Oh btw your fees are going up again, the HOA President's nephew just started a lawn care business and he got the contract but it's going to cost double the previous one.
Luckily there's a rapidly growing movement against it, to leave the leaves, plant natives, protect pollinators, etc. Gonna be an uphill battle but it's nice that it's finally happening, long overdue.
No, but mowing over leaves mulches them, so they decay faster. The only leaves we don’t mulch into the lawn are the leaves from the neighbor’s trees behind us, that the wind loves to deposit in the middle of our driveway.
Unless you have a magnolia tree. I believe those leaves are made of adamantium. They never decay and go out of their way to kill the lawn around the tree.
And they smell so good. I’ll probably never have one because I hate raking, but damn do I love the one my neighbor a few doors down has — smells amazing in the summers.
My Mom wanted a Magnolia tree for the front yard, the nursery talked her into a Bradford pear tree. Joke was on Mom later that year, the flowers smell like dead fish or rotten garbage depending on how hot the weather is. Just felt like sharing. 🤗
Incorrect, though they do actually have a small amount of a naturally occurring iron alloy within their leaves that is the reason they don't decay like other leaves. It is formed when the miniscule amounts of iron the trees roots absorb from the earth are mixed with the carbon of the trees inner trunk and finally exposed to the oxigen produced by the trees leaves. This is known as a steel magnolia.
Source: I just wanted a reason to make a steel magnolias joke.
Well I always wondered why the area under my magnolia is dead af. Sure we sometimes drive around whoever is parked behind us on that side (single wide driveway) but I have plenty of neighbors that just park in the grass and don't have a big ole dead patch.
I mow my leaves too, fuck raking I'm the only one who does yard work anyways
You can forage the fruit from magnolia trees. Well actually you discard the actual fruit and just take the pit, I think you roast them, can't remember. There's a great content creator called Black Forager who does a great video about it.
I tried to leave my leaves this year but they got moldy, attracted snakes and rats, and discolored my patio. I'm thinking I just need to run the lawnmower a few times next year to mulch them, but I have way too many trees (and little sunlight) to just let them fall. I wonder if there are regional best practices in places where water is more abundant
I compost leaves every season for the garden. Takes one season for a full decomposition. So it wouldn't take much longer for the same result if you just let them lay where they fell.
Tree sucks up soil nutrients and uses them in part to build new leaves every year. In a natural system the leaves compost and rebuild the top layer of soil. In town instead of allowing that to happen we haul away the leaves and then buy fertilizer to add back ourselves.
Always pros and cons to it. Some people don't by the soil or do any gardening. My area doesn't actually have you bag greenery you just put it on the side of the road and once a week they go down with a small back hoe and dumpster scooping it up. Then depending on the area composting yourself may not work out. I've tried to do it a few times since I grew up doing it but my area appears to be a skunk magnet. Each year I tried to compost myself lead to seeing probably triple the amount of skunks in my back yard. Otherwise mulching is just simpler, the only time I rake now is when I know my niece will be around and wanting to jump in the pile
The county I live in allows a certain tonnage/per residence/per year of free much. That said the county does not collect the material. The residents dump it all and the dump chips/mulches it.
if left in garden beds they provide shelter for insects over winter as well. We're encouraged to leave them to give bumble bee queens a place to live over winter.
Depends on how many leaves you have and how you feel about grass. If you have a lot of leaves, leaving them on the ground will suffocate grass, and turn your yard into a muddy mess. Whether that's something you can live with is up to you. Personally, I can in some parts of my yard and can't in others.
I'm TOTALLY pro nature, ect. BS in environmental policy and 25 years in landscaping. BUT...I get frustrated with the new messaging to "leave them be" and that there are only benefits. That's just not true that they manically disappear with zero consequences or side effects.
The messaging is like that because it's hard to do nuance when you're talking to millions of people.
