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No Mo’ Mow? - Printable Version

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No Mo’ Mow? - Zinjanthropos - Jul 9, 2019

If you’re really concerned about the environment then maybe this will interest you or force you to buy a goat(s). I wonder if an environmentally concerned person with a manicured lawn should be labelled a hypocrite?  

https://www.peoplepoweredmachines.com/faq-environment.htm

The alternative:

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/more-sustainable-and-beautiful-alternatives-grass-lawn

Excerpt: In a case of taking “the grass is always greener” a bit too literally, American homeowners have long strived to make their lawns brighter, lusher, and more velvety than their neighbors’. But all that competition has a devastating environmental impact. Every year across the country, lawns consume nearly 3 trillion gallons of water a year, 200* million gallons of gas (for all that mowing), and 70 million pounds of pesticides

*EPA Stats in first article state 800 million gallons of gas. Who do you believe?


RE: No Mo’ Mow? - C C - Jul 9, 2019

I believe I've seen reel lawn mowers occasionally still being used in retro images from the 1950s. They were certainly around in the 1940s. In an era of overweight problems, is it going to kill people to actually push one of those and keep the darned thing sharpened or whatever additional annoyance? (Hah, I'm a fine half-hypocrite. Yet pushing my gas-powered, non-riding mower. The latter just to shame hubby, as much as for the exercise.)

Yeah, no-mow (and don't need the water) yards would be the thing. The desert oriented ones out in the southwest US fit right in with the surrounding environment.

We don't water, so that kind of slipped my mind altogether. On the rare occasion it does get that dry, a barbaric "just let it fade" tends to reign.


RE: No Mo’ Mow? - Zinjanthropos - Jul 9, 2019

CC... I found the lawn care sites when I was searching for an answer to a question I had about whether cut grass takes less CO2 from the air than if if one allows it to grow. Apparently there isn’t much difference.


RE: No Mo’ Mow? - Yazata - Jul 9, 2019

The recent California drought forced (shamed?) many local homeowners into letting their lawns go. (And this is an area of million dollar homes.) Some lawns went to dirt and weeds (no pickups parked on the lawns), while other homeowners had the landscapers in and went 'southwestern' with rock gardens and desert vegetation like cacti and agave, and decorative elements like that. Now that the drought is more or less over, some of the lawns have come back, but noticeably less than before.