Lawn care - Don't rake your leaves?

This article or another just like it provoked quite a bit of comment in the gardening blogging community recently. The idea is ecologically sound; leaves represent biomass and resources trees removed from the soil, so don't remove them, mulch them to retrieve the nutrients.  So far so good, but if TPP followed this advice for just two years he would have a young forest. If you only have one or two trees and a whole big lawn, well OK, mulch away. Do remember that if too much organic material accumulates grasses get shallow rooted and become easily damaged. Your lawn will be more easily damaged. The organic material may attract more root feeding grubs. Our 1.3 acres has about a dozen very large trees and the leaf accumulation is significant and heavy enough to quite bury lawn even if the leaves are mulched with a lawn mower.  In places leaf accumulation can reach 12", and when TPP tried mulching and bagging them he had to stop every few feet to empty the bag. Our city does pick up leaves and mulch them enmass allowing people to pick up organic mulch to return to  gardens for free so they are not going to a landfill (one argument used by don't rakers). Some local farmers also take the leaves for their soil improvement.  Our personal leaves are moved to more heavily wooded areas or mulched and used in garden beds.  Even here the battle with woody weeds is unrelenting, and if the seedlings are not removed annually, well, a dense thicket of saplings will quickly appear.  In particular the do-not-rake-leaves advice is suspect especially if you have sugar maples. Because they make both sun and shade leaves, their crowns are dense (they can intersect up to 95% of the incoming light that hits their crown).  Growing grass under these trees is nearly impossible, although ferns and low-light ground covers work fine, and they can often handle a considerable mulch of leaves. But again the point is, you don't have lawn by the ordinary definition. Such a mass of leaves landing in our pond would begin turning it into a bog, and netting the pond and leaf removal is a bit of a problem that must be dealt with to have a big water feature. So do give this advice some thought before yelling yahoo and selling your rake. It doesn't work everywhere or for everybody.

Blue lawn to green slime

A month ago a large portion of our lawn was a carpet of blue scilla.  It took decades for the scilla to multiply so prolifically, and it's a wonderful and lovely harbinger of spring.  What could be the problem?  A month has passed and lawns need mowing.  The blue lawn is now a verdant thicket of green scilla leaves, but they mow right?  Sort of.  The leaves of scilla contain a considerable amount of mucilage and moisture.  The discharge from you mower is basically green slime.  Generally the best strategy is to simply wait until the scilla leaves begin to yellow and fade before mowing the densest parts.  Even where the scilla isn't solid, it can get so slippery, you can barely get enough purchase to push the mower!  Ah, well, nothing's perfect. 

New herbicide kills lawn weeds - and all your trees!

According to a report in the NY Times, DuPont has a winner on their hands with the "environmentally friendly" new commercial herbicide Imprelis. Apparently it kills violets and creeping charlie and some other really, really tough lawn weeds. It also appears to kill shallow rooted landscape trees including conifers. But you know, getting all those obstructions out of the way will make it so much easier to mow your monoculture of grass. According to one landscape/lawn care professional, they made 1000 applications of Imprelis and had 350 complaints about dying trees, and the number is climbing. Apparently the product is implicated in the death of thousands of Norway spruce, eastern white pines, and other trees on golf courses after the use of this herbicide. Now the Phactor's views on the ecology of lawn care are well known, although not followed by enough people, so he cannot condone the use of this product, but he knows from experience that creeping charlie mows really nicely and it grows well in the shade of those trees that you didn't kill. Think about it. Know how long it takes to grow a really big tree? Know how long it takes to kill it? Better to learn to live with creeping charlie. Now this also says a thing or two about the dummies at DuPont who must have never tested their product on anything but turf because how else do you end up marketing a product as environmentally friendly if it kills trees!

A narrow escape from a horrible place!

As it happened, a social invitation took us to an unsavory side of town, so bad that initially the Phactor was surprised to learn we knew anyone who lived there, the Burbs! It was ghastly! First of all, it’s one of those places with a pretentious name, something like Eaglecrest, or Mountainview, or Cornrow, and only one of those has any relationship to realty reality. From the moment the car door opened, the monoculture of evenly mowed and neatly trimmed grass was over whelming, the waste of time and effort appalling, the peer pressure enormous. Trees were stuck here and there into this green carpet of turf like lollipops with neat little donuts of colored, oh yes, nothing natural here, mulch. And then the worst, all those poodled shrubs, neatly rounded, or sharply squared. Somehow a glass of wine found my hand; it was white, the wine, of course. The lovely hosts began introducing me, Mrs. Phactor being well known already, and in so doing said something to the effect that he, being me, has the most gorgeous garden. But compared to what? The whole development was just one step above a Walmart parking lot aesthetically speaking. Had the car keys been in my pocket, the Phactor probably would have bolted on the spot, and as it was, it required great will power to suppress the urge to scream and run, but holding out bravely, until about the time the smoked salmon was consumed, it being a necessary accompaniment to the wine, having had the wine choice made for me so the only correction was food choice, an escape plan was quickly devised, and with a thank you to our hosts, we carefully, least any harm befall us from gangs of roving lawnmowers and hedge trimmers, escaped back across the beltline into the safety and serenity of our urban setting. What a close call! The horror of it all still creates shivers.

