You can use electric mowers. They solve the belching fumes problem and nothing else.
They're often pretty quiet too.
Get an automatic/self-driving one, and you can just watch your vegetation be mutilated instead of doing it yourself.
Yep, electric "Roomba" style lawnmowers exist.
Lol that sounds like a device that would mutilate the plants growing beside the grass too… like my precious strawberries
I'm pretty sure you need to set up an electric grid on the property for it to follow.
Like the pet "invisible fence".
That, or GPS, but they're more expensive
Husqvarna 115H! It's down to like $600 now. This is going on its 3rd year doing my backyard, and its fking amazing. Once a month I trim the perimeter, but otherwise I dont have to mow most of my yard now, its always the same perfect height, the grass seems much happier with it too.
Up until last year I didn't even know people in my country even still had petrol lawn mowers. I wanted to get one of those things that's not even powered, just a rolling blade cage.
I used to think lawns were dumb but then I moved to a place where if you don't take care of your yard, it's just overrun with bugs and weeds. Planting too many trees makes things damp and miserable, open areas are key, but that's where stuff grows. Most plants can't survive being mowed, but grass loves it, and the birds can pick out insects when it's low. So now I like lawns, it's the human version of a meadow. And I don't see an alternative, other than growing an extra long beard, converting myself in mud, and becoming a druid
And I don't see an alternative, other than growing an extra long beard, converting myself in mud, and becoming a druid
I don’t understand. Are you implying that’s not the obvious solution here?
It depends on how much lawn you have, too. If you're sitting on a quarter acre (1000 square meters), then just mow it. You don't want bug habitats literally on top of your house.
If you have five acres, you can probably leave a good chunk of it as natural. Mow the stuff closer to your house, and whatever you want to be able to use, and leave the rest. Maybe take a scythe to it every once in awhile.
I used to have about five acres and would only mow the area around my house. But when I went to sell it the realtor said I had to mow all of it because it looked "messy."
Dumbasses want to move out to the country and live in a damn suburb smh
To be fair, I do love mockingbirds, and mockingbirds love mowed lawns :)
Why not just fill it with gravel, put a few planters in if you still want some vegetation and then move on?
Ah yes, let's take the low life area and make it 0 life
OP is literally saying they want less life... I wouldn't consider an artificially manicured patch of grass to be much life anyway. The overgrown druid land OP describes sounds much better to me
Look at Mr rich pants here, needing a ride on petrol mower. Most people round my way have small push along electric mowers.
Petrol lawnmowers come in push along models too. Before they had electric, that was the only type. It's not fancy.
And before the petrol mower there was the mechanical reel mower. My grandfather had one of these beauties. They take a bit of extra care and maintenance (sharpening, cleaning, oiling) but they do a great job and are much easier to push around than you’d think! Super lightweight and much safer around kids and pets too. Plus they’re basically silent compared to those extremely loud engine varieties (petrol and electric)!
Reject modernity. Return to scythe.
look at mr. fancy pants here, thinks they're too good for a regular old sickle huh?
Those are two entirely different tools with entirely different purposes. Sickles are good for harvesting small parts of plants, not mowing large swathes.
I’ve planted clover and creeping thyme and wildflowers in my garden. I have a reel mower that I push at highest setting over the clover when it has a growth spurt.
I happy with my decisions.
Get a push mower. It's insane how much better it is in every single way. There's no reason at all to push a 2 stroke across your lawn after paying for gas and getting it to star. You just quietly glide over that grass quiet. And some have a bag too.
Nah, get an electric mower, best of both worlds. Quiet-ish and still faster than an old push mower. No gas or mixing or worrying about it starting every season, just like the push mower except as labor saving as a gas
Nah, throw your mower in the bin and let your yard return to nature.
Sadly, that's not an option for me until I can get enough allies to take over my HOA board and then proceed to dissolve it.
Just to be pedantic, mowers are 4-stroke because they need torque, not speed
Things like chainsaws are 2-stroke
i mean you don't have to pick grass to be the lawn you have, unless you live in a HOA that requires it
In my whole life, mowing the lawn was fun exactly once.
It was the first time that I got to mow the lawn at the house that I just bought. Every other time Ive had to do it, it sucks.
That's once more than for me.
I’ve got a reel mower and lawn cutting doubles as exercise without noise or cables or bags. Just have to do it regularly.
But then, I also don’t water my lawn, so it’s dormant for large parts of the year, like nature intended.
Nature intended my yard to be mixed hardwood forest.
Lawns are one of those things we do without thinking about it because it's what everyone else has.
If you have space for a lawn, why not turn it into something beautiful and productive like a garden?
Oh, because your neighbors will get made at you for being different.
Oh, because your neighbors will get mad at you ~~for being different.~~ because MuH pRoPeRtY vAlUe!!
Change the narrative. Tell them their property value will plummet because lawns were shit fads that are going out of style.
I like the way my backyard looks with all the clover and stuff for ground cover, but it also makes it almost impossible to enjoy it. The amount of insects and stuff that fly in my face or bite me while I'm out there just makes me miserable. I didn't have this issue when it was just mowed down grass.
Do you have any trees back there? If so, the next step is to build bat boxes to attract bats to live there. They will eat those abundant insects and be very happy! Eventually it should become less annoying!
I agree with you, a bat box or a birdhouse for insectivorous birds.
A battery powered thermacell insect repellent will work in the meantime to keep many insects away while you are outside at least.
I’m jealous, I miss insectlife. Rarely see anything living anymore.
Global insect biomass has declined 75% since I was born. And a big part of it is people who don't want insects on their property - reasonably, as the person you're responding to points out - and manage their lawns to deprive insects of habitat. And there's so many more people in the world now than when I was born, and correspondingly less habitat for insects. And everything else.
You could do what I did:
My parents always had lawns but always had a battery powered mower. They currently have a small lawn that continues to their neighbor's yard that they're planning to replace with something more eco-friendly & drought-tolerant.
Taking notes from Saltburn?
We have a nice wee patch for our daughter to play on that we maintain with a push mower. No extra power needed. Very satisfying.
I love mowing lawns. Put some headphones on and a good audiobook and I can mow for hours. I'm actually a little sad that I only have a small lawn now, because I can barely get into a rhythm before I'm done.
i have a reel mower. until i can completely subvert my lawn, i don't need to tolerate the smoke and noise, at least.
The only care my lawn gets is a mowing or needle raking once in a year. Some bush trimming maybe, but that's it. Rabbits, neighborhood cats, and deer hang out in it all the time.
I would rather live in a dense area and not even have a yard, and instead visit the nearby park for my greenery needs.
Lawns:
require artificial irrigation that contributes to depletion ofvaquifers
create monocultures that reduce biodiversity and harm ecosystems
require maintenance that usually involves burning fossil fuels
shadeless lawns contribute to warmer neighborhoods
act as nitrogen sinks
I'm not a fan of lawns but I have a huge lawn that does none of these things and looks fine. I don't irrigate and my lawn is greener than the neighbors. I let anything grow and cut it long with an electric mower. Plenty of shade /w 20+ oaks covering the whole property. No idea about nitrogen, but I don't fertilize, everything that drops from trees gets mulched back into the lawn which keeps everything healthy. At least there are ways to avoid these things if you care.
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