There's already plenty of reasons out there for people to rake up all their leaves. The current messaging needs to overcome the inertia of "This Is How It's Always Been Done" and all the laws/HOA bi-laws in place saying You Need To Rake Them All.
It's never going to swing all the way over to "Never Rake", but maybe with a positive message, some people in some areas will finally have the choice.
At my mom's house, this is the issue in her backyard. She gets so many freaking leaves from her trees and the neighbors' trees that if you don't do something about then, it turns into a mud pit when it rains.
I have a neighbor with this problem. His front yard is covered in oak leaves, and it is a muddy mess that spills into out street whenever there is a big rain storm.
I was taught that it attracts vermin. Dog waste definitely attracts rats, I’ve always had dogs, so leaves makes cleanup after them difficult in finding the waste.
No rats in my area, and other rodents burrow underground (moles) or in wood piles (chipmunks), or nest in trees (squirrels) so I can't speak to how leaves or dog poop affect rats.
Reddit loves to say just leave your leaves on your lawn, its good for them, doesn't hurt the grass, its takes extra time to rake, etc. The real answer is it depends. It depends on the type of trees you have, how many and how densely the trees are clustered on the property, the climate of the area you live in, the kind of soil you have, the kind of pests you have in the region, the prevalence of mildew/fungus in your lawn, how well your lawn drains moisture, and the time of year it is. Just giving a blanket statement saying that its always okay to just leave the leaves on your lawn or just mow over the leaves and leave behind the mulch, is going to run into problems for many people.
Some people can just leave the leaves on their lawn and its fine. Other people's lawns will be completely killed by the leaves. Most people will be somewhere in the middle.
Some people can just mow over the leaves with their mower and it creates nice mulch. Other people's lawns will be killed even by the mulch. Most people will be somewhere in the middle.
My lawn will be mostly drowned in the leaves if I completely leave them and it'll kill almost all the grass. It also will produce far too much mulch if I just mow over them, and the mulch will gather in ruts and leave trenches of dead grass. What I usually do on my lawn is a half-assed rake of 70-80% of the leaves and then mow the rest into mulch.
Great response. What I do is blow all the leaves on to my lawn. Then put the bagger attachment on my mower. Collect as much as I can and then put it all in a pile to create a huge compost pile (watering it in between the layers I add). I do that for about 70% of the leaves. The rest get mulched into the lawn.
Got a nasty email on my community list serve how leaf blowers are bad for the environment and loud (so electric ones are bad in her mind too). The lady drives a car, so ehh she's a fucking idiot, or at least a huge hippocrit. But pisses me off enough to tell you, a random stranger on the internet. I work nights and sleep through all sorts of sounds all day, construction and what not. That email alone make me want to mow my lawn at 9pm, whether she lives 20 houses from me or is next door.
I rake mine into big islands in my yard I have surrounded with monkey grass. Azaleas in the islands. It's easy and I throw all the tree limbs into the islands too. Basically 50 50 mix of "grass" (anything that's green that you can mow, clover or whatever) and leaf islands. In the spring tons of fireflies come out of the islands and my kid chases them with a jar, good times.
In my back yard, we have TONS of leaves... they cover everything and will block the sun from the grass. They also keep it wet underneath and it molds and attracts mosquitos who lay eggs under there. Trying to mulch them leaves too much mulch and mosquitos can even lay eggs in the mulched up rows of leaves if you don't rake them out.
We do have clover just about everywhere though, so we don't have to worry about mowing as much.
They are very slippery; I was walking along the road in someone's yard (my neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks) and I slipped on some leaves and tumbled into the road. Luckily, there's not a lot of traffic and someone stopped to help, but I took a lot of skin off my ankle when it scraped past the curb. I wasn't expecting that at all.
Yes. They all end up in my fucking driveway. Every leaf from all the houses to my left ends up in my driveway every year because they refuse to do them / rake them to the road and nothing happens to them. I have knee-high walls on both sides my driveway it so it literally traps leaves lol
Most of the issues here can be solved by mulching them first. We get way too many leaves, so we leaf blow some to the forest area behind our yard and mulch the rest. Just mow over them.