Lawn biodiversity versus monoculture

As many of you probably know, the Phactor is not a fan of grass monocultures. Lawns with some diversity are so much easier and cheaper to maintain. So quite to my surprise and with no effort what so ever, a considerable expanse of lawn has become a virtual monoculture, but not of grass, but the common violet. If full bloom 2500 square feet of purple and white violets is quite colorful and virtually nothing else is growing there at all. This is ecologically perplexing unless the violet is indeed the most competitive species. Now the question is to intervene or not. Oh, Mrs. Phactor says there is no choice, so some violetence is going to be exacted upon this lawn. In another area Viola labradorica is proving a well behaved component of the lawn. Wonder what conditions led to the violet takeover. Based on the number of seedlings, violets had a very good year for reproduction. Wonder if some experimental quadrats could be set up?

Lawn care and OCB

The Phactor has lectured you at length about the terrible things that happen when the object of your desires is a monoculture of grass. Indeed, it appears that one of the foibles of grass-only lawn care is the development of a full-blown obsessive-compulsive behavior. And that starts with B which rhymes with G and that stands for GUN, and what is the use of having one if you don’t use it? Can we not at least agree that shooting a neighbor because their dog urinated on your lawn is improper if not uncivil lawn care? At least the dog was not shot, blameless as it was for doing what was expected when out on a walk, and when you got to go, you go. So the lesson here is obvious. Do not walk your dog past properties where the lawn is perfect because the owner is likely a mental case and should your shadow fall upon a blade causing an asymmetry it might ruin the whole boring aesthetic. And out here in Lincolnland that is a hanging offense, but since that might break a perfect branch out of your carefully nurtured Bradford pear, not the strongest tree to begin with, shooting is the best thing of your landscape. Hope you are all looking forward to that next seminar on lawn care to be held down at the Cook County jail.

Now is the time ....

It's spring here in Lincolnland and this is the time for action.
First, now is the time to begin a flowering log for your garden to keep track of what and when everything flowers. Such a log will show you when and where you have flowering "gaps" and the beginning of data that can be useful for showing changes in the flowering season. Such data kept for over a century (and this is why you should start as soon as possible) have shown significantly earlier flowering in the northeastern USA, a trend consistent with a warming climate. The Phactor has never done this himself formally, and it will be a challenge what with several hundred flowering plant species to keep track of (150+ trees and shrubs & who knows how many perennials).
Second, now is the time to begin ignoring your lawn. This can never begin too early. Avoid the temptation to buy all that high nitrogen lawn fertilizer all the stores have in stock. If you must spread something to keep the neighbors from staring, spread milky spore to provide a biological control of Japanese beetle and other lawn grubs. At most sow some seed on bare spots. If you start your lawn out early on a fertilizer diet it will expect water and nutrients all summer long, and rather than having your lawn go dormant in the heat of summer, as it should, you will be out there mowing, harvesting all that inedible biomass, a wretched excess caused by your own exuberance and misplaced energy. Think of the money you will save and buy yourself some new plants so the garden shops don't go under. Remember, a monoculture of grass just is not very interesting, not sophisticated aesthetically, and not ecologically stable.

Ecological lawn care

The Phactor is an excellent source for advice on lawn care.

Lesson 1: Nothing is duller or more uninteresting than a monoculture of grass! This is a basic principle from which all else follows logically. Grassy lawns are such simple ecosystems they require a constant input to maintain, while if sufficiently ignored they will reach a more complex state of stability. A visitor to my spacious estate once asked how lawn weeds were managed in the shadier areas? Simple, they are left alone, of course, some are only weeds when in a lawn (scilla, spring beauty, bluebells, trillium)(see photo). My lawn ecosystem forms a green expanse, so what does it matter if the

chloroplasts are housed within a grass or creeping Charlie?

Lesson 2: Minimize lawn area. You can’t eat grass, so transform as much lawn as possible into gardens. Big beds of perennials will relieve lawn boredom and in the long run take much less work. You’ll be able to trade in that big honking Peterbilt riding lawn mower (you need the exercise of walking anyways) for a funky garden bench with a matching table upon which to place your margarita.

Lesson 3: Never, ever fertilize your lawn! Nutrients just make the grass grow and then you have to mow it. It’s a nasty cycle.

Lesson 4: Never, ever water your lawn! Didn’t you get the idea of Lesson 3? Don’t be a slow learner; the idea is to avoid mowing. Besides grass is supposed to turn brown and go dormant in hot, dry summers. Your neighbors probably don’t know this and they would appreciate the information. Lead by example; suburbia will raise a statue (or is that a statute?) in your honor.

Lesson 5: The plant diversity of your lawn and gardens is directly correlated with your IQ. This goes without saying, and it explains why lawn monoculturalists are so difficult to teach.

Lesson 6: Start writing a book. If anyone complains about your minimalist lawn care, simply counter by saying, with a slightly affected tone, “My book writing doesn’t leave time for things like lawn care.” This immediately puts the complainer on the defensive; what have they ever written? This has been working for the Phactor for about 10 years now and counting (hope my editor doesn’t see this).

Lesson 7: Plant lots of trees. Grass doesn’t grow well under trees so you can plant ferns and shady wildflowers and never, ever mow again. But don’t throw that old lawnmower away; they are pretty useful for chopping up leaves each fall which you apply as mulch.

Coming soon to this blog. How to get sponsorship for your gardening blog.