workers with those sprayer packs or trucks that look like small chemical plants. Before I decided to comment I submitted my write up, if you are interested you can read that you can read here: http://www.elegantcoding.com/2018/03/reimagining-suburban-yard-to-reverse.html http://www.elegantcoding.com/2018/03/reimagining-suburban-ya... Edit: I did want to mention that I definitely seen a massive decline in butterflies and moths over the last 15 years. Update: I quoted 40 million acres below, which is for turf grass which probably includes athletic fields. I am not against everyone having a lawn or athletic fields. I do think people should be able to cultivate their native environment on their suburban property and this should be encouraged and even incentivized. My neighbor’s kids play in their backyard, so they have a need for it. Of course a non herbicide non monoculture lawn should work ok too. That’s what I grew up with. Also I think that gas powered devices need to be replaced with electric devices. I think something like 17 million gallons of fuel are spilled alone in relation to lawn maintenance. The thing that scares me is the normality of spraying for mosquitoes. In my area it’s the invasive Aedes mosquito species, the native species are a lot less aggressive. Also with some of these other very scary invasive species like the marmorated stink bug, ash borer, lantern fly, that new Asian tick, etc. Are we going to end up using more and more insecticides and subsequently kill more and more of our native fauna?

mkirklions 8y ago
>Additionally lawns are an unnecessary waste of time for most people and have a large carbon footprint. I made a serious attempt to do ANYTHING but a lawn. Here are the issues- No grass= erosion. This + weeds makes a dirt yard impossible. If you want to 'farm' there is tremendous maintenance involved Turf is expensive, but might have been a solution. More concrete= hotter. This is bad for the environment. --- So is the solution to let native plants grow all over your yard? We did this for 1 year, but my wife ended this.
- bsmitty5000 8y ago
  I'm compromising with my wife and only mowing a small portion of the yard we have and I won't touch the rest. I might try and introduce some native wildflowers, like milkweed, though. We live in a more rural part of the country though so it's maybe easier to do such a thing here compared to a subdivision or something.
- gmoes 8y ago
  I used aggressive native plants from my area. These included Jerusalem artichokes, Indian Hemp, Joe Pye Weed, etc. in the sunny areas. Virginia knot weed, etc. in the shady areas. They colonized my yard very well and even kept the English Ivy at bay. I had no issues with erosion. The plants lived for years and established rhizomes and extensive root systesms.
- circlefavshape 8y ago
  That's more or less what we do. One section I seeded with grass and mow regularly. It's only around 50% grass now (after 10+ years), but it's short and green and looks like grass. Another section I cut with a scythe once a year in autumn. It looks cool in the summertime when it's in flower, in winter when it's cut down it just looks like the rest of the garden
- esarbe 8y ago
  You could introduce all kinds of edible plants on your yard; some berry bushes, a small apple tree, raspberries. Don't garden, just rip out the stuff you don't want. Let the remaining plants find their place and time. You'll have a nice little garden in a few seasons.
- ahje 8y ago
  > So is the solution to let native plants grow all over your yard? We're currently planting berry bushes, nuts and clover in large parts of our yard. It's fairly low-maintenance and as a bonus the clover is and excellent food source for our rabbits and chickens.
- jly 8y ago
  > So is the solution to let native plants grow all over your yard? Yes, but that doesn't mean you have no discretion or control over what is growing and how. The key is that you want to choose things that require no supplemental watering or nutrients like most non-native lawn grasses do. Choose native grasses that are well-adapted to your climate. This may mean dormant / brown periods of the year, but this is perfectly natural. There is a mental hurdle to clear about an aesthetic that isn't going to be achieved. There are many native ground covers that are also available, and many that flower to provide habitat and support for animals. Both these and grasses can be mowed to an acceptable height. Wherever possible, put in native wildflowers or shrubs/trees. These sustain other life and they look amazing.
justin66 8y ago
> I think the American suburban yard may be equally responsible with agriculture for a lot of this in the US. There are over 900 million acres of farmland in the United States, so I'm going to guess this assertion (the "equally") is wrong. It seems to me you're otherwise right about how we put our yards together, though. You didn't even mention how much water we often use to move our yards away from the native flora.
- gmoes 8y ago
  Good point, compared to 40 million for lawns. Maybe proportional to usefulness. ;) And water is a huge issue too. The native plants thrive in wet and dry conditions without attention.
  - alexanderdmitri 8y ago
    I'm curious about that definition of lawn, does it only apply to residence property or commercial spaces, athletic pitches, &c?
    - ticmasta 8y ago
      Most commercial buildings have extensive landscaping but try to limit huge patches of green grass as it's hard and expensive to maintain - unless they're using it as a signal for wealth and opulence (like a fancy hotel) or labour is really cheap. If you've ever had a chance to run/play on modern artificial turf it's amazing. I think most facilities would love to switch to it but it's super expensive.
  - ansible 8y ago
    So there is an order of magnitude difference, but the other side of that is with farmland, pesticides are applied by professionals, trying to minimize cost. With yards, pesticides are applied (most often) by rank amateurs, who often know nearly nothing about proper application.