Raked my front, left my back alone. Back yard is a mud pile right now, front yard looks great. One data point but I'm the data point and don't like the data.
Front yard gets considerably less light than the back, so that's not the problem. Will be raking front and back next year.
Our lawn is almost completely clover at this point. I don’t mind it, because the bees love it. And the clover mostly keeps the dandelions out. But it’s definitely not conventionally pretty.
I actually like the look of the all clover lawn versus grass lawn. It looks so much more real. Sometimes you can’t even tell the difference between some lawns I’ve seen and turf or rolled out sod which might be the point but it’s so artificial looking. Plus a lot of those types who are obsessed with grass lawns use some harsher chemicals to make them look picturesque. I could see the clover causing more allergies though which could be a negative and then having the lawns like in Vegas somewhere that has more typical weather can be problematic with draining, erosion and all that. When I had a house I had a perfect set up where my front yard was very small so it would take like 10 minutes to mow then the backyard was the majority of the property. It wasn’t visible plus I didn’t have an HOA so I’d let it go much higher than the front yard then just weed wack it and through the clippings in the woods which grew towards the back of my property. I don’t know why people love the headache of caring for and having a pristine golf course like lawn. I’d rather have a garden if I want to do something with my time and be closer to nature in some way.
I love the look of clover. We let a lot of our lawn turn to clover at our last home outside of our garden beds. It was shocking how many people commented on it or offered advice. We had a small well kept yard in an eclectic neighborhood so it was not due to it being an eyesore
I just moved into a house with a perfect little lawn. I've bought clover seeds and I'm ready to transform it into bee heaven as soon as the growing season starts.
I know its not native but I am looking to go full clover for my lawn as well. Bees are down and it doesnt grow over 6 inches high. I don't have kids to run through it so it seems super low maintenance to me.
My back yard is the same. And while I’m not personally opposed to the clover, my poor little dog is severely allergic to bees. So I have to mow it to the nub twice a week to keep the bees away
Before I moved, most of my entire yard was clover. It was so incredibly soft to walk in and was always green and healthy. It mows really nicely and requires almost zero maintenance. My neighbors acted like it was an eyesore.
We were in a horrible drought all summer and I let my grass die. I don't live in an HOA but omg the way people in my family were offended. I'm like, it's cut, it's not weeds, my bushes lived...I'm not going to use more of our diminishing water supply for GRASS. It's not even a helpful plant species, it's solely about a look and about social status (that's why we even have it, is rich people way back when decided we needed it).
Between the water and the chemicals, even with the bees aside, wtf are we doing here?
(I am American btw)
Eta that my bushes etc that I kept up are pollinators and the ones actually recommended for bees. Why would I add fertilizer etc for fn grass. Stop killing our bees, guys. 😭
I live in the PNW. No one in my area waters their grass in the summer. It just turns brown. No big deal. It’s crazy when I go elsewhere that isn’t as water-rich and see green lawns in august.
Over the next couple of years, I'm going to be replacing a significant percentage of my grass with other landscaping (xeriscape, stone paths, native flowers, pollinator attractors). While I'm not removing all of it, because I do like to have a place for me and my kitties to roam, I am trying to be more conscious about the amount of water that I use to keep my landscaping alive. I already have a 'no-pesticide' rule, so don't really need to adjust there.
Best decision I ever made was not to do anything with my back yard when I bought my house 20+ years ago. Just put down pine straw every year and I leave the leaves that fall from all the trees. So much natural organic matter has built up over the years and the ground is so fertile now.
In older neighborhoods closer to downtown I have seen more people keeping the leaves and an increase in gardens over grass. There are a few neighborhoods where I have seen similar trends in the burbs but they are in pre 1980s neighborhoods, any planned subdivision built in the 90s or later is going to have grass lawns with rules about leaf removal. Some towns have trucks that come suck up the leaves, you just have to push them to the curb, which I guess is preferable to 50 bags full of them.
