The rough idea is to use local, endemic plants. They'll have a much higher tolerance range for your area's pests and climate conditions. I understand the appeal of grass, and certainly love lying down to read on a slightly sloping lawn, but there are certain areas where the combination of soil and climate should make it inordinately expensive to grow and maintain one. We just collectively happen to provide huge subsidies (in the form of extremely cheap water and minimal restrictions on use) for households that want to have a lawn in those areas. That's also ignoring all of the other negative environmental and infrastructural externalities around everyone having a lawn.
Instead of worrying so much about a lawn, why not look into natural landscaping?
It's a cultural thing, afaik. Somehow (during the previous century I assume) it became important, or a sign of wealth, or maybe even a display of 'I'm living the dream' to have a nice green lawn. Without any impurities of course. And as flat as possible. So it turns into something that is considered aesthetically pleasing as well. I noticed that whan asking people with such a lawn why exactly they want it like that, they mostly remain pretty vague and cannot give much reason to it - which for me is a reason to support my belief it's purely cultural, as it doesn't have much, if any, benefits. Not for the people having to keep it like that, nor for nature.
That last thing bothers me most: for most animal life not bound to soil, a lawn without any weeds wahtsoever is essentially worthless. If you're lucky you'll get some birds able to get the earthworms out but that's it. Bees and butterflies and the likes don't benefit from it. Which is why natural landscaping (or basically, just let nature have it's go at it without much human intervention) is imo always better. We have a couple of acres of land like that: it is mainly left as-is (apart from getting rid of occasional non-local plants and making some pathways through the grass with a mower) and it's a home to a wealth of local plants and animals. The neighbour's land however is dead in comparision, no matter how green his lawn is shining.
Mowing height should be based on the type of grass, not a global 1 height fits all. Here in Texas, where lots of lawns are Bermuda, mowing high will leave you with a weak lawn. Of course, if you have St. Augustine or fescue, sure mow as high as you can.
Watering deeply and infrequently is very good advice though. If you have a sprinkler system with zones, it's good practice to run 10-15 minutes per zone depending on the type of sprinkler head in each zone. Do that for all zones then repeat. This will result in a much deeper soaking and lower runoff amounts.
Check your sprinkler heads yearly and replace ones that are broken or misdirected.
Fertilization should again be according to the type of grass you have. You would never fertilize corn the same way you fertilize beans (trick question, you shouldn't fertilize legumes) so you shouldn't expect to fertilize different grasses the same amount or time.
Lawn care in Boston is going to be drastically different from lawn care in Dallas. Do a little bit of research for your area and your grass type and then you can develop your own guide for the cheap and lazy.
(I live in NJ, I have Bluegrass, 6-zones in my sprinkler system)
About "Watering deeply and infrequently": I thought 30 minutes per zone, 2x/week accomplished that. Are you suggesting watering for 15 minutes and running through the zones 2x each time I water?
It's "landscaping and gardening that reduces or eliminates the need for supplemental water from irrigation," frequently with native species.
We xeriscaped much of our yard in Austin, Texas, and if it can work in Texas, then it can work anywhere. My wife took great care to make sure many of the plants were attractive to wildlife (bees, butterflies, hummingbirds) which was an added bonus. (Did you know that hummingbirds are crazy aggressive and territorial? They are!)
"Native plants" doesn't just mean ugly scrub brush either: plenty of beautiful plants grow natively where you are - but you'll probably have to look further than Home Depot to find them.
Yeah, hummingbirds are super aggressive. It is kind of cute and kind of scary at the same time. A territorial hummingbird will think nothing of dive-bombing you out of nowhere, or buzzing your head a few times until you get the message and back off. They can come at you so quickly that you won't know what they are until they zoom past you. You just hear this loud buzzing sound and see a large object dart just past your face. At first it seems like a monstrously proportioned bumblebee, until you look back and realize it's a hummingbird.
In re native plants, it is possible to grow a quasi-traditional grass lawn using native grasses, like Buffalograss. It will look like prairie grass, and not necessarily like the archetypal, deep-green fescue patch. But if you're living in a drought-prone area, you really shouldn't be growing thirsty, exotic grass lawns in the first place. It's bordering on socially irresponsible in certain parts of the country (Southern California, I'm looking at you).
I have one of the manual reel mowers listed. I love it. Not only does it give a better cut, it uses no gas and doesn't have all the associated hassles (pull start etc) of a gas mower. It's only slightly more effort to use than a gas mower too. And it cost like $100 as opposed to 3-$400. I predict it lasts much longer as well.
That's great that you use a manual mower, we've always had a gas mower because we have a fairly large lawn. I wonder how a manual or electric mower would do on a large lawn, especially going uphill?
I'm looking for a guide to caring for my lawn while we're conserving for the drought. Right now we're watering 5-10 minutes per week. I hope that's enough to keep the roots alive but assume that fertilizer would be a terrible idea until the grass starts to recover.
