7 ms·

Cool project, but why mow it all in the first place? Do yourself and absolutely nature a favor and let it grow. We need every patch of natural land we can get

by z9znz 4y ago

Cool project, but why mow it all in the first place? Do yourself and absolutely nature a favor and let it grow. We need every patch of natural land we can get, as biodiversity and insect populations are continually decreasing. Mow some patches for the humans (because standing in a buggy tall field is just no bueno), but leave the rest for nature. Rent or borrow some goats or sheep if you really want it kept lower; at least you'll end up with richer soil that way.

throwaway0a5e 4y ago
>but why mow it all in the first place? Because providing convenient habitat for grass dwelling rodents adjacent to your home will result in some fraction of them trying to move in.
- stinos 4y ago
  Depending on where you live those rodents won't do any harm though. Or simply leave again because the cannot find food, which is like the #1 thing to deal with in case of rodents. Moreover you'd need a serious amount of 'deadzone' around your house before rodents won't cross it, no? It's not like they only can cover distances of few metres. All in all, this type of claim should be backed by research :) Curious if there is any.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    > Depending on where you live those rodents won't do any harm though. Or simply leave again because the cannot find food, which is like the #1 thing to deal with in case of rodents. > All in all, this type of claim should be backed by research :) Curious if there is any. Yes, any evidence for your claims would be appreciated. Are there places where mice/rats aren't considered a disease vector?
    - stinos 4y ago
      Are there places where mice/rats aren't considered a disease vector All species? I actually don't know. But with 'depending on where you live' I also menat situations like mice entering your unused basement etc. Anyway: I'm mainly questioning whether 'long vegetation around my house means more chance of rodents in my house' is something general. Also because it's not my experience. Then again I don't live in, say, Australia.
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        > situations like mice entering your unused basement etc. This is a bad situation, if anybody ever goes in that basement for any reason ever, they're at risk of catching numerous diseases from the rodent feces they stir up into the air by walking around. Hantavirus is spread this way, and Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome kills about a third of the people who catch it. There is no reason to accept this risk if you have any other choice.
        MisterMower 4y ago
        Hauntavirus is no joke. I knew a piano tuner who got it, and it was not pretty. Mice droppings in an old upright, ironically in a house with a very poorly kept lawn. He was tuning it for a lady that was trying to sell it so she could move out.
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  Adding to this: depending on where you live, the rodent issue is made worse by the vipers they attract. I generally don't mind snakes, rat snakes are actually quite nice, but I think most people don't want to worry about a rattlesnake nipping their heel when they step out their front door. This is made worse by the selective pressure humans place on rattlesnakes to discourage rattling (those that rattle get noticed and killed.) I think there are probably better ways to address this problem than mowing grass right up against your house though. Ringing your house with mulched gardens or even gravel patches (particularly french drains, in areas prone to flooding) is a good alternative, presuming you don't have a HOA forbidding it..
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- z9znz 4y ago
  There is a concept of zones. You make zones 0 and 1 very human friendly. Beyond that you gradually transition from aesthetic and food growing toward wild nature. I'm not suggesting you wade through waist high weeds as you walk out your front door. But if you looked at the photo of the original post, you would see the plot being mowed appeared to be just a pasture well beyond habitation.
samatman 4y ago
Personally, I don't want to be fined by the city. It's a poor reason but a sufficient one. I maintain a lot of habitat in the back, but the front has to stay high and tight. My neighbors prefer it as well, you can change a culture but should think carefully before defying it.
stinos 4y ago
I completely agree with your point - pretty much everyone is now properly aware of the climate crisis but for a bunch of reasons biodiversity crisis doesn't ring a lot of bells let alone people are willing to do anything about it. However: depending on where you live not mowing at all turns your meadow into a rough wilderness with only a couple of plant species (think nettles+blackberries) in no time, and later on into forest. Main reason being nitrogen deposition leading to those species simply outgrowing the rest, as is the case for e.g. quite a lot of areas in western Europe (visuals in [1] for example). So as far as biodiversity goes: there's enough of the typical 'no mowing' vegetation already whereas ecosystems like flower-rich meadows are in decline. Currently and practically for laymen this can only be countered by mowing and removing cuttings. Depending on soil type and what's in it fertlizer-wise about twice a year. Preferrably, as you mention, still with mowing patches instead of everything at once in order to maintain some habitat for the fauna. Still a lot less time and money consuming than maintaining a lawn. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=nitrogen+deposition+map+europe&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=nitrogen+deposition+map+eur...
- z9znz 4y ago
  That's the thing about nature. It has immensely complex programming that we don't understand. Often a "plague" of one thing exists to rebalance another thing. If unmanaged nature does run wild with one or a few species, at some point they overstay their welcome and get rebalanced. Of course the final equalizer is fire. And that's something that we as humans really dislike, because it burns our work (and homes and sometimes even us) down. So we prevent it. But completely left to itself, nature does tend to stabilize after some period. As for western Europe, I live in Netherlands. The nitrogen problem is entirely manmade (animal farming waste). Were we to stop ranching at such high densities and producing unnatural levels of animal waste, the nitrogen levels would not be nearly so high. I have also lived in plant farmland areas in the south of Holland, and we have plagues of burning weed that grows. But it turns out, that plant grows in places with excess nitrogen. It feeds on it and eventually draws it out of the soil. After a few years, that "weed" stops growing and the soil nitrogen levels are more normal. At this moment I am in central Portugal trying to grow some trees. The thorny vines (blackberry brambles I believe, but I just don't keep up with the names) are a huge problem. However, they provide benefits in dry soil because they grow very well, provide shade, provide food for foraging animals, and help prevent soil erosion when the rains finally come. Nature doesn't seem to be concerned with human comfort. I f*cking hate the vines, but I do see their purpose. After some years of study of permaculture and actual experiments, plus a decent amount of reading, I think our best hope as humans is to develop high efficiency vertical farms and to keep our actual earth footprint low... and to start devoping subterranian habitation. On the last point, it's really a wonder to have a home which stays around 68F all year. Heat it up just a little and it is cosy. It is fire-proof, ultra efficient, and it can still be light with skylights and a south/west facing opening. Honestly, for a fraction of the mental energy we spend on designing scalable software systems, we could make livable earth-friendly human food ad habitation systems. This is not rocket science; after all, primative civilizations already figured out some of these things.

