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.
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.
xeriscape the front, let most of the back just grow out wild, and keep a small patch of grass in an area where you like to chill (for me this is in a courtyard)
use an old school push mower for this small patch. You get a little exercise with this, but not enough to ever stress ya, and it requires no gas, no oil, no electricity and barely ever any maintenance.
It's the other way around for me, I don't know anything about pruning.. one of my neighbors cross over to my side to have a chat, and asks, "new home owner, huh?"... I instantly laughed and admitted that owning a home is a HUGE learning curve. You either learn how to maintain your property inside and out, or you pay out the ass to have someone else maintain it. No other option, unless you want to be that neighbor that everyone hates.
Man, guy behind us has a beautiful garden. Just a little plot, probably a quarter acre, but it looks so much nicer than the plots on either side. More functional, too.
I think it's more so that people don't have the time for a productive garden. There are certain times of the year that my small garden becomes the workload equivalent to a part time job.
With composting, weeding, killing squash bugs, seeding, planting, harvesting, and pickling..... I can see why people opt to do something less time consuming.
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.
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.
This is the way I'm doing stuff. I only have electric yard tools, and really only mow when I have to for the city. I'm hoping to replace most of my front lawn with garden beds over the coming years!
I currently only have hand powered yard tools aside from the gas powered lawnmower that came with the house. As long as you stay on top of the pruning hand tools get the job done. I discovered a 20+ foot tall tree hiding in a larger pine when I went to pull a vine off of it and still managed to chop it up with the handsaw for normal city collection. Poured some stump killer on the stumps and one full spring later (I did this at the end of winter when it was nice and cool out, and everything was still dead/hibernating) only one stump shows any signs of life out of the 4 trees I chopped down, and it might even just be a new shoot.
I happen to have family members with birthdays in early March and early April, so I just remember to time it between those two dates. Y'know because just going "it's March it's time to cut back the weeds!" Isn't enough
I also do a daily bike ride around sunset, and I try to do a very quick walk around the yard before/after which gives another opportunity to grab thr loppers and chop a couple of things that are growing in a bad spot
I remember my parents were early adopters in 2011 so we had an electric mower that wasn't battery powered, you would actually have to plug it into the outlet. I remember going to school one day in the 3rd grade, we were assigned to talk about the chores we did around the house, I said that I liked to plug the mower into the outlet and mow the lawn. I got docked 50 points because the teacher didn't believe my lawnmower was electric. "Are you sure you don't crank it?"
I tried buying a plug in mower like that around that era. But the electric at the house we rented at the time was awful, so every time I plugged in the mower, the breakers would flip. Had to return the thing unused and bummed an old gas mower instead.
Recently bought an electric plug in mower. 100 ft extension cord and it can reach every end of the area I keep mowed.
Was considerably cheaper than an equivalent gasoline operated one and I don't have to store/worry about gas. The cord is a very minor inconvenience comparatively.
I also have an electric mower and honestly that cord drives me fucking insane. There are many things in my yard that it can - and does - get caught up on.
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.
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.
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!
Ahhh okay. Another approach to insect control (that doesn’t rely on trees) is a predatory bog. Loads of predatory plants as well as water with (insect / amphibian) predators of mosquitoes and flies.
Those are two entirely different tools with entirely different purposes. Sickles are good for harvesting small parts of plants, not mowing large swathes.
The post says you "you drive it" while you could say that for a push along it seems odd wording.
Before they had electric, that was the only type. It's not fancy.
True that they did exist in the past, however unless you've got an old one they're around twice the price of electric and more expensive to run. But, more than that, it points to you having enough garden to need petrol.
Definitely not more expensive here. We just had to replace ours on a budget and the affordable ones were all gas, over $150 less than the electric ones. Would've loved an electric one instead but it was a no go this time.
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)!
Even brand new they can be bad if they’re not properly made or adjusted at the factory. Think of a pair of scissors where the blades don’t make good contact. Couldn’t cut newspaper with that!
