Lawn Maintenance Best Practices
Lawns seem to have become the default when deciding what to put in people’s front/back yards. Think about when a new housing development goes up. The builders install imported sod, and generally one tree. It doesn’t necessarily have to be this way, this bland, uninspiring way of keeping your yard looking nice. and in most cases it isn’t even a good low-maintenance option. You still have to mow your grass during all the good warm months your particular region and climate have to offer.
Minimize the use of power tools
in the United States, we use about 800million gallons of gas just mowing our lawns. If you are able-bodied enough to operate a manual lawnmower, this is a great way to not use any gas. and you get a good workout in the meantime, you just have to make sure to do it frequently, because a manual mower isn’t going to be able to cut through really tall, thick grass. I personally have solar, so it makes sense in my mind to make use of the free electric I get and use electric power tools. Even if you aren’t on solar, an electric engine is still going to be more efficient than an 4-stroke engine like what’s in your lawn mower, and even more efficient than a 2-stroke engine like what’s in your weed eater, or chainsaw.
Mow less frequently
if you’re not using fertilizers, and not watering your lawn, your grass is naturally going to grow much slower. This means that you’ll have to mow less. This is a great thing if you pay someone to mow your lawn and otherwise take care of your grass, and its even better if you do it yourself. I know, some of you really like hopping on the lawn mower for an hour or two all to yourself, but I feel like most people’s time would be better spent doing literally anything else. I always feel like it makes my day less efficient. I would so much rather be tending to my other plants than taking time out to mow my lawn. At the moment I’m writing this, it takes me 4 hours to mow my lawn. I’m working on it, but I live on an acre and a half, and my back yard is covered in trees that I have to mow around and then weed-eat. I could be doing so much more in 4 hours than sitting on a mower, mowing a lawn that I don’t even fully want. I digress though, the main point is that mowing less frequently is beneficial for more than just the environment.
Reduce the size of your grassy areas
Smaller lawns equal less inputs needed. Less maintenance. Less power tool usage. Really, ideally, we would all just not have any lawns, or at least a re-wilded yard. However I know that in most places, particularly those with an HOA or a POA, your neighbors might get real hostile real quick. It depends a lot on your state and local laws, but sometimes there are laws put in place that allows you as a land owner to practice environmentally friendly land management. If you really want to do this, I would suggest you look into those laws as it pertains to your state and local laws as I am not a lawyer.
Educate your local lawn guys
You can do this in a variety of ways. One is if you have an existing contract with a lawn company, you can talk to the guys that come out, and then renegotiate your contract when it’s time to renew. If they are against doing things in a more sustainable manner, please go somewhere else. This is the whole thing with capitalism, right? If you don’t like something, you can take your business elsewhere, if enough people do it, that company will either be forced to adapt, or they will die out. And boy, do I hope that businesses like that do.
Re-wild your lawn!
I mentioned this earlier in this post, as a way to reduce the size of your lawn, but re-wilding accomplishes so much more than just reducing your need for power equipment. In a lot of places, meadows are also a sustainable part of the rewilding process. There are actually specific meadow grasses that you can buy, but fair warning, they’re a little expensive and can be difficult to find and/or have shipped to you. Meadows are naturally part of a perpetual grassland ecosystem, so if you like the look of grass, but maybe just want to re-wild a little, this might be a good option for you. If you like in an area where prairie land historically was, you might want to look into getting your land back to more of a prairie land state. These grasses are going to be a little taller, your front yard will definitely look more like a wild jungle, but you can also add so many varieties of prairie flowers that typically grow in that environment. If you google some wildflower prairies, it will give you an idea of what your lawn might end up looking like.