by z9znz 4y ago

throwaway0a5e 4y ago

>but why mow it all in the first place? Because providing convenient habitat for grass dwelling rodents adjacent to your home will result in some fraction of them trying to move in.

stinos 4y ago
Depending on where you live those rodents won't do any harm though. Or simply leave again because the cannot find food, which is like the #1 thing to deal with in case of rodents. Moreover you'd need a serious amount of 'deadzone' around your house before rodents won't cross it, no? It's not like they only can cover distances of few metres. All in all, this type of claim should be backed by research :) Curious if there is any.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > Depending on where you live those rodents won't do any harm though. Or simply leave again because the cannot find food, which is like the #1 thing to deal with in case of rodents. > All in all, this type of claim should be backed by research :) Curious if there is any. Yes, any evidence for your claims would be appreciated. Are there places where mice/rats aren't considered a disease vector?
  - stinos 4y ago
    Are there places where mice/rats aren't considered a disease vector All species? I actually don't know. But with 'depending on where you live' I also menat situations like mice entering your unused basement etc. Anyway: I'm mainly questioning whether 'long vegetation around my house means more chance of rodents in my house' is something general. Also because it's not my experience. Then again I don't live in, say, Australia.
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > situations like mice entering your unused basement etc. This is a bad situation, if anybody ever goes in that basement for any reason ever, they're at risk of catching numerous diseases from the rodent feces they stir up into the air by walking around. Hantavirus is spread this way, and Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome kills about a third of the people who catch it. There is no reason to accept this risk if you have any other choice.
      - MisterMower 4y ago
        Hauntavirus is no joke. I knew a piano tuner who got it, and it was not pretty. Mice droppings in an old upright, ironically in a house with a very poorly kept lawn. He was tuning it for a lady that was trying to sell it so she could move out.
MichaelCollins 4y ago
Adding to this: depending on where you live, the rodent issue is made worse by the vipers they attract. I generally don't mind snakes, rat snakes are actually quite nice, but I think most people don't want to worry about a rattlesnake nipping their heel when they step out their front door. This is made worse by the selective pressure humans place on rattlesnakes to discourage rattling (those that rattle get noticed and killed.) I think there are probably better ways to address this problem than mowing grass right up against your house though. Ringing your house with mulched gardens or even gravel patches (particularly french drains, in areas prone to flooding) is a good alternative, presuming you don't have a HOA forbidding it..
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
z9znz 4y ago
There is a concept of zones. You make zones 0 and 1 very human friendly. Beyond that you gradually transition from aesthetic and food growing toward wild nature. I'm not suggesting you wade through waist high weeds as you walk out your front door. But if you looked at the photo of the original post, you would see the plot being mowed appeared to be just a pasture well beyond habitation.

