Guest laugh by David Middleton
Being that this is the time of year when I have to start spending entire weekends on yard work, I almost agree with Mr. Holthaus on this one…
SCIENCE
Get Rid of Your Lawn
It’s a waste of land, and it’s terrible for the environment. You can do something better.
By ERIC HOLTHAUS
MAY 06, 2019This story was originally published by Grist and has been republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
My strategy for finding a house was probably a little different than most: I looked for the one with the smallest lawn I could find.
The privilege of homeownership is increasingly rare these days, and I wanted to make sure my little plot of land would have a net benefit to my city and the environment.[…]
[L]awns are awful for the planet. Our addiction to lawns means that grass is the single largest irrigated agricultural “crop” in America, more than corn, wheat, and fruit orchards combined. A NASA-led study in 2005 found that there were 63,000 square miles of turf grass in the United States, covering an area larger than Georgia. Keeping all that grass alive can consume about 50 to 75 percent of a residence’s water.
Lawnmowers suck up gas and pollute the air: Every year, U.S. homeowners spill about 17 million gallons of gas while filling up mowers. We use tens of millions of pounds of chemical fertilizer and pesticides on our lawns.
All this effort, of course, isn’t cheap. Americans spend more than $36 billion every year on lawn care, 4½ times more than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency.
[…]
My lawn’s days as a grass-based environmental scourge are numbered. I have big plans for my outdoor area: fruit trees, garden space, native plants. It’s small enough that this project should be manageable, even for a single parent with two small kids.
Slate
However, after reading Mr. Holthaus’ rationale for getting rid of his “grass-based environmental scourge”, I am now encouraged to mow, fertilize and water my lawn more often than ever before.
If spending more money on my lawn will cut into the EPA’s budget, I’m ready to break the bank at Lowes Home Improvement and Calloway’s Nursery!
A NASA-led study in 2005 found that there were 63,000 square miles of turf grass in the United States, covering an area larger than Georgia.
Here’s an idea for Mr. Holthaus: Get Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to write a new and improved Green New Deal Cultural Revolution Bill… Forcibly relocate all lawns to Georgia and then cover them with solar panels! Then cover Washington State with wind turbines. This would be enough solar and wind to replace coal and natural gas! Well, except on windless nights and windless cloudy days.
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KMA Mr. Holthaus.
Yesterday I spent a great deal of time running around my acre and the three acres of mowed grass field behind me with my 4 y/o granddaughter. I showed her the apple trees with some budding and one already starting to bring forth tiny apples. I showed her the retention pond with frogs and tadpoles that already have legs evident. She had seen them before without legs evident. Beside the retention pond is the garden already tilled and ready to be planted. Then 30 yards further to the south is the shelter made out of cedar rough cut lumber with a green metal roof and beside that a fire pit. In my side yard is a line of old western pines. The tallest one hit by lightning summer before last when I was home with a strike that scared me, raised the hair on my arms, and was quickly followed by an overwhelming smell of ozone. And we investigated how that tree which had the bark blown off of it in a streak down it’s side was healing. We investigated it all together as I pointed out the maples, oaks, wild Cherry, Locust, and different types of apple trees to her and a couple Fox squirrels and a smaller piney arguing with each other. Then I took her to the little stable across the road with it’s grass enclosure and we fed Holly the pony apple slices.
So Mr. Holthaus, you enjoy your dirt, gravel, asphalt, concrete. I’ll keep my own form of heaven on earth here along with my neighbors that love it like I do.
most of my lawn is old cow pasture that I allow to grow a bit before mowing, never use any fertilizer/etc, and some been reclaimed into a garden.
I’ve also planted tees to keep over heat from direct sun down and, like many others, have been a good steward of the land.
and yes, this means I have to use some gas and a tractor sometimes. oh well.
A week ago a guest on a rerun of a 1960’s episode of “What’s My Line?” revealed that his job was renting geese to cotton farmers for a day. The geese would eat the weeds and leave the cotton plants alone. Three days ago I visited tourist destinations around South Lake Union in Seattle, where there is a large expanse of lawn and walkways. It was filled with geese and goslings eating grass. So maybe “green” municipalities could hire a contractor to use geese to “mow” lawns (?). (Except they might go after flowers too.)
who picks up the goose poops?
17 million gallons of spilled gas and you wouldn’t even know it. Ain’t Mother Nature amazing?
Agree 100%. We should have come up w/a relatively maintenance-free groundcover for lawns by now. WAY too much time/effort/money wasted on grass lawns.
In Southern California some people plant dichondra, a form of clover. It never grows very tall, seldom needs mowing. The only problem is it’s hard to established as a lawn. It seldom needs watering and weeds don’t seem to bother it. It’s a pretty shade of green, too. It doesn’t survive in really cold climates, so I can’t grow it here in Illinois. There MIGHT be other types the will, though.
Holthaus:
Really?
Where will your children play?
Practice soccer?
Throw footballs or baseballs around?
Play field hockey?
Play baseball?
Play chase? Hide & seek?
Play badminton, volleyball or tennis?
