I actually have serious doubts that plants grow better in the complex soup of fats and proteins that a body turns into. In fact I’m pretty sure I remember reading that the romanticized idea of turning your body into a tree after you die basically doesn’t work for this reason!
Biologist here, the body itself isn't what grows the "greener grass". It's just the start of a long biological process that will lead to ecological growth.
A tree isn't going to feed directly off of the body. But the decay process will provide nutrients to the tree. We're talking about insects and fungus at various levels of the process here. You can look up things like the Trophic Levels and Nutrient Cycles for more details on this whole process.
TLDR would be that the corpse floods the area with nutrients and maybe even kills off the plants with over abundance of nitrogen, but then fungus and bugs move in, then bigger bugs and small animals, and so on and then better plant systems. It's kind of neat.
Daikon radishes. They grow in about anything and are especially good at clay busting. Grow a bunch then let them die back. Till them in and repeat until you get enough environment for the worms to take over the tilling. You can keep piling on radishes with something like clover and peas to add some nitrogen fixers. This is more a pasture revitalization technique, but if you don't mind being the weird radish guy for two or three years (depending on local conditions), you could do it on a smaller scale for a lawn
It only rains like a dozen times a year. I've got some decent work on the ground for my garden, there's worms even! But I don't have the time or water to really do several acres. I just kill invasives and water the natives. I have tons of native desert wild flowers but I still need to kill like an acre of buffle grass(I think that's what its called, super hardy invasive African grass). I have a lot of native seeds for larger plants and trees that I'm going to sow and hope they grow after I leave.
Oh, so you're in a real live desert. That'd be way too much work. I bet you have some beautiful natives growing out there. Sucks about the grasses, tho. I have enough trouble with bermuda grass, I can only imagine the problems from something that could be invasive in a desert
Planted by my septuagenarian father with just seeds and water. This is three eight weeks in. He had to water a bunch at first while it was taking root, but it should need less water than grass. The grass prior was pretty toast, but he took the time to remove crabgrass.
I will take a nap on it next time I visit and let you know :)
EDIT: MB, not three weeks-- eight weeks! Apparently, I have experienced a time warp (again) 🙄 SOZ!!
Got it, thanks. I like a mix in a lawn, i let my last backyard grow wild for half a year to see what happened. It was pretty cool, lots of honeybees showed up.
The message of the saying is that you only think that grass is greener because you're not living with it. The grass isn't actually greener on the other side of the fence
okay so that would apply if you could see the dirt, but if we're just talking about a thick turf layer it seems like the top would be greener because that's where most of the reflection is going
well, you're saying the grass looks less green because of the dirt, but then you're not talking about how green the grass is you're talking about seeing dirt
I don't understand the dandelion hate. They are puffballs for maybe two weeks tops. The rest of the time they're either invisible or beautiful flowers.
Also, I'm like the only yard with fireflies in my neighborhood.