samatman 4y ago

Personally, I don't want to be fined by the city. It's a poor reason but a sufficient one. I maintain a lot of habitat in the back, but the front has to stay high and tight. My neighbors prefer it as well, you can change a culture but should think carefully before defying it.

stinos 4y ago

I completely agree with your point - pretty much everyone is now properly aware of the climate crisis but for a bunch of reasons biodiversity crisis doesn't ring a lot of bells let alone people are willing to do anything about it. However: depending on where you live not mowing at all turns your meadow into a rough wilderness with only a couple of plant species (think nettles+blackberries) in no time, and later on into forest. Main reason being nitrogen deposition leading to those species simply outgrowing the rest, as is the case for e.g. quite a lot of areas in western Europe (visuals in [1] for example). So as far as biodiversity goes: there's enough of the typical 'no mowing' vegetation already whereas ecosystems like flower-rich meadows are in decline. Currently and practically for laymen this can only be countered by mowing and removing cuttings. Depending on soil type and what's in it fertlizer-wise about twice a year. Preferrably, as you mention, still with mowing patches instead of everything at once in order to maintain some habitat for the fauna. Still a lot less time and money consuming than maintaining a lawn. [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=nitrogen+deposition+map+europe&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=nitrogen+deposition+map+eur...

z9znz 4y ago
That's the thing about nature. It has immensely complex programming that we don't understand. Often a "plague" of one thing exists to rebalance another thing. If unmanaged nature does run wild with one or a few species, at some point they overstay their welcome and get rebalanced. Of course the final equalizer is fire. And that's something that we as humans really dislike, because it burns our work (and homes and sometimes even us) down. So we prevent it. But completely left to itself, nature does tend to stabilize after some period. As for western Europe, I live in Netherlands. The nitrogen problem is entirely manmade (animal farming waste). Were we to stop ranching at such high densities and producing unnatural levels of animal waste, the nitrogen levels would not be nearly so high. I have also lived in plant farmland areas in the south of Holland, and we have plagues of burning weed that grows. But it turns out, that plant grows in places with excess nitrogen. It feeds on it and eventually draws it out of the soil. After a few years, that "weed" stops growing and the soil nitrogen levels are more normal. At this moment I am in central Portugal trying to grow some trees. The thorny vines (blackberry brambles I believe, but I just don't keep up with the names) are a huge problem. However, they provide benefits in dry soil because they grow very well, provide shade, provide food for foraging animals, and help prevent soil erosion when the rains finally come. Nature doesn't seem to be concerned with human comfort. I f*cking hate the vines, but I do see their purpose. After some years of study of permaculture and actual experiments, plus a decent amount of reading, I think our best hope as humans is to develop high efficiency vertical farms and to keep our actual earth footprint low... and to start devoping subterranian habitation. On the last point, it's really a wonder to have a home which stays around 68F all year. Heat it up just a little and it is cosy. It is fire-proof, ultra efficient, and it can still be light with skylights and a south/west facing opening. Honestly, for a fraction of the mental energy we spend on designing scalable software systems, we could make livable earth-friendly human food ad habitation systems. This is not rocket science; after all, primative civilizations already figured out some of these things.