honest question…why do so many of you soak your yard with chemicals?

I dont put shite on my lawn. Of all the demands that life throws at me, tending to my lawn is at the bottom of the list. I guess I dont have that much free time to think about it

I can't believe that someone has been having the exact same thought that I have regarding this issue lately. I mean, I thought about making this exact thread.

I get those nasty spikey weeds in my backyard where the kid plays, am I just supposed to let it grow because “that’s what Mother Nature intended”?

I try to keep it to a minimum. I do one broadcast application of the winter weed cocktail in order to kill the burweed and whatever else is growing. I usually don’t have much growing between mid February to mid March in my garden so that’s my window. The rest of the year I’m too afraid of herbicide drift killing my garden, so I try to avoid it if possible. I try to just mow at the proper height and frequency to keep the lawn healthy.

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you are trying to artificially engender monocultural lawn grass

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Another one from the podcast/organization Jumpstart Nature:

Jumpstart Nature: The Yard of the Future

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Without noticing, homeowners across the country have destroyed habitat covering an area the size of New England or Florida. As bad as that sounds, it actually gets worse.

But we can easily fix this problem – and it actually saves you time and money.

The help from Dr. Doug Tallamy, Mary Phillips, and Leslie Inman, Griff explains what’s going on here, and how you can help create The Yard of the Future.

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I get those nasty spikey weeds in my backyard where the kid plays, am I just supposed to let it grow because “that’s what Mother Nature intended”?

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sometimes I wonder what it would look like if I just let Mother Nature take over. Would it actually look better and less like Tiger Stadium? Would there be wildflowers growing naturally? Maybe not. Maybe nothing but those stickers and shite weeds. But are we the ones that caused those to grow here by manicuring our lawns?

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sometimes I wonder what it would look like if I just let Mother Nature take over. Would it actually look better and less like Tiger Stadium? Would there be wildflowers growing naturally? Maybe not. Maybe nothing but those stickers and shite weeds. But are we the ones that caused those to grow here by manicuring our lawns?

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Having a more natural yard/lawn isn't the same as just letting nature take over. It is about making different, and it can be argued better, choices. Most neighborhoods you ride through are nothing more than non-native turfgrass lawns and non-native (also sometimes now invasive) ornamental plants/flowers. None of that offers anything of value to most things in a local ecosystem.

A simple approach is choosing native "wildflower" species over the traditional imported options. That alone provides something for pollinators and other beneficial insects.

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If you have bees/butterfly/caterpillars in your lawn how many are killed when you mow?

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I know you know better than this. Cmon man

let’s use an easy example
I always chuckle when I see “how do I get rid of clover” threads and then right after that a thread about lawn fertilizers.

Clover quite literally IS the lawn fertilizer. It fixes nitrogen in the soils. And yes when you mow the flowers you kill some bees but isn’t that better than no bees at all?

I know you know your shite but that argument is just disingenuous at best.

And yes pesticides and fertilizers feed the world. I’m not talking about that. The 1/4 acre lawn (time a couple billion) does far greater damage than does the industrial farm…precisely because it makes more economic sense on farm to conserve resources. Just like the casinos in Las Vegas are not the water users, it’s the lawns.

I would like to propose a challenge to anyone willing to try. Pick out a 10x10 area in your lawn in an area you can observe and makes sense from a landscape standpoint. Cover that area with a good soil mix with plenty of organic matter. Sow a big bag of native wildflower seed and mulch it. Wait three months (do nothing to it otherwise). Watch what happens

If you don’t like it, then this thread is not for you