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

Atrazine is king, hippy.

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you are best served by starting slow

pick an area (preferably in the shade) where you can stockpile materials. Start dumping all your leaves, pine needles etc there and give them a year to rot. keep piling it up

now you have a fungi rich soil amendment that cost you nothing.

pick your planting areas in full sun. Don’t worry about them being symmetrical or square. Use the topography of your property and go all the way to boundary (house/sidewalk/driveway etc). Fill that area with your soil amendment and whatever other bulk material you can get your hands on. Dump all your potted soil in there. Dump your cardboard in there. Dump your coffee grounds, paper towels, vegetable scraps, toilet paper…anything compostable. Cover it up with much and wait a season. The fungi you got from your rotted leaves will do its thing.

in the fall, sow wildflowers. Go get or order whatever perennials are native to your area. Go nuts and choose a dozen different ones. Mix them all up in a bucket and sow them randomly. Water good and wait

after the spring/summer blooms once winter comes it will look like shite. Ignore it

when spring comes again, cut down the dead shite and throw it in your pile of leaves area to be recycled. Re-sow any bare areas in the spring. It will always change and never look the same two years in a row

the sheer diversity of insect and animal life that will immediately explode will astound you. And best part…no weeds.

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what does all of this have to do with my front yard full of grass that my kids play football and baseball in?

Am i supposed to cover my whole front yard in wildflowers and compost?

I treat my yard so my kids, myself, and my dogs aren't stepping on stickers, or thistles or any other weed that would hurt my bare feet. A healthy yard of grass, and not weeds, makes it easier for my yard to recover and stay healthy when kids are constantly playing it.

Right now i can see the start of the crab grasss, adn it's going to get chemically castrated after this week. I also have a ton of that velcro shite growing all over the place, and that is getting chemically castrated as well.
What are you recommend i do here, just let it grow and die in a few months when it gets too hot?

Not trying to be mean, but this looks like crap compared to a cleanly cut lawn. Just my opinion and you’re free to maintain your property as you like. Unless you have an HOA, which mine would go ape shite if I had that in my front yard.

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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

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This is great for, here we go, A 10x10 AREA OF YOUR LAWN, but not your whole yard front, back and 2 sides.

You ever been to Golden Meadow baw? Absolutely beautiful, but that ain’t happening naturally on my small 1 acre property.

To each his own, baw! I like the look of a well manicured lawn. While I do use fertilizer and herbicides, it's far from "soaking my yard". Once you get on top of weeds, the occasional spot spray is all that's required to keep your lawn looking 100.

It's all about personal taste. I think a yard chock full of weeds looks horrible....especially, this time of year. The grass isn't growing much, but the weeds are thriving.

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don’t see Lucius wildflowers growing along highways down here, do you?

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You don't see much of that anywhere anymore. Everything is mowed and/or sprayed constantly giving nothing time to grow to bloom or seed production. The only thing that can survive that are actual weeds.

Was reading through the thread and was about to post that I bought a lot of the pre/post emergent stuff to start maintaining my lawn a few years ago; but then realized how much my kids love the clovers because they can come home everyday after school and just "pick flowers". There are some areas that I will want to tend to in the fall for some of the less desirable weeds after my landscape guy topped me off with some cheap shite.

But after seeing this pic, I now want to do this somewhere in my backyard. How did you start?

But to answer your question, because a yard full of “clover” and other spring weeds looks like shite.

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You don't see much of that anywhere anymore. Everything is mowed and/or sprayed constantly giving nothing time to grow to bloom or seed production. The only thing that can survive that are actual weeds.

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That’s bs. Maybe for rights of what but there’s plenty of land that gets left to mother and turns to shite. First tall grass than a big thicket. You might see flowers one time. One spring. Once that passes you’re done.


So….. if you want to have flowers every year you have to buck nature.