4 ms·

Are there environmentally friendly alternatives to the traditional grass lawn if one uses their lawn for sports, BBQ, and play? Maybe just allowing grass to gr

Are there environmentally friendly alternatives to the traditional grass lawn if one uses their lawn for sports, BBQ, and play? Maybe just allowing grass to grow more naturally rather than using pesticides and removing weeds?

toastal 7y ago
Going to a park is a reasonable thing.
sokoloff 7y ago
For several years, I fed my lawn an organic diet (corn gluten meal in the spring, which serves as a mild pre-emergent, then mixes of cracked corn, alfalfa, soybean meal, often in the form of horse and rabbit feed). Healthy grass, cut somewhat higher than typical will outcompete most weeds. The only weed I wasn't able to control effectively enough this way were grassy weeds (poa trivialis and poa annua). Triv patches had to be mechanically removed and annua needed late summer chemical pre-emergent (CGM isn't effective enough there). Once those were dramatically reduced (from the "yard" I inherited when we bought the place), the organic system was effective in keeping a >95th percentile lawn. That lawn was more resilient and beautiful than any of the chemically fertilized lawns (whether high or low input) I've maintained. In addition, we had more wild rabbits than I've ever seen, providing additional entertainment for the kids. The big issue with the organic lawn feeding is that it's quite bulky. No more 15 pound bag of sulfur coated urea that would do two fertilizer applications on my small city lawn. Instead, it was 30-50# bags of organic material that had to bought at Agway or Tractor Supply (necessitating a car trip) and couldn't reasonably be stored for a long time due to bulk and being organic (subject to rotting and rodent infestation). It's also more expensive than the chemical feeding, but still not prohibitive.
- scoot 7y ago
  PC asked for environmentally friendly alternatives to a grass lawn. Your suggestion is neither an alternative to a grass lawn, nor environmentally friendly. (An order of magnitude more pesticides, fertilizer and water are used to grow the animal feed that you are using as fertilizer than you need to would put on your lawn. At an industrial scale, the land used to grow that "fertilizer" could be put to better use growing actual food! (Quibble: unless the animal feed is itself certified organic, it is not an "organic diet" for your lawn in the recognised sense of the word.)
stinos 7y ago
Do you use 100% of that lawn? You could mow only part of it. E.g. simple things like instead of using square corners, leave the coreners as-is with a radius of a couple of meter and only mow those twice a year or so. Makes it also interesting to see the difference in what will grow. On the other hand if you keep on using pesticides it might simply not work. Why exactly do you use the pesticides? As other commenters mention, it's not normally a prerequisite to get a nice lawn.
bluGill 7y ago
Just cut the grass with a manual reel lawn mower. No added chemicals - including water. Note, if you lawn has a wetland or stream do not cut closer than 1 meter to the wetland, the uncut lawn will filter runoff for the wetland/stream and keep everything healthier.

toastal 7y ago

Going to a park is a reasonable thing.

sokoloff 7y ago

For several years, I fed my lawn an organic diet (corn gluten meal in the spring, which serves as a mild pre-emergent, then mixes of cracked corn, alfalfa, soybean meal, often in the form of horse and rabbit feed). Healthy grass, cut somewhat higher than typical will outcompete most weeds. The only weed I wasn't able to control effectively enough this way were grassy weeds (poa trivialis and poa annua). Triv patches had to be mechanically removed and annua needed late summer chemical pre-emergent (CGM isn't effective enough there). Once those were dramatically reduced (from the "yard" I inherited when we bought the place), the organic system was effective in keeping a >95th percentile lawn. That lawn was more resilient and beautiful than any of the chemically fertilized lawns (whether high or low input) I've maintained. In addition, we had more wild rabbits than I've ever seen, providing additional entertainment for the kids. The big issue with the organic lawn feeding is that it's quite bulky. No more 15 pound bag of sulfur coated urea that would do two fertilizer applications on my small city lawn. Instead, it was 30-50# bags of organic material that had to bought at Agway or Tractor Supply (necessitating a car trip) and couldn't reasonably be stored for a long time due to bulk and being organic (subject to rotting and rodent infestation). It's also more expensive than the chemical feeding, but still not prohibitive.

scoot 7y ago
PC asked for environmentally friendly alternatives to a grass lawn. Your suggestion is neither an alternative to a grass lawn, nor environmentally friendly. (An order of magnitude more pesticides, fertilizer and water are used to grow the animal feed that you are using as fertilizer than you need to would put on your lawn. At an industrial scale, the land used to grow that "fertilizer" could be put to better use growing actual food! (Quibble: unless the animal feed is itself certified organic, it is not an "organic diet" for your lawn in the recognised sense of the word.)

stinos 7y ago

Do you use 100% of that lawn? You could mow only part of it. E.g. simple things like instead of using square corners, leave the coreners as-is with a radius of a couple of meter and only mow those twice a year or so. Makes it also interesting to see the difference in what will grow. On the other hand if you keep on using pesticides it might simply not work. Why exactly do you use the pesticides? As other commenters mention, it's not normally a prerequisite to get a nice lawn.

bluGill 7y ago

Just cut the grass with a manual reel lawn mower. No added chemicals - including water. Note, if you lawn has a wetland or stream do not cut closer than 1 meter to the wetland, the uncut lawn will filter runoff for the wetland/stream and keep everything healthier.