A bit OT from your question, but I've had an organic lawn the last 3-4 years (in Illinois), and while it's certainly debatable if tall organic grass 'crowds out dandelions' or not, I've been quite happy with the natural spread of white clover, particularly along parts of the lawn like the edge of the driveway that have been hit hard/first by drought. I'm pretty sure the clover is more drought tolerant than the grass will ever be. The last few years before this one we had some bad droughts, but this year our fortunes are reversed.
So when I see clover getting dispersed through my grass, I get quite happy. Much better than bindweed, which took me a few years to get out :-)
Check with your state's cooperative extension [1]. They'll have articles about proper watering and fertilization. They'll also have places where you can send soil samples from your yard and get a report back on its condition.
Noticed that article writer is from Missouri. Down here in Texas we are in the plains but very dry conditions. While fescue is a good grass I don't recommend it for Texas. It might work with optimal soil conditions but in my experience that is tough to do.
Mowing height is almost entirely dependent on the type of grass you have. Mow St Augustine low and you'll have major problems. But let bermuda grow to 4 inches and you'll have a different set of problems. Find out what kind of grass you have and mow according to that.
I've found that if I let my grass grow to 3-4 inches, some of the grass doesn't always stick straight up and goes diagonal when the mower goes over it. Then the grass it's covering doesn't grow as well, creating bare spots.
This is probably because the previous owners of the lawn didn't take great care of it and there's already some thin spots.
So I have to cut it to about 2 inches to allow all the grass a chance to grow.
Now I'm curious what the cheapest and laziest lawn care solution would be for someone only interested in avoiding municipal fines and rocks through the windows from neighbors.
It's got to be cleverer than mowing less frequently. Surely there's some way to hack lawns so they require almost no care at all right?
When I bought my house, my grass was a mess of thatch and weeds. My neighbors all thought I was insane letting it grow so tall every year before mowing, and for not hacking it down to the dirt like they do. The first few years I would let it overseed itself. Didn't take long to produce a healthy lawn with minimal effort. Now my neighbors tend to follow my lead on grass height. Their yards are coming in nicely, too.
The key isn't infrequent mowing, it's letting the grass grow tall, especially in the spring, before bringing it down. I mow just as often as others, just not as short. The article nicely lays out the reasons why one would do this.
Nature doesn't need hacking. It needs to be understood. Learn about the root systems of grass, and that stuff on top everyone seems to care about is simple.
Plant something other than grass. Seriously. I'm experimenting with yarrow in some problem areas on our property: a hot dry and sandy septic bed and some embankments with crappy soil. Yarrow can be mowed much less frequently, looks amazing (better than grass), grows on any soil, chokes out weeds, and doesn't need watering. For shady areas I'm having good results with periwinkle.
Artificial turf is increasingly popular in Australia due to water restrictions and water pricing, but even the modern stuff can be a bit ugly and often it gets really hot underfoot because of the dark rubber "soil" used.
Have to shake your head when you see people with artificial turf that has weeds sprouting through it too. Worst of both worlds - dorky looking surface, plus still get the weeds!
Goats! That's what the City of LA uses in certain hilly spots on city property. I used to take the subway to Pershing Square in downtown and was rather amused to find a goat staring at me from across a temporary fence erected to coral them around an overgrown hillside.
It is a great resource for public spaces like parks and sports fields but maintaining it domestically seems to belong to a distant past. Domestic water has to be potable. Parks can use lower quality waste water and they can manage it better. Some people have huge rainwater storage but even then lawn has to be scaled back in a dry climate.
When I was a kid just about everyone had a quarter acre block with a house and shedding (garage, garden, tools etc) a veggie garden and a big front and back lawn.
I learnt to ride my bike on our big lawn. Played backyard cricket on it. Got stung by bees on the clover. And summer meant playing under the sprinklers running during the daytime with no thought to waste or expense. Golden age.
Drought water restrictions killed most lawns where I lived and when they were lifted most people didn't bother to reestablish them. Most of the green yards of my youth are now bark and natives, glyphosated bare earth or weeds. It sucks for kids. Kicking a ball around without lawn isn't the same. It is another of those childhood freedoms people used to take for granted that seems to have disappeared.
Missing from this great guide was any mention of moss, an issue I never thought about until moving to the Pacific Northwest. Now my lawn is mostly moss with some grass sticking through. I have resigned to just let it grow, since it is soft underfoot and nice and green. Any tips for a mossy lawn?
Moss is often a sign of poor drainage and/or inadequate sunlight. It's often seen overtaking lawns on heavy, compacted, waterlogged, clay soils. If you don't believe that to be the problem, you might have a soil that's overly acidic.
