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Just do it. We bought a plot that is (for where we live) fairly large. About 2/3 of it is meadow. Gorgeous wildflowers. It's easy to do: Mow it once a year, in
by bradley13 3y ago
Just do it. We bought a plot that is (for where we live) fairly large. About 2/3 of it is meadow. Gorgeous wildflowers.
It's easy to do: Mow it once a year, in late summer, to prevent brush and trees from establishing. Remove the mowings, and never fertilize - or you'll have nothing but grass. It can take a few years and some helpful seeding, but the results are worth it.
Edited to add: since the wildflowers are native, you also never have to water.
- idontwantthis 3y agoWhy wouldn’t you like to have trees too?
- justrealist 3y agoTbh grasslands (at least, mixed habitat) will give you a much richer diversity of fauna than pure forest. Grazers, pollinators, carnivores will all do better in open terrain. There just aren't that many animals that thrive in a dense forest. Trees are hard to eat.
- Lutger 3y agoI find that hard to believe. Grasslands that are managed in the suggested way become nutrient poor and support way less life than a naturally grown forest. Everybody is eating from trees: nuts, fruit, leaves even the wood itself. A natural forest - not the managed ones with just a couple of species - is absolutely teeming with life. However, there is something in between nutritionally poor wildflower grassland and thick dense forest and I feel those hit the sweet spot. Finally, I feel biodiversity is often given so much value that we don't even think about the amount of life anymore. It turns out that some ecologically managed grasslands do have a high number of species, but just not a lot of each one, whereas an open forest can harbor way more animals. This makes sense: there is just not a lot to eat when you only have wildflowers on the menu.
- justrealist 3y agoThink about it this way — the sun is the prime energy input to a biome. - In a temperate forest, basically nothing eats canopy foliage. Maybe they did when we had mastodons and forest elephants, but we don't now. Trees grow, die, and get eaten by fungus. - In grasslands, nearly 100% of the photosynthesized energy is available to megafauna. Deer simply can't eat the bark of adult trees, or get to the leaves. Yes, some trees drop a lot of nuts, but it's nothing compared to what a prarie can support (aka, millions of bison).
- munch117 3y agoYou are making a compelling argument that grassland has a richer diversity of grazers. But surely the diversity of fauna is richer in the forest.
- justrealist 3y agoIt's just not. I recommend you research deeper here. Fauna is richest only near the edges of the forest or near rivers. In a deep closed-canopy temperate forest, there's just really not that much going on.
- aziaziazi 3y agoThat’s fine because bisons aren’t considered good pollinators. Forests canopy is a very, very living biome for pollinators however. You’ll find birds, insects (and small mammals) in droves over the canopy but no “megafauna” indeed. Francis Hallé work on forests, canopies and trees architecture is fascinating and insightful. He’s one of the creator of the “radeau des cimes”, an aerostat designed to study the canopy. Bonus point: forest tends to retain water much better than grassland and therefore are less prone to drought.
- greenie_beans 3y ago> forest tends to retain water much better than grassland and therefore are less prone to drought. you're gonna have to cite this claim
- chongli 3y agoThere just aren't that many animals that thrive in a dense forest Rainforests are as dense as they come and absolutely the peak of biodiversity on this planet (on land anyway, underwater is a whole other ballgame). They’re one of the only environments humans can survive in with literally nothing but knowledge of the plants and animals around you.
- tw04 3y agoBecause the shade prevents wildflowers from growing
- Angostura 3y agoDeep shade, yes - but dappled shade is ideal for many species of woodland/glade wild flowers
- ykonstant 3y agoOff topic (?), but your remark made me nostalgic about glades; so I googled "glade" to get some pictures. The first two results were glade.com and a bunch of ads about deodorants. Fuck this shit :(
- aziaziazi 3y agoThere’s also wild flowers that grow in forest. Bluebells in Belgium are spectaculars https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/hallerbos-forest-belgium-bluebells https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/hallerbos-forest-belgium-b...
- globular-toast 3y agoThey probably don't want to commit to it being undeveloped...
- bstpierre 3y agoNot sure about the person you replied to, but here in northeast US if you don’t mow to keep trees down you can quickly end up with a very thick growth of trees. It’s also easy to end up with a lot of undesirable (invasive) species crowding out the native/desirable plants. It may be the case that a small amount of trees is beneficial overall for pollinators but if you’re managing an area as described then it takes a bit more work to plan for trees and mow around them.
- myshpa 3y agoAbsolutely. Just a tip, though: when using mower to mow, it's better to mulch. You don't have to remove the clippings, and it will feed the soil.
- bradley13 3y agoNo, you want to remove the clippings. The soil needs to be (or become) nutrient poor if you want wildflowers. Otherwise, you just get grass, which is no use to pollinators.
- myshpa 3y agoWhen one wants strictly a meadow, then you're probably right. I'm doing that in a garden for a decade or more, and we have a mix of grass and wildflowers and "weeds", with abundant biodiversity.
- oxfordmale 3y agoI mulch and it is perfectly adequate for promoting dandelion growth. I don't have "wild flowers", but plenty of daisies, dandelion and clover.