Lawn 2.0: Natural Lawn Care

Excerpt from Justin West’s masters dissertation

‘Unlawning what we have lawned’

Lawns are to me an embodiment of the confusion which we as a society are experiencing. Lawns reflect our desire, conscious or unconscious, to control our surroundings and separate ourselves. Lawns (urban parks aside) are actually rarely used in the recreational activities for which they are well designed. They are a leftover from the 17th and 18th century European gentry when landowners were few and labour was cheap. They have continued to act as status symbols, and have spread extensively, particularly in the US following the suburban sprawl of post- WWII. In a NASA sponsored study lawns in the US were estimated to cover 32 million acres.

It is the most extensive irrigated crop in the country (about three times that of corn). 50-70% of residential water is used for irrigation. The collective maintenance budget of this ‘crop’ was in the range of 29 billion dollars in 2002, or roughly 1,200 dollars/using household. That something so wasteful can be a sign of wealth is understandable, but how something so lacking in health and diversity can be a sign of wealth is a reflection upon the dearth of ecological education in our society.

The lawn, it seems, separates us like a moat from the untidiness of our surroundings-be they the neighbour’s property, or a stretch of unmanaged woodland. Neighbours come and go, the woodland grows denser and more entangled, but the lawn-moat remains, an embodiment of a seemingly timeless order. This form of tidiness is in actuality, as Bill Mollison says, ‘maintained disorder.’ Lawns are spatially extended without regard for temporality. The striving forward into complexity and diversity is stunted by each pass of the whirring blades. Our abilities to perceive life’s movements juxtaposed with its durational qualities are rendered virtually obsolete in wastelands of ‘lawnliness.’

Due to their very design forest gardens have high potential for replacing unnecessary and unused residential lawns. They are complex and diverse, which means they are not well suited for large scale mechanized operations. However, they are very low maintenance, but require frequent periodic human participation, mostly in the form of harvesting abundant food crops. And…

…they are beautiful.

Click Here for Video on This Topic

Practice Natural Lawn Care

It’s easy to save time and money by putting these steps to work for a beautiful yard.

Mow higher, mow regularly and leave the clippings.

Mow more frequently when grass is actively growing so that you are only cutting no more than one-third of the height of the grass. This practice minimizes the amount of grass clippings. The desired height of grass varies depending on climate. Contact your local Cooperative Extension office for local recommendations. “Grasscycling,” or leaving the clippings on the lawn, doesn’t cause thatch build up—but it does make lawns healthier. Soil organisms recycle the clippings into free fertilizer, and you save all the work of bagging. Modern mulching lawn mowers make “grasscycling” even easier and homeowners can reduce their mowing time by 30 to 40 percent by not having to bag clippings.

Honey, I Shrunk the Lawn!

• Grass grows best on level, well-drained soil in full sun or part shade.
• Consider alternatives to grass on steep slopes, shady areas or near streams and lakes.
• In these areas, it takes a lot of extra work (and sometimes chemicals) to maintain grass.
• Look for other plants, such as ground covers, better suited to soggy soil, slopes or heavy shade.
• Leave or plant a “buffer” of dense native vegetation along streams and lakes to filter and slow run-off, shade and cool the water, provide homes for wildlife and prevent bank erosion.

Lawns need only about one inch of rain a week in summer to stay green. Or you can let areas of lawn that don’t get heavy wear go brown and dormant— they’ll bounce back in the fall.

Overseeding can improve the quality of your lawn.

• Core aerate in the fall to improve root development and water penetration.
• Follow by overseeding thin areas of lawn with grass seed blends recommended for your area.
• Then “top-dress” by raking in quarter- to half-inch of compost to cover the seed and improve the soil.
• Repeat these steps annually as needed to improve poor lawns.

How  Grass  Grows

Ananda Harvest Presents Dave Jacke

Join Dave Jacke as he graces New York and Ananda Ashram with a spiritual perspective of the building and evolving Permaculture movement. Please RSVP by Monday April 12th.  Additional information on the shuttle to and from Harriman will be provided.

How To Repair The World

Hard to believe how easy it really is to solve our climate and pollution problems. Put the planet back to a more natural state and it fixes itself!! It is funny how as humans we tend to complicate a beautifully simple process. Watch this short video.

Perennial Perpetual Food!!

Eric Toensmeier Tours His Backyard Perennial Food Garden and teaches us that with a little know how, we can change the way we look at “yard work”. He is producing delicious, healthy food nearly year round in a relatively small space.