    - cantankerous 8y ago
clarkmoody 8y ago
> The use of herbicides and pesticides is completely unregulated. Every bag of the stuff says, "It is a violation of federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling." Sounds like regulation to me. You don't have to ask permission to put it on your lawn, but you've got plenty of rope to hang yourself with a warning label like that. > I had a small native plant yard that attracted hundreds of pollinators and arachnids. I was treated like and criminal forced to cut most of it down. This is a shame. Native yards much more beneficial than monospecies turf everywhere.
- Swizec 8y ago
  But are those regulations enforced is the wuestion. Without oversight and enforcement, the regulation doesn’t exist. What does a lawn need herbicides for anyway? You’re not trying to macimize yield ... Another question is what does that label say. Is it “Don’t spray in eyes” or something like “Don’t use more than X per square foot” or even something cool like “Only for agricultural use where actual crops are grown”
  - clarkmoody 8y ago
    It has all sorts of specific instructions about how much to spread, how soon before/after rain, how close to waterways & drains, sweep up any that gets on sidewalks, etc. Tons of words. Also in Spanish.
    - hinkley 8y ago
      There’s more than one definition of regulation. One being “the act of controlling or supervising”. If you define regulation as the act of making rules? Then yeah there’s not much to talk about. But if we’re talking about controlling, throttling, or supervising, we aren’t seeing much of that.
    - Retra 8y ago
      Having some words written somewhere is hardly regulating anything. Regulation requires control.
gambler 8y ago
Lawns are one of the most ridiculous human inventions I have ever observed. You take normal self-sufficient grass out, then reseed with some sort of crippled grass that needs constant fertilization and watering. To make things worse, you mandate it to be unnaturally short, so people have to constantly mow and use herbicides to keep the normal grass out. And all of this is made mandatory for some reason. Aside from creating grass mono-cultures, this is just a gigantic waster of time and resources that doesn't produce anything in return.
- c4urself 8y ago
  Wow just had a facepalm moment realising what you said is spot on. To make matters worse small-engined tools that pollute the environment are used weekly to keep the yard nice... what a waste
  - culot 8y ago
    You'd think electric motor yard tools could be common by now, but instead the deafening gas-powered black-cloud-spewing machines are still ubiquitous.
    - rsync 8y ago
      "You'd think electric motor yard tools could be common by now ..." You will be happy to learn that we are just on the cusp ... Bosch and Dewalt have very high density battery power systems and they are using them for lawn tools - including normal push mowers. Other tool companies are quickly following suit. Unlike past iterations, these tools really do have the power and longevity to do real work. To wit: my local volunteer fire department now carries a battery powered Dewalt chainsaw in one of our engines. As for the embedded carbon cost in all of these new tools and batteries and the production pollution that is occurring "somewhere" ... an exercise for the reader.
      - jamiepenney 8y ago
        I've got a set of power tools and a lawn mower from Ryobi that all use the same 36V battery pack. Works well for our small section in town.
bryan11 8y ago
In the midwest 20 years ago, we'd regularly see butterflies, bees, and many other insects. After I planted butterfly bushes there more came with dozens of butterflies and bees on them each day. Every year, though, the numbers decreased. I don't used any chemicals in my property. A few years ago, the city started spraying everywhere for mosquitoes. The day after spraying, people frequently find a couple dead birds in their yard. One neighbor's bee hives were killed as well. Lately, seeing one single butterfly a year is a rare event.
camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago
Thanks for caring. I was always weary of biocides but after reading Silent Spring about five or six years ago, I am regularly confronted with the appalling widespread use of poison. Between the aisles of enough poison to exterminate a wilderness in every hardware store, ludicrous plans to manage invasive species and pests, and an army of shills perusing social media, your comment was a brief moment of respite in an ongoing personal crises. You'd think the thought, "well if it's poisonous for one organism it's probably poision to others." Would occur to more people... Meanwhile us weirdos will be appreciating our beautiful yards that we don't need to maintain, overgrown with flowers and bustling with life.
swoongoonz 8y ago
what the hell, how is it legal for anybody to tell you what to do with your land?
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Get a property in a city and start a tire fire.
- wcoenen 8y ago
  It's often a voluntary agreement. A developer builds a collection of houses, then sells them under the condition that the owner must join the home owner association set up for those houses. The idea is that the association forces its members to do upkeep, so that the homes don't collectively lose value for being in a "bad neighborhood".
  - 3131s 8y ago
    It's very often a city ordinance. I've posted this before, here's the link to my home city's lawn gestapo: http://www.minneapolismn.gov/inspections/report/inspections_report-long-grass-weeds http://www.minneapolismn.gov/inspections/report/inspections_...
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - kaybe 8y ago
      That example picture looks perfectly reasonable. If there were a few more flowers it'd be even better.
- Daishiman 8y ago
  "Your land" as your own personal little utopia is a fantasy and fiction that's never existed in civilized society and whose continued reference as some sort of ideal is naive at best.