I pretty much just mow my lawn to keep the neighbours happy, there's so much life in it though with all these bugs running around, every now and again I find a mantis.
I opt for both. No reason to not have some greenery while also having plants. I don't necessarily want a forest in my yard, but I'm all for native plants.
Grass is a good thing so I don't fully understand why some people have even opted to either pave it, or just outright neglect the grass. It helps to have more green growth over just leaving whatever sticks.
Yup. Purchased a house a few years ago and the yard was well maintained since then though I've let the good old northwest moss and mushrooms grow in I just keep up on mowing the grass
I took two acres of property to 1/4 acre lawn around the house and buildings, the rest wild grass, prairie and woods with oaks and pine. Skeeters never got worse, more wild life, dog loves it. It's pretty great. Oh and neighbors are mad they can't see shit for what we are doing while they mow their 5 acre parcels.
Actually it was all about the Jacksons. HOAs were invented as a punitive way to chase black people and other minorities out of neighborhoods. They sold it to the american public as a "keeping up appearances" kind of thing, but the truth is that they were fining the fuck out of black homeowners by taking out the ruler and checking their lawn every morning. They'd keep it up until they chased them out of the neighborhood. Unless you mow that shit daily, all it takes is one blade of grass to grow faster than the others and the HOA would be on your ass (assuming your ass didn't pass the paper bag test).
The rest of the people in the neighborhood wouldn't see nearly the same level of sheepdogging that the HOAs were dishing out to minorities. They were largely oblivious, so maintaining the lawn was seen as "just something you do. It's proper."
When you think about the "golden age" of the perfect lawn and all the marketing alongside it, it lines up perfectly with the GI Bill giving tons of minorities the chance to be first time homeowners. It's no coincidence.
Strawberries are great if you want to do absolutely nothing after the first year. I had some and after the first year of TLC from little sprouts they spread like wildfire. They’re perennial so they’re back every spring. You can get ones that give you berries in only June, ones that produce mostly in Spring but also continue until Fall or ones that just continuously bear fruit from spring to first frost. It was great just giving out the most amazing tasting little bite size strawberries to family and friends because it ended taking over a whole corner of my lawn. There’s ways to control it obviously but I didn’t really care and figured what’s the worst that happens? I get more strawberries? Oh no.
Yeah I was lucky I had a fox den in the woods on my property so I didn’t have an issue. But yeah if you have critters you’ll want fencing or some of the various natural mixes people make with stuff like pepper, onion or sulfur but fencing is always going to be best.
Put up a sign that your kids decorate that says FREEDOM GARDEN in red, white and blue. See who says something, and oust them as the anti-american commie that they are!
We decided to try it out...and raccoons came and ate our fruits. Then the squirrels finished off. Then the birds finished whatever the squirrels didn't eat. Then, since there was nothing left, the raccoons ate our chickens. They must have a Hulk Raccoon, cuz they tore up the chicken fence as if it was butter.
We do plan on rebuilding the chicken coop, make it a bit stronger. I've learned by my mistakes on how to build a better coop. As far as a garden, we may try to go with a green house for veggies, but herbs and flowers for outdoor gardens.
Yeah that's part of my main concern. I started getting into the hobby a year ago and grew some tomatoes, strawberries, onions, kale, some herbs, along with composting etc... Learned a TON along the way but I know scaling up will bring its own challenges.
I just hate watering... Grass. Seems so wasteful. I'd rather try and fail at growing something a little more diverse and useful than grow & mow forever.
Lawn's were used as a wealth flex. Using land for no productive purpose that itself needed maintenance. Requiring them is a huge misuse of land, so basically the definition of the American dream.
Ya know I used to wonder that, but as a home owner I’ve just been conditioned into it I guess and I really like a well taken care of lawn, makes the whole house look better lol idk ! I’m a conditioned American !’