Another selfish assertion that changes children in to household prisoners to only be allowed outdoors to attend school or play semi-organized sports…
Nor has Holthaus put any effort into how much land is required to raise sustenance for a small family. Or the crops necessary to feed a family over time.
Instead Holthaus focuses on dilettante gardening where crop harvests are small and frequently abusive.
e.g. a typical planter with the classic “I hate to waste them” attitude and zucchini plants that produce abundantly for a brief period.
Unfortunately many of these dilettantes fail to understand that bigger zucchini is not better zucchini, nor do they learn to can or freeze their produce. Instead friends and neighbors get stuck with the overload of large zucchini.
Pathetic.
I once rented an old farm house, right in the middle of Anaheim, California. It was on 2+ acres! The owner told me it was still zoned for agriculture, and it even had some large old chicken houses. I thought about raising chickens but instead decided to grow a really good, BIG garden. I put in about 40 tomato plants, a hundred feet of strawberries, corn, beans and about 40 squash plants, both yellow crook neck and zucchini. Before planting I spread lots of fresh, supposedly composted cow manure. It didn’t smell that way.
In a few short weeks my garden was starting to produce. I watered it daily, using a timer. At first I got squash. LOT’S of squash. I was a single man, then, so I started taking the excess with me to work every morning, filling up the trunk and sometimes the back seat in my Camaro. They were very popular with my co-workers and the man who drove the lunch wagon. Even so, I had to rent an upright freezer to hold the surplus. I also had fresh sweet corn. I learned a lot of new ways to fix squash. I also got very sick of squash! I was really glad when the plants finally stopped producing! The tomato plants all got blossom end rot, which means I was over watering them, so I didn’t get very many tomatos. The strawberries never did produce as well as I thought they would.
That was the biggest garden I ever tried to manage, about 150 feet by 50 feet. At first I thought about expanding it to a full two acres, but I am glad, now, that I didn’t! As it was, it was far more work than I had time or inclination for. Plus there was also a front and back lawn, which required almost constant mowing. That was an interesting year, for sure.
There is a pattern to these misanthropic movements.
They want us living in as highly urbanized, isolated from nature, crowded in with others, conformist way possible.
In our moderate density neighborhood we have wildlife, nice trees, pleasant individual gardens, diversity of residence, diversity of neighbors.
Hoaxhaus sounds like he is basically shopping for a beehive.
In ’96 we moved to Illinois from Southern California, where you HAD to mow if you wanted a lawn, and the city required you to keep up your lawn. At first I tried watering, using the same sprinklers I’d used in CA. But the water pressure here was so low they barely squirted anything out! The neighbor’s told me that they never water. I nervously tried it, fearing the worst, but, hey, they were right! In Illinois it actually RAINS in the Summer time! Since then I have never watered and the grass just keeps on growing! Of course, it needs mowing constantly. I have finally managed to get one of my grandkids to do the actual mowing, one of the girls! The boys, of course, are all MUCH too busy, playing video games and such. I have used weed and feed a few times, but it seems to me that all it does is FEED the weeds! Besides, the last time I bought a bag it was nearly $50! And RISING! I always leave the trimmings on the lawn to feed it. It makes an excellent mulch, too. I spent a lifetime learning how to manage a lawn and now I’m too old to do it anymore! But that’s OK, too, now I can just sit in the shade and enjoy it! There HAVE been times when I thought about painting it green, when it was dry and looked dead. That probably wouldn’t last very long, though.
“…My strategy for finding a house was probably a little different than most: I looked for the one with the smallest lawn I could find…”
Never heard of a condo or a townhouse?
Hard to tell where this hard to believe meme came from (i.e. that more area of lawns are irrigated than any other ‘crop’ in the USA), but it seems to have been repeated ad nauseam by the usual suspects ands probably started by this modelling study:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Lawn/lawn2.php
So, I’ve no problem with the people trying to estimate the amount of lawn area in the USA, but the leap of imagination it takes to then consider all of that lawn area irrigated and irrigated to the same extent as a field of maize or an almond orchard seems beyond ignorant, not to mention very unlikely.
I’m no fan of lawns, and have only watered my lawns during severe drought. I know some people water lawns out of habit, whether they need it or not, but most people that are paying a water bill don’t waste large amounts of water if they can help it. Golf courses have no choice, but people trying to maintain a greensward around their homes in any area with a summer drought are fighting an uphill battle that they can only lose when water restrictions come into place. Xeriscaping or planting drought tolerant and fire-resistant shrubbery would be a better choice in much of the non-urban Western USA, and far more friendly to wildlife.
Lawns may provide a clear field of fire against trespassers, as one commenter noted, but they are not wildlife friendly unless incorporated with more 3-dimensional plants like herbaceous perennials, shrubs and trees. Think of a wildflower meadow in an open forest situation – wouldn’t you rather have something like that in your front yard than a flat greensward you had to mow every week it rains, water if it doesn’t rain, and pour on fertilisers and pesticides if you are a perfectionist
Poor old Eric. it’s obviously not easy being being paid a climate-scientist’s wages that force you to choose between buying a house with a lawn or buying one without a lawn.
I can envisage most of the rest of the world crying enough for him to water a golf course.