Clay soil is a bear, especially when it's been compacted. I had to deal with it for many years when I lived in LA. There are no fantastic solutions that don't risk making the problem worse than it already is. The best you can do is compost generously, and hope for a slow improvement over time. Do not attempt to till the soil or mix in sand. This can actually make the problem 10x worse, creating a sort of concrete-like substance as the clay and sand particles interlock.
I really don't understand the obsession people have with lawns. Obviously it depends a great deal where you live, but we only mow once or twice a month, and never use fertilizer or irrigation. It's not a perfect monoculture, but so what. There are also lots of flowers; large patches of clovers, dandelions, wild carrots. It benefits the bees.
I'm surprised that many years of people mowing their lawns hasn't evolved plants which don't waste resources growing above the mow height. Perhaps the trait could be selectively bred into them manually.
Get an earthworm or bokashi composter use that for nutrients. Declorinate your water by letting it stand outside for a day or 2. if you have a water feature somewhere which recycles water pee into it, after a couple of weeks bacteria which turn the amonia into no2 and then no3 will come to live in there (you will also supply a fair bit of nutrient this way), use that to water your lawn.
*bacteria in certain temp ranges obviously, a boston winter won't be any good for this.
"
Get an earthworm or bokashi composter use that for nutrients. Declorinate your water by letting it stand outside for a day or"
THis only works if your waters has been chlorinated. chloramine is much more stable and is also commonly used - it does not break down in the water over short periods of time, so letting it sit for a couple of days won't remove it.
Missing from this great guide was any mention of moss, an issue I never thought about until moving to the Pacific Northwest. Now my lawn is mostly moss with some grass sticking through. I have resigned to just let it grow, since it is soft underfoot and nice and green. Any tips for a mossy lawn?
[+] [-] cwal37|11 years ago|reply
The rough idea is to use local, endemic plants. They'll have a much higher tolerance range for your area's pests and climate conditions. I understand the appeal of grass, and certainly love lying down to read on a slightly sloping lawn, but there are certain areas where the combination of soil and climate should make it inordinately expensive to grow and maintain one. We just collectively happen to provide huge subsidies (in the form of extremely cheap water and minimal restrictions on use) for households that want to have a lawn in those areas. That's also ignoring all of the other negative environmental and infrastructural externalities around everyone having a lawn.
[+] [-] stinos|11 years ago|reply
It's a cultural thing, afaik. Somehow (during the previous century I assume) it became important, or a sign of wealth, or maybe even a display of 'I'm living the dream' to have a nice green lawn. Without any impurities of course. And as flat as possible. So it turns into something that is considered aesthetically pleasing as well. I noticed that whan asking people with such a lawn why exactly they want it like that, they mostly remain pretty vague and cannot give much reason to it - which for me is a reason to support my belief it's purely cultural, as it doesn't have much, if any, benefits. Not for the people having to keep it like that, nor for nature.
That last thing bothers me most: for most animal life not bound to soil, a lawn without any weeds wahtsoever is essentially worthless. If you're lucky you'll get some birds able to get the earthworms out but that's it. Bees and butterflies and the likes don't benefit from it. Which is why natural landscaping (or basically, just let nature have it's go at it without much human intervention) is imo always better. We have a couple of acres of land like that: it is mainly left as-is (apart from getting rid of occasional non-local plants and making some pathways through the grass with a mower) and it's a home to a wealth of local plants and animals. The neighbour's land however is dead in comparision, no matter how green his lawn is shining.
[+] [-] scotch_drinker|11 years ago|reply
Watering deeply and infrequently is very good advice though. If you have a sprinkler system with zones, it's good practice to run 10-15 minutes per zone depending on the type of sprinkler head in each zone. Do that for all zones then repeat. This will result in a much deeper soaking and lower runoff amounts.
Check your sprinkler heads yearly and replace ones that are broken or misdirected.
Fertilization should again be according to the type of grass you have. You would never fertilize corn the same way you fertilize beans (trick question, you shouldn't fertilize legumes) so you shouldn't expect to fertilize different grasses the same amount or time.
Lawn care in Boston is going to be drastically different from lawn care in Dallas. Do a little bit of research for your area and your grass type and then you can develop your own guide for the cheap and lazy.
[+] [-] beanholio|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orenadler|11 years ago|reply
(I live in NJ, I have Bluegrass, 6-zones in my sprinkler system)
About "Watering deeply and infrequently": I thought 30 minutes per zone, 2x/week accomplished that. Are you suggesting watering for 15 minutes and running through the zones 2x each time I water?
[+] [-] svec|11 years ago|reply
It's "landscaping and gardening that reduces or eliminates the need for supplemental water from irrigation," frequently with native species.
We xeriscaped much of our yard in Austin, Texas, and if it can work in Texas, then it can work anywhere. My wife took great care to make sure many of the plants were attractive to wildlife (bees, butterflies, hummingbirds) which was an added bonus. (Did you know that hummingbirds are crazy aggressive and territorial? They are!)
