Quickly, what’s your favorite pastime?
Oh, I know: Mowing the lawn, right?
No? You don’t like it?
Time to celebrate, then: You can do a lot less of it than you might think – with a clear conscience!
Let your lawn grow a decent hairdo
If you’re mowing your lawn too often, you ensure the following:
- You will be bored/annoyed/worn out more often than you need to be
Mowing the lawn is a drag, best kept to a minimum. - Weeds will have a better chance of outgrowing your grass
If you crew cut your grass, any quickly growing weed will have better access to light and space, thus allowing it to speed past your grass. - Your lawn will dry out and die more easily
Short grass straws cast less shadow. This lets the sun bake the soil and evaporates water quicker.
Let your lawn maintain a decent height instead. Never go shorter than two inches (five cm) and let it grow to at least three inches (eight cm) before getting the mower out.
This will counteract the annoyances above and gain these extra advantages:
- Your lawn avoids being a Yawn Lawn
A big, monoculture-like mat of grass isn’t just yawn-inducingly boring, it’s also bad for biodiversity. If you let your lawn grow, a greater variety of plants and other beneficial organisms will move in and thrive.Clovers fixate nitrogen in your soil, providing your grass with easy access nutrition. Bumblebees and other pollinators go crazy, making your flowers bloom and your fruits and veggies grow. Shortly put, your garden starts living, instead of just pretending.
- Your lawn gets more comfy
Longer grass equals a better cushion. Walk barefeet, lie down in it and enjoy
As a final note, when you do mow the lawn: don’t bother raking the grass clippings into a tidy pile. Just distribute them more or less evenly across the lawn. They’ll help with fertilization.
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This post was tagged with: biodiversity, bumble bees, bumblebees, garden work, gardens, grass, lawn care, lawn mowing, lawns, monoculture, pollinators
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That cat iss too cute
Great post too by the way!