- pjc50 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
hpbd 8y ago
>It sickens me when I see workers with those sprayer packs or trucks that look like small chemical plants. I hate insects. They are often annoying and sometimes outright dangerous. We live in the same Earth so we'll have to reconcile our points of view.
- pjc50 8y ago
  Quite a lot of insects are harmful, but no insects means no birds; and some insects are vital pollinators in ecosystems.
CalRobert 8y ago
Outside of the US, one thing I have trouble understanding is this idea that farmland is somehow natural. I talk to people who say they want to visit nature and then we go look at... sheep on grazing land. Not a damn thing natural about it. And then local councils destroy plants on the road verges because they're "untidy". Those verges were one of the last refuges for native insects and birds. I think the place I live (Ireland) has been so completely denuded that people literally don't know what nature is. It looks like that will be the whole world in short order.
shams93 8y ago
A lot of places will confiscate your property and potentially throw you in prison if you don't grow and maintain a lawn our laws were written in the 1950s when nobody heard the word carbon footprint.
- soared 8y ago
  This is false.
noetic_techy 8y ago
Could not agree more. History will look back on lawn maintenance as stupid and meaningless waste of space. I live in FL and am required by my HOA to maintain my St Augustine lawn. Costs me $115 for maintenance (large corner lot), $45 a month for fertilizer and lawn pest maintenance, and another $100 every 3 months for pest control perimeter around my house. For what? A toxic lawn I barely use. Been a big fan of reading on permaculture lately. I'm hoping shit hits the fan enough that I can just convert my lawn one day into a food forest. Considering moving further into the outskirts so I can have more freedom with my yard.
- gmoes 8y ago
  Sorry to hear that. I guess in a sense I am lucky as the ordinances only restrict height not species. I suspected HOA's were worse. I'm with you. Hopefully this madness will end.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
kamaal 8y ago
>>The use of herbicides and pesticides is completely unregulated. In my country(India) this is already a very big problem. Apart from the impact on insects, pests etc. Its also a big problem for Humans ourselves. There have been villages full of people with cancer. In fact there are even trains going from villages to cities, name like cancer trains. Apparently this all had to be done, to tackle India's growing population problem. One more thing that no body is talking about in this case. Over population of earth, and effects it's causing on resources we humans consume. That's beyond all that Carbon we venting it in the air. How long before we see some big problems(famines, food shortages) showing up?
- stallmanite 8y ago
  I’m really interested about the whole towns coming down with cancer and “cancer trains” you described as I haven’t heard about this before. Would you be willing to share some of the village names or possibly a link to local news coverage I can use to research further? Even if it’s not English-language is fine for news-stories I don’t mind machine-translating it. Thanks in advance and thanks also for adding to this conversation.
cptskippy 8y ago
No offense but you're framing your situation as though you had created a garden of native plants when in reality all you did was let your yard be overrun with whatever would grow. In other words you neglected it, intentionally or otherwise. Most of the plants in your photos are considered weeds. So by not pruning and selectively removing aggressive and invasive plants, you're actually increasing your neighbor's use of herbicides in their attempts to combat them. Then you cried foul when local laws were used to compel you to clean up your messy yard that was a nuisance to others. You're relying on the "why can't everyone else just behave like me then we wouldn't have an issue" defense.
- andai 8y ago
  The fact that people consider native plants weeds is exactly the problem.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    That's part of the problem but even a yard composed of "acceptable" plants can be over grown and unkempt. If you look at the OP's photos of his yard you'll see that it is just a mess of plants with no rhyme or reason.
    - tropdrop 8y ago
      It's OP's property - why must OP's property conform to your rhyme or reason?
      - cptskippy 8y ago
        Believe me when I say that I have no love of my lawn but regardless of legality or fairness: The OP agreed to the laws of the municipality when he moved into the home. If the house he purchased was part of a covenant or an HOA, then the sell was not allowed to sell to him unless he agreed to the terms of said covenant or HOA. If the OP objected to or did not educate himself to any of those laws or rules prior to agreeing to them, that's his fault.
nusrattt 8y ago
"I was treated like and criminal forced to cut most of it down." By the city? By the state? In what location?
darod 8y ago
Brief history of lawns for anyone interested. http://www.thegameoffew.com/blog/2017/9/17/what-front-lawns-can-teach-us-about-the-value-of-studying-history http://www.thegameoffew.com/blog/2017/9/17/what-front-lawns-...
johnchristopher 8y ago