"Native plants" doesn't just mean ugly scrub brush either: plenty of beautiful plants grow natively where you are - but you'll probably have to look further than Home Depot to find them.
[+] [-] jonnathanson|11 years ago|reply
In re native plants, it is possible to grow a quasi-traditional grass lawn using native grasses, like Buffalograss. It will look like prairie grass, and not necessarily like the archetypal, deep-green fescue patch. But if you're living in a drought-prone area, you really shouldn't be growing thirsty, exotic grass lawns in the first place. It's bordering on socially irresponsible in certain parts of the country (Southern California, I'm looking at you).
[+] [-] jqm|11 years ago|reply
I have one of the manual reel mowers listed. I love it. Not only does it give a better cut, it uses no gas and doesn't have all the associated hassles (pull start etc) of a gas mower. It's only slightly more effort to use than a gas mower too. And it cost like $100 as opposed to 3-$400. I predict it lasts much longer as well.
[+] [-] swayvil|11 years ago|reply
I am thinking about getting a reel.
[+] [-] bluthru|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anishkothari|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diminoten|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wnissen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] penguindev|11 years ago|reply
So when I see clover getting dispersed through my grass, I get quite happy. Much better than bindweed, which took me a few years to get out :-)
[+] [-] akehrer|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_State_Research,_Edu...
[+] [-] larrydag|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jvoorhis|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anishkothari|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotch_drinker|11 years ago|reply
http://publications.tamu.edu/TURF_LANDSCAPE/PUB_turf_Maintai...
[+] [-] joevandyk|11 years ago|reply
This is probably because the previous owners of the lawn didn't take great care of it and there's already some thin spots.
So I have to cut it to about 2 inches to allow all the grass a chance to grow.
[+] [-] juanuys|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/
[+] [-] Mz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brownbat|11 years ago|reply
It's got to be cleverer than mowing less frequently. Surely there's some way to hack lawns so they require almost no care at all right?
(Short of buying a townhome?)
[+] [-] zecho|11 years ago|reply
The key isn't infrequent mowing, it's letting the grass grow tall, especially in the spring, before bringing it down. I mow just as often as others, just not as short. The article nicely lays out the reasons why one would do this.
Nature doesn't need hacking. It needs to be understood. Learn about the root systems of grass, and that stuff on top everyone seems to care about is simple.
[+] [-] LeeHunter|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prawn|11 years ago|reply
Have to shake your head when you see people with artificial turf that has weeds sprouting through it too. Worst of both worlds - dorky looking surface, plus still get the weeds!
[+] [-] krfsm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Istof|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aye|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Moto7451|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shirro|11 years ago|reply
It is a great resource for public spaces like parks and sports fields but maintaining it domestically seems to belong to a distant past. Domestic water has to be potable. Parks can use lower quality waste water and they can manage it better. Some people have huge rainwater storage but even then lawn has to be scaled back in a dry climate.
When I was a kid just about everyone had a quarter acre block with a house and shedding (garage, garden, tools etc) a veggie garden and a big front and back lawn.
I learnt to ride my bike on our big lawn. Played backyard cricket on it. Got stung by bees on the clover. And summer meant playing under the sprinklers running during the daytime with no thought to waste or expense. Golden age.
Drought water restrictions killed most lawns where I lived and when they were lifted most people didn't bother to reestablish them. Most of the green yards of my youth are now bark and natives, glyphosated bare earth or weeds. It sucks for kids. Kicking a ball around without lawn isn't the same. It is another of those childhood freedoms people used to take for granted that seems to have disappeared.
[+] [-] wingspan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnathanson|11 years ago|reply
Clay soil is a bear, especially when it's been compacted. I had to deal with it for many years when I lived in LA. There are no fantastic solutions that don't risk making the problem worse than it already is. The best you can do is compost generously, and hope for a slow improvement over time. Do not attempt to till the soil or mix in sand. This can actually make the problem 10x worse, creating a sort of concrete-like substance as the clay and sand particles interlock.
[+] [-] Houshalter|11 years ago|reply
I'm surprised that many years of people mowing their lawns hasn't evolved plants which don't waste resources growing above the mow height. Perhaps the trait could be selectively bred into them manually.
[+] [-] specialist|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lennel|11 years ago|reply
*bacteria in certain temp ranges obviously, a boston winter won't be any good for this.
[+] [-] GrinningFool|11 years ago|reply
THis only works if your waters has been chlorinated. chloramine is much more stable and is also commonly used - it does not break down in the water over short periods of time, so letting it sit for a couple of days won't remove it.
[+] [-] wingspan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbcgerard|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juanuys|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darkstar999|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frogpelt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willlma|11 years ago|reply
I believe that should be the other way around.
[+] [-] mdesq|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperliner|11 years ago|reply