I'm quoting a caption for a photograph that shows a lot of dandelions blooming and going to seed.
The article's headline is "In Wisconsin: Stowing Mowers, Pleasing Bees/Can the No Mow May movement help transform the traditional American lawn — a manicured carpet of grass — into something more ecologically beneficial?"
Appleton’s No Mow May initiative had a clear purpose: to save the bees — and not just honeybees (which are European imports), but also native bees, such as bumble bees, mining bees and sweat bees. Lawns typically provide poor habitat for bees. But if allowed to flower, lawn weeds — perhaps better characterized as plants other than grass — can provide rare spring food for bees emerging from hibernation.....
I think dandelions are a special problem. Why not sow clover?
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36 comments:
Weed; Plant out of place.
Corn is a weed in soybeans.
Mowing is a non chemical weed management Tool.
Leave dandelions run wild, and the large prostrate leaves smoother out lots of desirable grass species.
I have relatives in southern Wisconsin who participate in a state program to return areas to the native state. I think they plant, weed for a few years to keep non native species out. After a few years the native plants have taken over. IIRC it’s about 2-3 acres.
What does Meade say about this?
many (old hippy professor types) in Ames had prairies for yards.
I thought it was Great, because i legally couldn't be forced to mow my crabgrass
"lawn weeds — perhaps better characterized as plants other than grass"
Thank you.
We've been battling the "weed" slur for so long.
The struggle is real.
Clover makes a beautiful green carpet, similar to grass. Dandelions are something only someone who's never maintained a lawn would promote.
99.999% of lawns in this country get mowed regularly and somehow bees survive.
But if it makes the good people of Appleton feel better about themselves...
"Plants other than grass" is a nice metaphor for most of what the left, the crazy left, wants. White women are now "birthing people" to Harvard professors. It would be nice if the crazies all beamed themselves up some place.
And of course there will be plenty of bees buzzing around in June, proving that it all worked just as planned.
"The NYT checks in on Wisconsin"
Just stick with New York. We don't need your "help".
That would never fly with Massholes. Best lawns in the Universe. It's the one thing that unites the libtards with the deplorables.
Balance the ecological benefits of making your lawn a bee habitat against the harm of all the extra weed killer your neighbors will apply to get rid of the dandelions your lawn is spawning.
Negative externalities are a thing.
I'm not inclined, like they, to tell people how to live their lives. I'm told to go for No Mow May, I'm told not to remove last year's dead growth because this year's bugs might be living in it (somehow, it's always the beneficial bugs you'll kill; apparently the pests have all wintered someplace else).
My grass area is minimal anyway.
I did this with a corner of our property but we have the nastiest weeds here. Dandelions are the least of them. Knapweed and Canada thistle are worse and the bees love them of course.
So I end up weeding the tall grasses. But now I worry about deer ticks hiding in the undergrowth.
Then the Aspen volunteers went crazy, but it's the only forest we have so.
People of teh Cheese! Be proud!
I'm all for wildflowers and in the past have left large swaths with wine cups, paintbrush, partridge pea, etc in my field. I can do that, since I have three acres. I do it for the bees (raised them in the past), but also because I like wild flowers! But many of my neighbors do not have that much land and like their bermuda and zoysia lawns perfecto. Each to their own.
Wisconsin needs to learn about Xeriscaping, as practiced in the dry desert states due to limited local water supplies. In sum, grow native plants that thrive without care in a given climate zone instead of importing wet-and-rainy-Victorian-England-style lawns...lawns create a perfect environment for dandelions.
https://www.epicgardening.com/xeriscape-plants/
Dave Begley said...
What does Meade say about this?
I say do what you want, I’ll do what I want. Don’t bother me with noise, pesticide drift, and yard signs telling me what you believe and what you find to be “no importa.” I’ll happily return the favor. Happy Spring!
Why not sow clover?
Hell, yes! Nothing is better on a hot day than a field full of sweet clover, when you can just catch the aroma on the edge of the breeze! Reminds me of summers spent at my Grandmother's in Western North Carolina.
A lefty couple one street over does this even on their front lawn.
I'd hate to check out his wife's situation, down there.
Ouch! He just slapped me!
Every other year more or less I make the pilot's Hajj to Oshkosh Wisconsin to attend the worlds largest (by far) aviation convention, along with 2 or 3 hundred thousand of my friends.
I have always marveled at how well kept Wisconsin people keep their lawns. Rich or poor neighborhoods don't seem to matter. The bright green grass is always perfectly trimmed and edged, any shrubs are always works of art.
I don't know how they do it, and how rare an unmowed or badly trimmed lawns are there.