I have similar experiences. In some European countries the government is pushing for softer herbicides and pesticides usage by public agencies. Where I live it's met with resistance all the way from 70 years old who use bleach on plants to get rid of slugs to workers who prefer splattering herbicides all over the walkway and in the gutter to burning herbs with some kind of small flame throwers. People are completely mad here, spending most of their saturdays or sundays circling their garden on their huge lawnmower truck. It's a valley so there's a constant whirring noise from April to early November. There's a lot of education to do and frankly.. I believe it's getting way too late :/.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  >In some European countries the government is pushing for softer herbicides and pesticides usage by public agencies. Where I live it's met with resistance all the way from 70 years old who use bleach on plants to get rid of slugs to workers who prefer splattering herbicides all over the walkway and in the gutter to burning herbs with some kind of small flame throwers. This raises a curious question for me. My grandfather is from Ireland (Meaford, Canada now) and still an avid gardener. He swears by Murphy's Oil Soap (diluted, 2-4%) to deal with harmful insects like Spider Mites. Does anybody have any more scientific insight on that? Mind, he uses it on a far smaller scale, mainly spraying his flowers, vegetables, and other garden plants with a small spray bottle. Not much of a lawn guy.
  - pvaldes 8y ago
    Hens will happily eat all your slugs, bleach will kill your plants instead. Soap is used sometimes to get rid of some plagues (because many plages use wax to avoid dessication or deter predators and soap distroys this upper layer) but remains in the soil aren't good at long term. Of course you can't use any common insecticide, because spider mites aren't insects, but you can use (or support) mite predators that will munch on spider mites. Spider mites hate the moisture and, if is in a pot, just spraying water repeatedly can help a lot, or even solve the problem. In a non sprayed garden with enough access to water and welcomed predators, spider mites aren't so much trouble.
blux 8y ago
Great write-up on your natural suburban yard. What other consider 'messy' I consider natural and beautiful. Our small backyard has a section where we let native plants grow. This year a handful of thistles were growing there, which attracted a few European goldfinches (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_goldfinch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_goldfinch). Was really pleased to see them, first time I saw them in our area! It saddens me that people consider a garden with thistles growing as 'messy', and prefer cultivated plants that need to be bought at a garden center. Plants native to the area will provide a much better habitat for local wildlife which results in a much more interesting garden, according to my definition of interesting :P
tzs 8y ago
> Additionally lawns are an unnecessary waste of time for most people and have a large carbon footprint I'd be curious to see data and analysis on lawn carbon footprint. For my lawn, everything I've been able to find suggests it is a negative carbon footprint. I don't put any chemicals or fertilizer on it, so no carbon impact either way there. I do not water it, so nothing either way there, either. I do mow during the summer, with a gas powered push mower. The total gas used per year is under 1 gallon. Let's go with 1 gallon, although it is probably actually closer to around 0.6 or 0.7. A few different results on Google tell me that this will result in about 17 pounds or 8 kg of CO2 emission per year. I haven't found much on how much CO2 a lawn can take out. What I have found was always about "well-managed" lawns, in a context where "well-managed" meant a lawn that is heavily watered, fertilized, and mowed. Those sequester almost 1000 pounds of carbon per acre per year. Note that was carbon, not CO2. That would be around 3400 pounds of CO2. But you'd only get 3400 pounds of CO2 a year per acre if you are keeping the lawn constantly growing (hence the "well-managed" part), and the heavy watering, fertilizing, and mowing to do that will have have a high carbon cost. My lot is about 1/5th acre, and my lawn only covers between 1/3 and 1/2 of it. Going with 1/3, then if my lawn were a "well-managed" (e.g., heavily watered, fertilized, mowed lawn), that would be about 230 pounds a year of CO2 reduction. But it is not "well-managed", so I'm not getting maximum growth out of it. Still, as long as I'm getting at least around 8% of the growth a "well-managed" lawn would get, it looks like I'm coming out ahead, with the lawn sequestering more CO2 than the mowing produces.
- jdmichal 8y ago
  I'm guessing from your description that your lawn has probably largely reverted to less needy species. In which case, they don't need that maintenance to grow and you are probably beating that 8% pretty handily. My front lawn right now is full of daisies. I have been purposely not mowing sections of it, because they're covered in bees and I can't bring myself to leave them nothing! Anyway, like you, I put in zero chemicals, but that stuff still grows well above 8% of the chemical-fed grass a few houses down.
sxates 8y ago
My office window overlooks an intersection in Pleasanton CA [1] that looks like many in the city - wide streets, big grassy areas around the street, and carefully curated shrubs and trees past that. It's all very artificial. I can count maybe 10 plant species within view. Very few birds. And it requires constant maintenance. Crews are here almost every day, driving mowers around, blowing and removing leaves and clippings, watering, spraying herbicide, etc. It strikes me as obscenely wasteful. And for what? Nobody is picnicking on this grass. It's just an aesthetic choice that it seems like all of America has embraced - and no wonder everything is dying off. We're actively killing everything on this land that isn't the exact species of grass that was planted. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6914552,-121.8947521,3a,75y,38.53h,77.77t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sDaeRtPSe6JYXRoFpCarw6w!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DDaeRtPSe6JYXRoFpCarw6w%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D257.49185%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6914552,-121.8947521,3a,75y,...
- CalRobert 8y ago
  God, that is hideous.
- hedvig 8y ago
  This goes hand in hand with the fact that its just ornaments around a landscape built for cars. We need to rework the land and our communities based on just humans walking about. Rip up the roads.

