Hi all - anyone with an urban orchard keep their grasses tall? The status quo is of course keep your lawn short in urban setting, but I’m experimenting with letting current grasses/plants grow tall at this point in the season.
I’ve got a 4ft circle of mulch around all trees and I’m hoping the tall plants help the area stay cool and retain moisture. On an 87F day today I measure the mowed grass paths around 100F and the tallest/thickest grass areas around 85. I used a surface instant read thermometer.
Anyone else play with this variable or have any advice? Thanks!
Neat fact on the temperature difference, I believe it 100%, transpiration makes all the difference. The next step is replacing your entire lawn with a flowering ground cover that you never need to mow again!
The reason you see lawns so short in urban settings are because of HOA fines. HOA will often have rules stating grass can only be a certain amount of inches high or you endure a fine. If you refuse to or can’t pay their fine the HOA will repossess your house. Everyone thinks of a bank doing that but the HOA has that power too. It was not until recently that it was illegal for HOA to not mandate you have a lawn here in CO. Finally of a few years ago the HOA cannot require grass on your property as it takes too much water to maintain grass where I live.
We have no HOA, so this is irrelevant. We do, however, have a city code that requires 12 inches or less on grass height in the front parcel. You could in theory receive fines after years of inaction.
What’s really at play is a cultural norm of short lawn that supposedly serves some purpose. It’s really just a euro centric norm that needs to go the way of the dinosaur, esp in the age of climate change.
Then the city is enforcing it. Like others have mentioned many are replacing the lawn with ground cover. The first one most seem to go to here in clover. There are plenty of ground cover though. French Terragon, thyme, arctic raspberry, buried treasure (although it spreads slowly) and carpet raspberry (in warm climates) are all edible ground cover. For non edible there is sedum too. The reasons I see on arguments for grass is it allows a cool space for children to play and my mother claims it helps with seeing things like snakes. I am personally one that thinks if you are worried about snakes you should just wear some snake chaps and boots opposed to keeping a lawn. Not only that but I have noticed when looking up venomous snakes that they are often evolved to hold color to their environment. In Florida they have the green viper which blends in wonderful with the green foliage. In TN and NC they have the pigmy rattlesnake which looks like a grey stone. In the macaw dessert they have the maw haw rattlesnake which looks similar to the dirt and a cactus. Here where grass is brown so are the rattlesnake. Grass won’t help.
See my post right before you. Snakes blend in with their environment by evolution. Where it is green snakes are often green or are the color of a stone like the green viper or the pigmy rattlesnake. In the places grass turns brown so are rattlesnake. Where you see cacti the the mayahaw desert you see they are a greenish color reminiscent of a cactus. Grass will not help with a deadly snake. Your best bet is boots and snake chaps.
Besides for snakes, long grass is also a great place for blood sucking insects like ticks, fleas, chiggers and turkey mites to hang out. They all just wait for you to pass by for a little of your blood.
We mow our prarie grass pastures and roll into hay rounds twice a year when they are about waist high. The rest is in weekly mow during the growing season so we can enjoy it and also to control the above.
We have maybe have an acre of natural unmowed land that we mainly pick wild blackberries from. But as soon as we are done, we strip our clothes and toss them into the washing machine. And then jump in the bath tub with palmolive orginal green (not the concentrate) to sufficate the blood sucking insects that found their way to our skin. No matter what kind of protective clothing and insect spray you apply to your skin, they still find away to attach to you for a little of your blood and leave you itching like crazy.
Plenty of cities have similar regulations, and can get legal judgments to use as leverage against a person’s property. When I lived in Berkeley, a nuisance ordinance was used to force the sale of a property. There is a recent case in Florida where a man refused to mow his lawn, incurred $30,000 in fines, and now must sell his house to pay.
I’ve been hoping to see one my whole life and never ran across one (Pygmy rattlesnake). Their range covers my area but I think it’s incorrect. I really like snakes tho, especially king snakes. Been catching them likely since I could walk. I know most people avoid snakes at all costs, spiders too. I’ve never owned a snake so I’m not some enthusiast, just have always enjoyed seeing/catching reptiles in the wild. Unfortunately the only thing that frequents my yard is glass lizards so far. But I also let my tiny backyard turn to “pasture” with crimson, red and white clover for the pollinators and my chickens.
I don’t want to start raising fowl, but a friend swears by her guinea hens for keeping her “lawn” free of ticks.
Growing up in northwest Arkansas we saw snakes -king, garter, copperhead, timber rattler, water moccasin, black- often. Easy enough to avoid. Black snakes could be introduced in the house’s crawl space to clear out mice.
Funny you should call it eurocentric. We call it “The English Lawn”. Try fining anyone here for growing a meadow on their property. That would likely cause a revolution (maybe not in Switzerland).
I’m okay with keeping the grass tall. When the grass is seeding, it gets a little ridiculous to wade through seed stalks, so I cut around trees and paths create paths. I leave areas without traffic un-mowed.
There’s a lot of native or naturalized flowering plants that just grow wild and I like the look of it in my orchard. Chichory, thrisles, buttercup, creeping charlie, clover, etc. Some have tap roots which add to the soil as well.
I’m also weary of ticks, and that’s the main reason I cut.