Here in Texas, even in rich neighborhoods there is always at least one house with an overgrown weed infested lawn. Always.
Are their vigilante groups that prowl the neighborhoods and make 'offers they can't refuse' to any homeowner who doesn't keep a perfect lawn?
I think that this might be one of the earliest descriptions of a lawn. From a Portuguese chivalric romance in the fourteenth century. It was there amidst the description of the wonders, reserved to the nobility, of a captured castle in "Palmerin of England," which I read because it was one of the books in Don Quixote's library that Cervantes said did not deserve to be burned, and it was oddly compelling, despite its absurdity.
Here were green plats without the intermix-
ture of any other plants, of a short herb'
smooth shaven, whereon to enjoy the sun
when it should be delightful.
I love that it says what the lawn is for.
TO Jim,
We're also in Texas and I, too, admire the yards in OSH each year. One big difference is water. They have it; we don't. So I cut us a little slack! (RV-10)
Jim Howard said...
Are their vigilante groups that prowl the neighborhoods and make 'offers they can't refuse' to any homeowner who doesn't keep a perfect lawn?
Don't know about Oshkosh but here in NE iowa, i learned that (Unlike Ames) if your grass gets long..
You get a letter from the city, telling you that if your yard isn't mown in 3 days..
They will mow it For you, and charge you a Minimum of $250
Being from the Prairie Town of Ames; This took me Completely by surprise (and NOT in a good way)
Xeriscaping? In Wisconsin? It's not a desert, unlike the country west of the Dry Line.
Should be all kinds of available water there.
Dandelions are not comfortable underfoot. Clover is. Turf grass is (some varieties more than others).
I do like the versions of lawn grass I saw many years ago at Kew Garden in London: mixtures of grasses rather than a single variety. I would think that approach would mitigate the effects of disease and pests, and I think it looks pretty.
My SoCal-born husband disagrees. Monoculture all the way for him! (Easy to do when you live in a place where anything will grow if you water it, but it doesn't rain for nine months or so if the year - so you have near-perfect control over what does and doesn't grow.)
No Mow May? Hell, our lawn is still frozen in May.
Not really, but we have a northward sloping lawn that is very slow to get started in the spring. It doesn't requiring mowing until almost June.
Lawns (and driveways) are a mighty big deal in the suburbs. Just last week, we were having a debate about what's acceptable.
Neighborhoods with tidy lawns won't usually allow grass to get out-of-hand. A group of ill-bred, boisterous Hooligans who "congregate" out on the front lawn smoking cigarettes---not allowed either. Errant neighbors who park their pick-ups on the lawn---uncouth.
I've often wondered about how your neighbors feel about seeing a flatbed parked in your driveway. Or, wondering on what Universe it is, that you'd bother to obsess over the opinions of uppity neighbors.....
After we bought our home here in Tucson, my wife called a gardener and asked about someone to mow our lawn (about 30 feet square). He laughed at her and said nobody has a lawn in Tucson.
Wince,
Might be limited to "Januhairy".
I live in Florida and have the lawn mowed 3 or 4 times a month. I have a well established bee colony in one of my trees. They seem happy enough.
When my Mom was a kid in Milwaukee her Dad used to send her and her sisters out to gather dandelion leaves down by the tracks. He knew various ways to serve them, and he had eight kids to feed.
"The NYT checks in on Wisconsin"
Who doesn't go to someone in New York City to get advice about how to live their life, anyway?
I generally have a pesticide-free lawn, as I do worry about runoff and the general ecology of the area. I make an exception for dandelions every few years and put down the stuff that keeps the seeds from sprouting, because that doesn't kill everything else on my lawn. They're just so uncomfortable underfoot, and ugly to boot. Generally my method of weed-management is to mow them down, and pull things that start to look like bushes. It works for me.
My favorite bee-friendly ground cover is purple thyme. My kids love eating it (sometimes I think it's the only green vegetable they get?) because it makes them feel canny and able to live off the land. It never grows too tall, is soft and fragrant underfoot, and flowers into a beautiful purple carpet in July. It does look HIDEOUS in the winter, because it turns black when it dies down for the year, but we get enough snow I only have to really look at it in November and early spring. And the rabbits are happily helping me to propagate it across the lawn over time, which is nice.
Around here the "lawns" are covered with a couple dumptruck loads of riverstone. No mowing, no dandelions, no bees. Any weed that gets through the stones meets its end with a blast of Roundup.
Somebody didn't get the memo. Elizabeth Kolbert at that kissin' cousin publication wants you to have No Lawns.
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