this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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Turns out I've been cultivating natural gardens and eco friendly habitat for years, much to the chagrin of my neighbors, just by not caring enough to spend my whole summer seeding, weeding, and spraying.
I thought the one thing about these sort of yards compared to more varied ones is that they're way easier to maintain.
Of course just not doing yard work is another option but maybe not so pleasant after a while.
It's less of a not doing work and more of a not trying to fight nature. I have very dense clay soil here, so trying to force some fragile grass seed is an uphill battle. But the clover and this fern-like stuff, that shows up without trying and keeps coming back. Just give it a trim every so often and let the critters that wander through help shape what suits their diets.
After the 2nd year of cutting our farm, we stopped, our vets told us it's actually better for our rescues to have roughage than just straight grass. A good number of ours are metabolic and aren't supposed to eat super sugary grass. After the 1st year of not cutting, all the animals look great and tons of insects came back, now we have fireflies in the summer by the thousands, I haven't seen them since I was a kid. It's been amazing. Some of the fields in the morning during the summer I'll go out and just listen, as the noise from all the bugs is incredible.
O and the few small caves we have....the bats are back in large numbers as well...love me some bats.
My place has a pile of bats, in a large part I suspect because of the wrap-around style gutters they like to hang out in. Had a bunch decide to move into the fireplace for a bit though which wasn't ideal. Brought a pup that got lost into a rehab shelter. Made for a nice chance for the my kid to see something a lot don't get to up close.
Nicely done, thanks for saving the little guy and not killing them.
I've done the same, and now my yard is green year round because all that's left are native plants. My neighbor was bragging about his $300 water bill, then asked me what my secret was.
I let everything flower in the spring to let whatever survived the heatwaves, droughts, and freezes seed and outcompete the new stuff, then it gets mowed every other week at the highest setting.
I am about to seed some clover to help fix more nitrogen into the soil, though.
I just realized I can probably spray the yard with aquarium water after I do a change instead of pouring it down the drain.
That aquarium water idea is great, totally stealing that for the veggies this year.
Aquaponics is pretty cool.
This is simple and yet genius. Very low maintenance which is perfect, I hate having to spend so much time caring for a lawn.