"... but Ms. Ziter thinks it might be related to how people manage their yards, like by mowing. So there is a risk that the carbon we release using gas-powered lawn mowers, for example, could eclipse the soil’s ability to absorb carbon. And before we start chopping down forests and putting in lawns, it is important to note that the study focused on soils, not on what may be growing above. 'You don’t need to have a perfect lawn for it to be really beneficial,' Ms. Ziter said. 'You don’t have to have an incredibly intensive management system. It’s O.K. to have things to be a little wild.'"
From
"A Secret Superpower, Right in Your Backyard" (NYT) about a study of soil in Madison, Wisconsin.
Notice the NYT urge to naysay about lawns.
The carbon we release using gas-powered lawn mowers. No mention of
a reel mower. That's what Meade uses. Carbon absorbing results:
Posts
45 comments:
Not a lot of lawns in Manhattan.
Here in Vegas the local water authority pays you a couple a bucks a square foot to tear out your lawn.
Wow. Do you fertilize or use chemicals? If that's the natural condition of your lawn that is just amazing.
Meade is a pro. Stop torturing us Ann. Vienna Convention and human rights violations with that picture. Cruel and unusual punishment too.
You don’t need to have a perfect lawn
I stopped reading there. Mission Accomplished.
My lawn is 80% Creeping Charlie. I'm thinking of mulching the whole thing this summer. I do want to put in raised beds for veggies -- the question is: How many?
"Meade is a pro. Stop torturing us Ann."
The next stage in your torture will be Meade showing up and explaining how it's done and why it isn't a lot of work, which will removing your excuses, but since you still won't do it, you will suffer. Just get it done! And you'll feel great, like Meade. When he's out there with that reel mower (the one linked in the post), passersby stop and eagerly respond to the offer to take a turn mowing. They love the experience, and express a desire to come back and mow our law again. It's fun, and part of the fun is how much people enjoy it, and not just looking at it -- mowing it, walking on it, reclining on it. It might be something women especially love. I know I do. And it's great environmentalism. You're subtracting from your carbon footprints, even as you make your satisfying footprints in the plush, cool surface.
Also pleasing: the sound of a gas-powered mower when it's not running, and the clippy slithery sound of the reel mower. Get reel! And enjoy the green.
I was going to click over to see if the article would help make sense of that confusing quoted paragraph, but I thought...nah, I really don't care.
I'd rather admire your nice yard.
So I guess we've accepted the concept that carbon must be sequestered.
When he's out there with that reel mower (the one linked in the post), passersby stop and eagerly respond to the offer to take a turn mowing. They love the experience, and express a desire to come back and mow our law again.
I'm reminded of Tom Sawyer and the whitewashed fence here. A great way to get out of work.
My husband used to have a reel mower. I'd take a turn now and again for the exercise. (I'm not the mower in the family.) But he eventually threw in the towel and got a power mower. (Our yard is larger and, shall we say, more interesting topographically than the Meadehouse lawn.) First an electric one, and then a gas guzzler. He's a much happier man now.
"It was not clear why the soil in residential green spaces was better at sequestering carbon..."
It's not clear that it is better.
They measured amount of carbon, not the absorption rate, and the amount of carbon increased with the length of time that the land was considered residential.
Which could indicate the increased carbon is from fertilizer, or from "polluted" city air with more carbon, or sequestered by grass then transferred to the soil...
"mow our law"
interesting typo
"I'd rather admire your nice yard."
Why, thank you. Soon, I'll be back at it. Ahhh, ecology!
"which will removing your excuses"
non-interesting typo.
"It was not clear why the soil in residential green spaces was better at sequestering carbon..."
It's not clear that it is better.
They measured amount of carbon, not the absorption rate, and the amount of carbon increased with the length of time that the land was considered residential.
Which could indicate the increased carbon is from fertilizer, or from "polluted" city air with more carbon, or sequestered by grass then transferred to the soil...
Speaking as someone formerly in the biogeochemistry business, the reason is pretty clear to me. Most residential areas start as bulldozed lots, and the lawn area is low in carbon, because it has been deeper subsoil. As time adds carbon from leaves and grass clippings, the soil becomes more organic rich.
In the "wild", soil is pretty much in steady state with the amount of organic matter falling on the soil being much closer to the amount that gets consumed by decay.
People, even scientists, need to learn to think on a longer term than just one year.
Maybe this will lead to banning crazy loud gas powered lawn equipment. It's almost nonstop noise in a developed suburb.
The reel mower would be great for me except you can't cut a St. Augustine grass lawn with it. The engine noise is something I could do without.
I cut and edge my own lawn in South Florida because: I like the exercise, 2. I save the money spent on a lawn service, 3. it looks better if I do it and 4. the lawn services all set their mowers too low, scalping the vine-like St. Augustine. And people wonder why their lawn doesn't look like mine.
8 months out of the year I have to mow twice a week because - surprise - plants grow like crazy here. I tell my northern friends this is the weed capitol of the world, and not the smoking kind.
If we could just learn to love weeds, imagine the time saved so we could shave more often.
If it wasn't for crabgrass and dandelions, I wouldn't have a lawn. I refuse to fertilize, spray for weeds, or water. I have a riding law mower with a 48 inch mowing deck, and it still takes me about 2 hours to mow the lawn.
Angle-Dyne, Angelic Buzzard said...
I was going to click over to see if the article would help make sense of that confusing quoted paragraph, but I thought...nah, I really don't care.
You better care! An affirmative action author writing about an affirmative action scientist is important.
We had a lawn, that I mowed, when the kids were young and played out back.
Now I exterminate weeds with my bolo. Its also traditionally used to mow grass - well, sort of. Control grass is a better way to put it. There is a trick to mowing grass with a bolo.
Something else not considered in the climate change models?
Besides AA's brains, beauty and character, Meade fell in love with the potential for her garden.
“So I guess we've accepted the concept that carbon must be sequestered.”
Another advantage of not buying into the AGW hoax is that you don’t have to worry about this sort of thing.
I have never been a fan of lawns that you had to mow, since we had most of a half acre growing up that had to be mowed every week. We had horses for a bit, and I could never quite understand my mother’s point that they (the horses) weren’t a god addition to the family because they could keep the grass short w/o the need fir the electric mower. Being the oldest of five boys, I started the youngest, at 8 or 9, and the youngest only had to mow when the next oldest went away to college, at maybe 13. Not what I wanted to spend my summers doing.
Since then, I have mostly managed to avoid having a yard that needed frequent mowings, except for my first couple years in Austin. There I had a large back yard that unfortunately had a number of fire ant nests in it. Took an entire summer to get them under control - I would poison the nests that I would run over with the lawnmower, only to find a week or two later that they had moved.
Currently, at our AZ home, the front yard is gravel and artfully placed desert plants, per HOA rules. Only have to weed on occasion, and can hire that done fairly cheaply. We haven’t put in a backyard yet. She wants winter grass. I want fake grass. Plus, of course, the gravel and artfully placed desert plants. And a fire pit, that we, no doubt, will never use. Managed to dawdle through the first 4 months here, and if I can do it for another month or so, won’t have to deal with that issue again until next fall. I absolutely refuse to put in a lawn that needs to be mowed. Because, of course, she wouldn’t be the one mowing the lawn - I would be. She has always had guys to mow her lawns. Just like pumping gas for her, or changing her oil.
We do have a gas mower in MT, for our “lawn” there. The grass is natural, which means fairly sparse, but will get over a foot tall if not cut. Before I bought the high wheeled mower a couple years ago, she had whatever guy was available weed whack it, then rake the grass up, put in bags, to take to the dump, where it was burned in late winter (need to do this to keep potential forest fires away from the house). I first bought a gas weed whacked, because the electric one was a pain. But the mower was even better - because it would bag it automatically, eliminating the raking almost entirely. There, as another poster above suggested, the yard is a bit more challenging than most have to deal with. Instead of artfully arranged desert plants, as we have here in AZ, there it is artfully arranged rocks (the builder owned a rock quarry) around the yard. Luckily, since the major driver for mowing is fire prevention, I only have to mow a couple times a summer. Which is about my tolerance level for mowing.
Photosynthesis, of course, is the answer to the reduced measure of carbon. Check out "Plants absorb more CO2 than we thought, but …"
“If we could just learn to love weeds, imagine the time saved so we could shave more often.”
We get into this discussion, on occasion. I point out how arbitrary the definition of good and bad is in a yard. Why is one type of plant considered a weed, and another considered a weed? Personally, I consider zukinni a weed, and dandelions a flower. The broader your definition of good vegetarian in your yard, and the narrower your definition of weeds, the less yardwork you need to do.
@AllenS... You don't have a lawn. You have a field. Which is great for dogs and ballplayers. But we are talking about neighborhood best landscaping yard awards, which is a highly competitive activity. It starts with a Professional Landscape Designer and carefully transplanted ornamental bushes, flowers and zoysia grass hand cut with a reel mower.
"Trophy wives deserve trophy homes." I think that's Meade's motto.
That is a beautiful photo of a beautiful lawn. Makes me think of three things - velvet, itchy summer nights after a day of rolling around on the grass, and that I have never mowed a lawn.
Notice the NYT urge to naysay about lawns. The carbon we release using gas-powered lawn mowers. No mention of a reel mower. That's what Meade uses.
Do the clowns at the NYT even have lawns? I would bet most live in high-rise apartments in Manhattan. If they do have lawns, do they consider the impact of the cheap paid help (mostly illegals and their families) into the CO2 equation?
First off, People, the article is lying to you. It is talking about "carbon" when what it really means is "carbon dioxide" two completely different substances. Carbon is a solid that has no way of getting into the atmosphere. Think graphite, coal, diamonds. Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring gas that is present in extremely small atmospheric quantities (>0.04%) But people talk about "carbon" because it is scarier, and dirtier (pencil leads, coal dust) than carbon dioxide.
So let's start from the premise that they are lying to us when they say carbon instead of carbon dioxide or CO2.
Lawns, shrubs, trees etc do absorb CO2 but only when they are growing. As soon as they die, such as when the lawn is mowed, the CO2 goes right back into the atmosphere. Quickly if left exposed, slowly if buried but it always returns.
Lots of people go gaga over solar energy (Expensive! Unreliable! Unstable! What's not to like?) as the answer to global warming. We are seeing that here in Puerto Rico where our govt wants to rebuild the electrical grid with solar.
AES wants to replace all the base load with 10,000 megawatts of solar. Solar needs 5 or more acres of panels per megawatt. Doing the math, that means 80 square mile or more of land that will be covered up.
Some, let's say half, though probably much less, of the panels will be on roofs and over parking lots and such. That will not displace any greenery. But at least 40 square miles of green, CO2 absorbing, plants will have to die for solar.
More info at darkislandpr.blogspot.com including a Google Earth pic of AES's 454MW coal plant which has a 5MW (effective) solar plant on the same site. The solar plant takes up more land than the 90 times bigger coal plant.
The coal plant makes electricity for 9-12cents/kwh. The solar plant makes electricity for 18 cents/kwh.
John Henry
Last time I looked the Times used data from lawnmowers with two-stroke engines, not the inherently less-polluting four-stroke engines.
I have noticed that lawns in the north, especially Wisconsin and Minnesota since I have been there, are wonderfully deep green and weed free. In coastal Virginia where I attempt to keep a nice lawn, we have weeds that do not even have the courtesy to die in winter and grow from March 1 until Thanksgiving. The grass plants peter out before that though new grass does best in October. By any measure, Meade is a true grass whisperer!
One other comment about how we get lied to about solar power:
Most articles, even in the technical press, speak of solar plant capacity as if it were cloudless noon 24/7. That is, the Humacao PR plant shown in the darkisland blog is called a "40MW" plant because that is how much it can generate at peak. That is a "nominal" or nameplate rating.
The actuality is that solar panels can only generate 6 or so hours per day. Average, more in summer, less in winter. Of that 6 hours, very little is at full nominal capacity.
So the 40MW nominal plant output, over the course of a year will be the equivalent of a 10MW or so diesel, coal, gas, hydro or other normal plant that can run continuously.
So remember that any time someone talks to you about solar or wind energy. Whatever number they tell you will almost always be nominal. Effective capacity will be 25% of that. Or less.
John Henry
It's all those pets we're burying the yard. Makes for richer soil...
We should get a push mower for our grass areas. The areas are small and near the house and deck. (not much more than the areas that Althouse and Mead have it looks like) It wouldn't take much time to mow those areas and would be good exercise. Since I am the one who mows the property, I think I will buy a mower for myself.
We still need a gas powered John Deere riding mower for the rest of the property though. In the spring, I mow the orchard area several times to keep the weeds down a well as other areas outside of the orchard where we do not water. The orchard is on an underground 'drip system' that waters each tree separately. The plants eventually give up and stop growing :-). I also mow along the road edges outside of our property, again for weed control and a fire break. The riding mower is also handy in that I have a small dump style yard trailer that I can hook onto it and it is great for hauling orchard trimmings, weeds, and other debris to the burn pile
We burn in the spring and in the fall. BIG heaping piles of tree trimmings right now that I need to burn ASAP !!! before the birds decide to make homes in the pile.
I don't feel the least bit guilty or worry about my carbon footprint either.
Plants NEED CO2, so I park the car backed up to the garden and let it idle a couple hours a day.
LOL, Sam.
>Plants NEED CO2, so I park the car backed up to the garden and let it idle a couple hours a day.
I hope you don't have any houseplants...
"If it's green it's grass" is my philosophy.
Those are nice borders. I congratulate him. We can't do that down south, or not nearly so well. Beautiful.
"I have noticed that lawns in the north, especially Wisconsin and Minnesota since I have been there, are wonderfully deep green and weed free. In coastal Virginia where I attempt to keep a nice lawn, we have weeds that do not even have the courtesy to die in winter and grow from March 1 until Thanksgiving. The grass plants peter out before that though new grass does best in October. By any measure, Meade is a true grass whisperer!"
I thought he'd come in and give a lot of good advice, but maybe he didn't because he's done it before.
The reason there are no weeds is that he keeps pulling out all the weeds. There were plenty of weeks (and crabgrass) before he started working on the lawn. He also reseeds it a lot and waters it a lot and mows it a lot. As for things like fertilizer and peat moss... he'd have to tell you that.
John Henry: Actually, Black Carbon (BC) is a significant air pollutant and a short-lived greenhouse gas. It is the easiest to treat at the stack and causes the most damage. It is especially pernicious as a result of high sulphur fuel combustion. Check out how polluted Greenland ice is with black soot. BC air pollution began the massive Alp glacier melt starting in 1850 with industrial coal burning in Europe.
Soot Causes Sea Level Rise
Soot Ends Little Ice Age
I'm now imagining a small company in Brooklyn--even better if Queens-- that hand makes custom Steampunk reel mowers from recycled steel.
So Meade is a Lawn Professor. Huh.
Something that surprised me about South Florida:
After living in Illinois for 32 years I got to know about dandelions and how relatively difficult they are to remove from a lawn. But here, the variety of dandelion grows only a shallow root, so they're easy to pull out of the ground.
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