by gmoes 8y ago

mkirklions 8y ago

>Additionally lawns are an unnecessary waste of time for most people and have a large carbon footprint. I made a serious attempt to do ANYTHING but a lawn. Here are the issues- No grass= erosion. This + weeds makes a dirt yard impossible. If you want to 'farm' there is tremendous maintenance involved Turf is expensive, but might have been a solution. More concrete= hotter. This is bad for the environment. --- So is the solution to let native plants grow all over your yard? We did this for 1 year, but my wife ended this.

bsmitty5000 8y ago
I'm compromising with my wife and only mowing a small portion of the yard we have and I won't touch the rest. I might try and introduce some native wildflowers, like milkweed, though. We live in a more rural part of the country though so it's maybe easier to do such a thing here compared to a subdivision or something.
gmoes 8y ago
I used aggressive native plants from my area. These included Jerusalem artichokes, Indian Hemp, Joe Pye Weed, etc. in the sunny areas. Virginia knot weed, etc. in the shady areas. They colonized my yard very well and even kept the English Ivy at bay. I had no issues with erosion. The plants lived for years and established rhizomes and extensive root systesms.
circlefavshape 8y ago
That's more or less what we do. One section I seeded with grass and mow regularly. It's only around 50% grass now (after 10+ years), but it's short and green and looks like grass. Another section I cut with a scythe once a year in autumn. It looks cool in the summertime when it's in flower, in winter when it's cut down it just looks like the rest of the garden
esarbe 8y ago
You could introduce all kinds of edible plants on your yard; some berry bushes, a small apple tree, raspberries. Don't garden, just rip out the stuff you don't want. Let the remaining plants find their place and time. You'll have a nice little garden in a few seasons.
ahje 8y ago
> So is the solution to let native plants grow all over your yard? We're currently planting berry bushes, nuts and clover in large parts of our yard. It's fairly low-maintenance and as a bonus the clover is and excellent food source for our rabbits and chickens.
jly 8y ago
> So is the solution to let native plants grow all over your yard? Yes, but that doesn't mean you have no discretion or control over what is growing and how. The key is that you want to choose things that require no supplemental watering or nutrients like most non-native lawn grasses do. Choose native grasses that are well-adapted to your climate. This may mean dormant / brown periods of the year, but this is perfectly natural. There is a mental hurdle to clear about an aesthetic that isn't going to be achieved. There are many native ground covers that are also available, and many that flower to provide habitat and support for animals. Both these and grasses can be mowed to an acceptable height. Wherever possible, put in native wildflowers or shrubs/trees. These sustain other life and they look amazing.

justin66 8y ago

> I think the American suburban yard may be equally responsible with agriculture for a lot of this in the US. There are over 900 million acres of farmland in the United States, so I'm going to guess this assertion (the "equally") is wrong. It seems to me you're otherwise right about how we put our yards together, though. You didn't even mention how much water we often use to move our yards away from the native flora.

gmoes 8y ago
Good point, compared to 40 million for lawns. Maybe proportional to usefulness. ;) And water is a huge issue too. The native plants thrive in wet and dry conditions without attention.
- alexanderdmitri 8y ago
  I'm curious about that definition of lawn, does it only apply to residence property or commercial spaces, athletic pitches, &c?
  - ticmasta 8y ago
    Most commercial buildings have extensive landscaping but try to limit huge patches of green grass as it's hard and expensive to maintain - unless they're using it as a signal for wealth and opulence (like a fancy hotel) or labour is really cheap. If you've ever had a chance to run/play on modern artificial turf it's amazing. I think most facilities would love to switch to it but it's super expensive.
- ansible 8y ago
  So there is an order of magnitude difference, but the other side of that is with farmland, pesticides are applied by professionals, trying to minimize cost. With yards, pesticides are applied (most often) by rank amateurs, who often know nearly nothing about proper application.
  - cantankerous 8y ago

clarkmoody 8y ago

> The use of herbicides and pesticides is completely unregulated. Every bag of the stuff says, "It is a violation of federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling." Sounds like regulation to me. You don't have to ask permission to put it on your lawn, but you've got plenty of rope to hang yourself with a warning label like that. > I had a small native plant yard that attracted hundreds of pollinators and arachnids. I was treated like and criminal forced to cut most of it down. This is a shame. Native yards much more beneficial than monospecies turf everywhere.