More videos in this series are available at Permaculture & Regenerative Design News

Garlic…

Now is fairly close to the time (a little late by my estimates) that people plant garlic in our area. My father and I have been doing a little research on the subject.

Growing Garlic with Tom Ashley – Part 1 of 17
Garlic Propagation with Daniel Botkin

This a nice series and an interesting video from two farmers up in Massachusetts. Tom Ashley from Dancing Bear Farm and Daniel Botkin from Laughing Dog Farm. In the latter segment Daniel sows a large amount of garlic, fast, by planting the whole bulb, then separating and transplanting it come spring time. Pretty awesome technique for for speed and I get the feeling there might be some other intelligence that nature has bestowed upon this method.

I sent Daniel an email inquiring about the particulars:

Hi Matt,

No it’s still prone to those things… however, you can quickly seed out
hundreds of cloves and have them ready for early spring separation and
transplant. When the ground is freezing up, I revert to this method just to
up my total # garlic planted. They all need mulch and a bit o luck, whether
separated or not. Happy planting/eating.

Daniel

> Does planting garlic in whole undivided bulbs help the garlic resist the
> potential perils (heaving, not enough time to establish roots, etc…) of
> late planting in colder weather (as compared to sowing cloves individually
> in the same conditions)?
>
> Thanks a bunch,
> Matt

For those wanting to delve further, here’s a nice article about growing garlic in Minnesota.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/cropsystems/DC7317.html

I figure it could be especially pertinent. People growing in Minnesota are planting in what might be an even colder/tougher environment. Any tips they have might ensure a healthy hardy garlic crop. I’m almost positive we’ll be going with a Hardneck variety. Johnny’s Seeds says German Extra-Hardy is the beezneez.

Greening the Desert II: Greening the Middle East

.

Greening the Desert II: Greening the Middle East from Craig Mackintosh on Vimeo.

“This example has to be set so that the world can have a positive future. Unless this soil management is fully demonstrated, extended and enhanced, then we don’t have any future. The world is just going to turn to dust.” — Geoff Lawton

This half hour video documents the ongoing work of Permaculture gurus, Geoff and Nadia Lawton, in the Dead Sea Valley, and is an update to the famous ‘Greening the Desert‘ clip.

You’ll get to see and learn about the original Greening the Desert site and see some of the spin-off effects of its influence throughout Jordan, and you’ll also be introduced to a new educational demonstration site that was started last year.

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

This film is really a must-see for anyone interested in what happens when the oil really does run out:

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call “The Special Period.” The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope. The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil is a project of The Community Solution, a non-profit organization that designs and teaches low-energy solutions to the current unsustainable, fossil fuel based, industrialized, and centralized way of living.

Note: There are some audio sync problems for me in the Google Video version. You may alternatively try this version, hosted on Dailymotion: PART 1 and PART 2.

Project Bona Fide

Michael Judd and his team seem to be doing some truly incredible work over at Project Bona Fide, and we certainly hope to have him as a guest lecturer this coming year at Ananda. From their website:

Project Bona Fide is a non-profit organization working toward sustaining culture through organic agriculture, community correlated outreach, and re-forestation projects in Nicaragua. Project Bona Fide has been created out of a need to support rural Nicaraguan farming communities so that they may gain self-empowerment and economic stability. In addition to offering farmers financial and technical support toward gaining international organic certification, Project Bona Fide focuses on establishing much needed fair trade export market* opportunities, preserving natural environments, and focusing on local health and nutrition projects.

Michael and his team also teach Permaculture PDC courses in both Nicaragua and New York. Thanks once again to Janaka for pointing all of this out!

Greening the Desert

This is the video that first got me interested in the potential of advanced Permaculture, and I doubt that I am alone in that respect! It shows a technique of combining guilded planting and intelligent water harvesting to essentially reverse desertification, making such lands productive for growing food. The experiment was done in Jordan, just off the dead sea, and is pretty remarkable. As I understand, it is still there, and still producing without much additional human interaction.

Highly recommended viewing for everyone.

Taranaki Farm: Brilliant Ideas from Victoria, Australia

I am seriously impressed with the Taranaki Farm Blog. Lots of great ideas, lots of simple solutions to otherwise complex problems. Highly recommended articles are Farm Like a Gardener and Keyline Plowing with Compost Tea Application. They also have a really cool Newsletter, a great video library and a number of other interesting things over there.

Making barren lands bountiful

A cool interview with Geoff Lawton of the Permaculture Research Institute: