You must log in or # to comment.
My neighbor HATES me because I’ve been converting my backyard into clover. We have fireflies, Butterflies, bees, bunnies, all sorts of wildlife. It smells beautiful, but we are an oasis amongst upper-middle class lawn zombies… Mowing, edging, pesticide spraying, weed killing zombies.
Meanwhile, I have milkweed, clover, chive, snapdragons, black eyed susans, grapes, raspberries, lilac, echinacea, chamomile, lavender, hydrangea, coreopsis, and salvia. I welcome wasps that eat pests, I buy bags of ladybugs, I compost… I’m really trying. It’s only 1/4 an acre, but I’m trying.
Please keep doing it. As a poor landless peasant I celebrate your attempt to preserve some of nature. You’re buying time, which is vitally important
Since getting my own place I can actually have a more natural garden, removed so much concrete. So many bees! I can even hear them from inside now that they are swarming around the poppies. Sage and to some extent chive flowers got a few bees earlier in the year but those flowers have died off now.
Should take pictures of them so that in the future we can remember what bees were.
Hey, that’s pretty cool! Just make sure they’re not actually starting to build a hive inside your walls
From 1 internet stranger to another, thank you. It really means a lot to me that people are doing what they can at their own level like you. I know how demotivating and isolating it can feel to be the only one doing the necessary work.
I dislike the mowing robots because they seem to encourage the Flatt grass only gardens and I hate them.
You can still have flowers around them yes, but the grass is mostly a plant and insect desert.
Spray your neighbors lawn with salt water
The cartago treatment
I love this and I’m working towards a no lawn/native plants setup as well. I hope your neighbour’s hate fuels you. Keep at it!
deleted by creator
Incredibly based thank you for your service o7
Man im working so hard to be that yard, but its not as easy as just stop mowing!
Always on the lookout for invasives, poison ivy, tree sapplings (my yard isnt big enough to support any more trees without threatening the house), and other undesirables.
Then theres also the english ivy encroaching from the corner that I’ve pretty much given up on :/
It’s great that you’re helping your native plants stand against the invasives, they’re like the schoolyard bullies of the backyard.
English ivy is a tough one, but at least getting the vertical growth is a fairly easy to manage. the vertical growth is also more problematic because it is a requirement for producing berries and killing trees
It’s great that you’re helping your native plants stand against the invasives, they’re like the schoolyard bullies of the backyard.
My lack of mowing gives us a light show every summer night.
My yard is the only reason we have frogs and dragonflies.
Friendly reminder that lightning bugs need tall grasses present in addition to wildflowers and leaf litter. You can also improve their survival rates by removing artificial lighting or even just setting any safety lighting (like motion activated lamps) to their shortest “on” duration. Another obvious step is to avoid pesticides.
Alright I’m going to need all of your suggestions as this is the project I’m working on right now.
A bought a small townhouse in Ontario 7 months ago and I have a tiny yard.
The yard had mostly grass, but had a little bit of moss, crab grass, and clover. There is a small garden, and many dirt patches in the yard.
I have spread clover seed in the yard, especially in the dirt patches.
Then I weeded the garden area, removed about half the rocks but left some in the garden, I have my mother coming over next month to help me pick local garden flowers, and I had to pull a tiny tree out because it was planted right beside the foundation of the building and would eventually cause damage.
What else should be added to the lawn? Should I be pulling out the crabgrass? What wildflowers are native to Ontario?
Visit some Garden Centres near you- often they’ll have seed mixes of local perennial flowers available for purchase, you just need to spread the seeds in the spring or autumn.
Also, “weeds” aren’t always weeds, they’re just plants that some people decided get in the way of monocultures. If it’s flowering, it’s feeding insects, so leave it be.
The fireflies are awesome in my area this summer and my humble yard is part of that. It’s honestly so satisfying watching plants come back year after year, bigger and bigger
I’d check for native species of clover, which is invasive in most of Canada.
Given that you are asking in a thread that is the subject of fireflies, we are going to assume you are asking for suggestions to improve firefly accommodations.
In this regard, do not ever clean your yard of any loose leaf vegetation or damp rotting vegetation and it will attract fireflies. Do not remove the weeds unless you can positively identify they are harmful to people, or are invasive non-indigenous. Go to nearby privately owned plant nurseries and ask them for native species for your garden. They will be significantly more expensive to purchase from, and will likely be less aesthetically pleasing plants.
If you don’t care about insects, and are asking simply to project to us a fake progressive personality, then resume decorating your yard with non-native invasive species from your local commercial/franchise garden center, from what it sounds you are currently doing.People of Lemmy don’t know what civility means.
Hold some restraint maybe in assuming you know everything.
Lightning bug, eh? I smell a Pennsylvania native
Yinz can get ahtta tahn.
Begone, Pittsburgher (more like Pittspeasant)
At least I’m not a fan of the Eagles, band and team.
Lightning bugs never existed where I live 😞 I didn’t realize they were real until my mid teens even
West Coast?
I have a small, yet still growing, grove of wild flowers and grasses. I just let my side yard grow whatever it wants (except invasives).
#nolawnsAren’t those called fireflies?
Depends on where you’re from
i’d never heard fireflies called lightning bugs before
Oh Lemmy, I saw all the lightning bugs in the trees last night, blinking fast as hell because of the high temperature, and I thought of you!
I was just discussing my raggedy-ass yard and it’s contribution to the local fauna.
You can do a hell of a lot with a meter squared