Swizec 8y ago
But are those regulations enforced is the wuestion. Without oversight and enforcement, the regulation doesn’t exist. What does a lawn need herbicides for anyway? You’re not trying to macimize yield ... Another question is what does that label say. Is it “Don’t spray in eyes” or something like “Don’t use more than X per square foot” or even something cool like “Only for agricultural use where actual crops are grown”
- clarkmoody 8y ago
  It has all sorts of specific instructions about how much to spread, how soon before/after rain, how close to waterways & drains, sweep up any that gets on sidewalks, etc. Tons of words. Also in Spanish.
  - hinkley 8y ago
    There’s more than one definition of regulation. One being “the act of controlling or supervising”. If you define regulation as the act of making rules? Then yeah there’s not much to talk about. But if we’re talking about controlling, throttling, or supervising, we aren’t seeing much of that.
  - Retra 8y ago
    Having some words written somewhere is hardly regulating anything. Regulation requires control.

gambler 8y ago

Lawns are one of the most ridiculous human inventions I have ever observed. You take normal self-sufficient grass out, then reseed with some sort of crippled grass that needs constant fertilization and watering. To make things worse, you mandate it to be unnaturally short, so people have to constantly mow and use herbicides to keep the normal grass out. And all of this is made mandatory for some reason. Aside from creating grass mono-cultures, this is just a gigantic waster of time and resources that doesn't produce anything in return.

c4urself 8y ago
Wow just had a facepalm moment realising what you said is spot on. To make matters worse small-engined tools that pollute the environment are used weekly to keep the yard nice... what a waste
- culot 8y ago
  You'd think electric motor yard tools could be common by now, but instead the deafening gas-powered black-cloud-spewing machines are still ubiquitous.
  - rsync 8y ago
    "You'd think electric motor yard tools could be common by now ..." You will be happy to learn that we are just on the cusp ... Bosch and Dewalt have very high density battery power systems and they are using them for lawn tools - including normal push mowers. Other tool companies are quickly following suit. Unlike past iterations, these tools really do have the power and longevity to do real work. To wit: my local volunteer fire department now carries a battery powered Dewalt chainsaw in one of our engines. As for the embedded carbon cost in all of these new tools and batteries and the production pollution that is occurring "somewhere" ... an exercise for the reader.
    - jamiepenney 8y ago
      I've got a set of power tools and a lawn mower from Ryobi that all use the same 36V battery pack. Works well for our small section in town.

bryan11 8y ago

In the midwest 20 years ago, we'd regularly see butterflies, bees, and many other insects. After I planted butterfly bushes there more came with dozens of butterflies and bees on them each day. Every year, though, the numbers decreased. I don't used any chemicals in my property. A few years ago, the city started spraying everywhere for mosquitoes. The day after spraying, people frequently find a couple dead birds in their yard. One neighbor's bee hives were killed as well. Lately, seeing one single butterfly a year is a rare event.

camelCaseOfBeer 8y ago

Thanks for caring. I was always weary of biocides but after reading Silent Spring about five or six years ago, I am regularly confronted with the appalling widespread use of poison. Between the aisles of enough poison to exterminate a wilderness in every hardware store, ludicrous plans to manage invasive species and pests, and an army of shills perusing social media, your comment was a brief moment of respite in an ongoing personal crises. You'd think the thought, "well if it's poisonous for one organism it's probably poision to others." Would occur to more people... Meanwhile us weirdos will be appreciating our beautiful yards that we don't need to maintain, overgrown with flowers and bustling with life.

swoongoonz 8y ago

what the hell, how is it legal for anybody to tell you what to do with your land?

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
Get a property in a city and start a tire fire.
wcoenen 8y ago
It's often a voluntary agreement. A developer builds a collection of houses, then sells them under the condition that the owner must join the home owner association set up for those houses. The idea is that the association forces its members to do upkeep, so that the homes don't collectively lose value for being in a "bad neighborhood".
- 3131s 8y ago
  It's very often a city ordinance. I've posted this before, here's the link to my home city's lawn gestapo: http://www.minneapolismn.gov/inspections/report/inspections_report-long-grass-weeds http://www.minneapolismn.gov/inspections/report/inspections_...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - kaybe 8y ago
    That example picture looks perfectly reasonable. If there were a few more flowers it'd be even better.
Daishiman 8y ago
"Your land" as your own personal little utopia is a fantasy and fiction that's never existed in civilized society and whose continued reference as some sort of ideal is naive at best.
pjc50 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

hpbd 8y ago

>It sickens me when I see workers with those sprayer packs or trucks that look like small chemical plants. I hate insects. They are often annoying and sometimes outright dangerous. We live in the same Earth so we'll have to reconcile our points of view.

pjc50 8y ago
Quite a lot of insects are harmful, but no insects means no birds; and some insects are vital pollinators in ecosystems.

