Various factors affect sustainability in lawn care:
- Height of the grass: Don't cut too short! Let it grow a little longer to reduce evaporation. it also reduces how often you need to mow. (Remember, what "lazy gardening" is actually efficient gardening.)
- Choice of mower affects energy use as well as pollution (water pollution, air pollution and noise pollution). The best choice for all of these concerns is a reel mower, pushed by human effort.
- Let the clippings remain on the grass - they will settle down to the soil surface and add organic matter to the soil. Alternatively you can compost it, but never discard it.
- Be organic - with a little forethought, organic care is easy and effective, and you avoid the risks to health and ecology from chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
- Consider alternative water sources:
- Greywater reuse (with appropriate greywater treatment, depending on the source and pollutants). Consider directing it into a channel filled with gravel, so it absorbs into the soil, and not directed onto the surface, to avoid people coming in contact with it.
- Rainwater - either storing in a tank, or groundwater recharge through proper soil management (to increase absorption) and contouring (as in swales to allow rainwater to sit and absorb into the soil).
- If you want grass (feeling it beneath your toes, sitting or playing on it) then make use of a shared lawn (i.e. public park, or lawn within a community e.g. cohousing). Open and usable public space will get more use for a smaller amount of lawn, and yards can grow something useful and edible instead.
See also
External links
- Greenscaping Your Lawn and Garden - from the US EPA.
- Lawns: time to ungarden on faircompanies.com.
- organic lawn care for the cheap and lazy article by paul wheaton
- organic lawn care tips