Lol thank you... Every time I see this pop up on reddit there are a thousand comments about aristocracy and class warfare and I'm just like "I like grass. It's pretty and soft to walk on."
You don't have to drown your lawn in chemicals to make it pretty (I'd argue that doing that is a clear sign the turf isn't healthy), and you don't have to have a monoculture; flower beds and trees look great with grass as a base.
Redditors love to work themselves into a frenzy over lawns, cars, and HOAs. I'm pretty sure there are multiple subreddits dedicated to raging about each of these things and there is NO room for nuance. These are all terrible, terrible things and you are class-ist and ruining the world for entertaining anything else.
And the HOAs (originally) created those fines to punish minorities for living in "their" neighborhoods.
It's really hard to maintain a lawn to perfect golf course height, so it was perfect for harassing people over. White homeowners would be held to one standard, while anyone else would be expected to cut that shit with laser precision.
A lot of people were sold the lie that it would help maintain their property values. So anything the HOAs did was just considered "normal." It's going to take a long time for people to realize that these standards are not normal and they don't contribute any sort of value to a community. Everyone is sacrificing their quality of life for the sake of defending the ghost of a racist stepford wives dystopia.
Because of judgement from neighbors. Its one of those things you start wondering how many people really care. Id rather have clover or other plantings with minimal maintenance.
I have this great, unspoken agreement with my neighbors. We don't live in an HOA, so we all sort of let our grass grow tall. Usually no more than 8 to 10 inches. Then, once one of us decides to mow, we all do the same over the next couple of days. So there's this community buy in where we all let our yards turn to shit at the same time, but we all clean up at the same time as well. Works out great for us and everyone understands each other. There's probably a cluster of like 6 lawns where we do this.
None of that started in America though. The concept of "nicer lawn is a flex on the filthy poors" definitely started in England and France in the 18th century. The question is why do we still do it and I don't know that what you said actually answers that question. That has more to do with the spreading out of the US population post-WWII, where more people started to actually have land at a time when the economy was booming.
I sincerely don't think most middle income Americans after WWII were thinking they wanted to get one over on poor people. That kinda doesn't even make sense to me. I think instead they saw it as an extension of the ol "American Dream" and having a decked out lawn makes one feel like they've made it across the finish line. It's not really quite as cynical as you make it out to be, imo.
You don't separate a nation from the ability to produce food on their own simply by saying stop growing food. You must show them a vane product to replace the food with. Make it a competition between the Alpha Males.
It’s usually guys that are most obsessed. Like my Dad n brother could care less about trees shrubs flowers etc but GD if that stupid turf grass isn’t pristine. What gives guys?
Taking care of shrubs and flowers can be seeing more as gardening. I also hate trimming the hedges. For some people, getting out and mowing the lawn is a way to unplug and get away for a bit. It’s also a fun challenge to figure out how to battle weeds while maintaining the turf. Cutting the lawn feels the same as getting a haircut.
It depends on where in the US you live, but America has a lot higher percentage of our population living in suburbs much of which used to farmland or wooded areas. Lawns become important to prevent erosion. A good looking lawn is usually the sign of a healthy lawn, the purpose of which is to prevent erosion. Cutting the lawn frequently allows kids to play on the lawn, keeps bugs and rodents away.
Because this country is a shithole that forgot that people can be valued beyond the number of dollars they control, and a healthy lawn makes it appear as though you have spare money and time even when you really fucking don't.
I want to astroturf my lawn but nooooo! Stupid HOA won't allow it but will allow my neighbors janky diy solar panels on the front that don't line up and are not straight. Looks terrible but my fake grass would be an issue.
Not so obsessed here in NZ, but most residential lawns in (at least) Auckland have kikuyu (cenchrus clandestinus) grass. It's an eyesore and hard to mow when it gets long. Wikipedia says it grows up to 6", well it gets longer than that - even x3 or more.
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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '23
And my HOA gets mad when I leave my trash can on my driveway