CalRobert 8y ago

Outside of the US, one thing I have trouble understanding is this idea that farmland is somehow natural. I talk to people who say they want to visit nature and then we go look at... sheep on grazing land. Not a damn thing natural about it. And then local councils destroy plants on the road verges because they're "untidy". Those verges were one of the last refuges for native insects and birds. I think the place I live (Ireland) has been so completely denuded that people literally don't know what nature is. It looks like that will be the whole world in short order.

shams93 8y ago

A lot of places will confiscate your property and potentially throw you in prison if you don't grow and maintain a lawn our laws were written in the 1950s when nobody heard the word carbon footprint.

soared 8y ago
This is false.

noetic_techy 8y ago

Could not agree more. History will look back on lawn maintenance as stupid and meaningless waste of space. I live in FL and am required by my HOA to maintain my St Augustine lawn. Costs me $115 for maintenance (large corner lot), $45 a month for fertilizer and lawn pest maintenance, and another $100 every 3 months for pest control perimeter around my house. For what? A toxic lawn I barely use. Been a big fan of reading on permaculture lately. I'm hoping shit hits the fan enough that I can just convert my lawn one day into a food forest. Considering moving further into the outskirts so I can have more freedom with my yard.

gmoes 8y ago
Sorry to hear that. I guess in a sense I am lucky as the ordinances only restrict height not species. I suspected HOA's were worse. I'm with you. Hopefully this madness will end.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

kamaal 8y ago

>>The use of herbicides and pesticides is completely unregulated. In my country(India) this is already a very big problem. Apart from the impact on insects, pests etc. Its also a big problem for Humans ourselves. There have been villages full of people with cancer. In fact there are even trains going from villages to cities, name like cancer trains. Apparently this all had to be done, to tackle India's growing population problem. One more thing that no body is talking about in this case. Over population of earth, and effects it's causing on resources we humans consume. That's beyond all that Carbon we venting it in the air. How long before we see some big problems(famines, food shortages) showing up?

stallmanite 8y ago
I’m really interested about the whole towns coming down with cancer and “cancer trains” you described as I haven’t heard about this before. Would you be willing to share some of the village names or possibly a link to local news coverage I can use to research further? Even if it’s not English-language is fine for news-stories I don’t mind machine-translating it. Thanks in advance and thanks also for adding to this conversation.

cptskippy 8y ago

No offense but you're framing your situation as though you had created a garden of native plants when in reality all you did was let your yard be overrun with whatever would grow. In other words you neglected it, intentionally or otherwise. Most of the plants in your photos are considered weeds. So by not pruning and selectively removing aggressive and invasive plants, you're actually increasing your neighbor's use of herbicides in their attempts to combat them. Then you cried foul when local laws were used to compel you to clean up your messy yard that was a nuisance to others. You're relying on the "why can't everyone else just behave like me then we wouldn't have an issue" defense.

andai 8y ago
The fact that people consider native plants weeds is exactly the problem.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  That's part of the problem but even a yard composed of "acceptable" plants can be over grown and unkempt. If you look at the OP's photos of his yard you'll see that it is just a mess of plants with no rhyme or reason.
  - tropdrop 8y ago
    It's OP's property - why must OP's property conform to your rhyme or reason?
    - cptskippy 8y ago
      Believe me when I say that I have no love of my lawn but regardless of legality or fairness: The OP agreed to the laws of the municipality when he moved into the home. If the house he purchased was part of a covenant or an HOA, then the sell was not allowed to sell to him unless he agreed to the terms of said covenant or HOA. If the OP objected to or did not educate himself to any of those laws or rules prior to agreeing to them, that's his fault.

nusrattt 8y ago

"I was treated like and criminal forced to cut most of it down." By the city? By the state? In what location?

darod 8y ago

Brief history of lawns for anyone interested. http://www.thegameoffew.com/blog/2017/9/17/what-front-lawns-can-teach-us-about-the-value-of-studying-history http://www.thegameoffew.com/blog/2017/9/17/what-front-lawns-...

johnchristopher 8y ago

I have similar experiences. In some European countries the government is pushing for softer herbicides and pesticides usage by public agencies. Where I live it's met with resistance all the way from 70 years old who use bleach on plants to get rid of slugs to workers who prefer splattering herbicides all over the walkway and in the gutter to burning herbs with some kind of small flame throwers. People are completely mad here, spending most of their saturdays or sundays circling their garden on their huge lawnmower truck. It's a valley so there's a constant whirring noise from April to early November. There's a lot of education to do and frankly.. I believe it's getting way too late :/.

52-6F-62 8y ago
>In some European countries the government is pushing for softer herbicides and pesticides usage by public agencies. Where I live it's met with resistance all the way from 70 years old who use bleach on plants to get rid of slugs to workers who prefer splattering herbicides all over the walkway and in the gutter to burning herbs with some kind of small flame throwers. This raises a curious question for me. My grandfather is from Ireland (Meaford, Canada now) and still an avid gardener. He swears by Murphy's Oil Soap (diluted, 2-4%) to deal with harmful insects like Spider Mites. Does anybody have any more scientific insight on that? Mind, he uses it on a far smaller scale, mainly spraying his flowers, vegetables, and other garden plants with a small spray bottle. Not much of a lawn guy.
- pvaldes 8y ago
  Hens will happily eat all your slugs, bleach will kill your plants instead. Soap is used sometimes to get rid of some plagues (because many plages use wax to avoid dessication or deter predators and soap distroys this upper layer) but remains in the soil aren't good at long term. Of course you can't use any common insecticide, because spider mites aren't insects, but you can use (or support) mite predators that will munch on spider mites. Spider mites hate the moisture and, if is in a pot, just spraying water repeatedly can help a lot, or even solve the problem. In a non sprayed garden with enough access to water and welcomed predators, spider mites aren't so much trouble.

blux 8y ago

Great write-up on your natural suburban yard. What other consider 'messy' I consider natural and beautiful. Our small backyard has a section where we let native plants grow. This year a handful of thistles were growing there, which attracted a few European goldfinches (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_goldfinch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_goldfinch). Was really pleased to see them, first time I saw them in our area! It saddens me that people consider a garden with thistles growing as 'messy', and prefer cultivated plants that need to be bought at a garden center. Plants native to the area will provide a much better habitat for local wildlife which results in a much more interesting garden, according to my definition of interesting :P

tzs 8y ago

> Additionally lawns are an unnecessary waste of time for most people and have a large carbon footprint I'd be curious to see data and analysis on lawn carbon footprint. For my lawn, everything I've been able to find suggests it is a negative carbon footprint. I don't put any chemicals or fertilizer on it, so no carbon impact either way there. I do not water it, so nothing either way there, either. I do mow during the summer, with a gas powered push mower. The total gas used per year is under 1 gallon. Let's go with 1 gallon, although it is probably actually closer to around 0.6 or 0.7. A few different results on Google tell me that this will result in about 17 pounds or 8 kg of CO2 emission per year. I haven't found much on how much CO2 a lawn can take out. What I have found was always about "well-managed" lawns, in a context where "well-managed" meant a lawn that is heavily watered, fertilized, and mowed. Those sequester almost 1000 pounds of carbon per acre per year. Note that was carbon, not CO2. That would be around 3400 pounds of CO2. But you'd only get 3400 pounds of CO2 a year per acre if you are keeping the lawn constantly growing (hence the "well-managed" part), and the heavy watering, fertilizing, and mowing to do that will have have a high carbon cost. My lot is about 1/5th acre, and my lawn only covers between 1/3 and 1/2 of it. Going with 1/3, then if my lawn were a "well-managed" (e.g., heavily watered, fertilized, mowed lawn), that would be about 230 pounds a year of CO2 reduction. But it is not "well-managed", so I'm not getting maximum growth out of it. Still, as long as I'm getting at least around 8% of the growth a "well-managed" lawn would get, it looks like I'm coming out ahead, with the lawn sequestering more CO2 than the mowing produces.

jdmichal 8y ago
I'm guessing from your description that your lawn has probably largely reverted to less needy species. In which case, they don't need that maintenance to grow and you are probably beating that 8% pretty handily. My front lawn right now is full of daisies. I have been purposely not mowing sections of it, because they're covered in bees and I can't bring myself to leave them nothing! Anyway, like you, I put in zero chemicals, but that stuff still grows well above 8% of the chemical-fed grass a few houses down.

sxates 8y ago

My office window overlooks an intersection in Pleasanton CA [1] that looks like many in the city - wide streets, big grassy areas around the street, and carefully curated shrubs and trees past that. It's all very artificial. I can count maybe 10 plant species within view. Very few birds. And it requires constant maintenance. Crews are here almost every day, driving mowers around, blowing and removing leaves and clippings, watering, spraying herbicide, etc. It strikes me as obscenely wasteful. And for what? Nobody is picnicking on this grass. It's just an aesthetic choice that it seems like all of America has embraced - and no wonder everything is dying off. We're actively killing everything on this land that isn't the exact species of grass that was planted. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6914552,-121.8947521,3a,75y,38.53h,77.77t/data=!3m5!1e1!3m3!1sDaeRtPSe6JYXRoFpCarw6w!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DDaeRtPSe6JYXRoFpCarw6w%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D257.49185%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6914552,-121.8947521,3a,75y,...

CalRobert 8y ago
God, that is hideous.
hedvig 8y ago
This goes hand in hand with the fact that its just ornaments around a landscape built for cars. We need to rework the land and our communities based on just humans walking about. Rip up the roads.