Does anyone have no-mow lawns?
 

I am looking into this as a low maintenance thing around my house. I wouldn't cut the grass and let it grow long and wild. Just curious is anyone else does this and how it's turned out? Thanks Chris

I wont mow the lawn. I put our garden in place of our front lawn this year. Im considering what I can plant around the house so I dont have to weed wack. My wife likes to have a mowed lawn. SHe can mow all she wants. Im not going to spend my time, or $3.50 per gallon gas on it.

There was a house in In. I saw where the guy blacktopped the entire yard. Not a bad idea considering the savings on lawn equipment and time over the years. I have a neighbor whose wife has him out there as soon as a pine cone hits the grass.. poor guy.

I have always thought it a bit crazy to have to spend your life growing the perfect lawn and pulling weeds then having to spend hours mowing it.

I now mow about a quarter of the area I used to mow. The area around the house - to keep the snakes and mice at bay. And a few paths here & there so that folks can walk between buildings and not wind up with a mess of ticks clinging to them.

You could say there are a lot more "wildlife preservation areas" on my farm now.

NeHi

For as long as the current drought continues

I have a no-mow lawn.

During the last 8 weeks here when normally close to 12" of rain would have fallen, there has been less than 2/3rds. of an inch of rain.

Plant something else
 

I think grass that's too long can hide critters. Maybe plant something else, like clover?

I dont have any sympathy for him. If he wants to allow her to run the show then he can deal with whatever she tells him to do.

mosquitoes, ticks, skunks,bar, govt. declaring your back yard a wild life protected habitat, govt telling you too mow and the biggy fire. most of our "yard" is pasture so the animals eat down the grass.

boy you sound like a real charmer to live with

I have enough posts around here that I'm sure everyone knows I'm not unreasonable. Spending $3.50 gas on a lawn is unreasonable when there are alternatives to mowing.

I have lots of clover and it stays pretty short, attracts honey bees and rabbits, keeps the weeds at bay, and I personally like how it looks when it's flowered. My parents have a more wooded area and mainly just have moss. In the end they're both green and low maintenance.

I've never been much on making my lawn look nice (1.9 acre lot minus house, outbuildings and garden is too much to manicure), but I think of it as an investment towards hard times. If, for some reason, I could no longer acquire feed for my chickens and rabbits, I can simply "put them out to pasture."

He's right. I've used a reel mower and goats for years

I hate mowing and would rock/woodchip/pave if my neighbors wouldn't storm the house with pitchforks.

My "lawn" is a natural prairie grass mix, although I do spread some rye seed in the fall to give the critters something to eat and to look nice during the cold months. I let the wildflowers do their thing in the spring and mow after they have set seed. I also set the mulching mower at the highest setting possible so I don't stress the grass. I only have to mow a couple of times during the season and I do wait until those long scraggley things are sticking up all over.

I just mow paths to get everywhere else (chicken coop, orchard, creek). The paths are about three mower passes wide.

I will say that DH would love to have "carpet grass" and has said this many times, but he has yet to get "off the couch" to make his dream come true. Plus, the amount of water that fancy grass takes to maintain is an absolute waste. I don't have to put any water on the native grass. It is able to survive year after year with whatever rain that we are able to get.

When we lived in the city limits we had for a time a 'no-mow lawn'...

Then the city sent us a registered letter telling us to cut our grass.:D

I considered it a wildlife preserve and it also kept children away(fear of snakes :rolleyes: )

I cut the grass and then would wait for the NEXT registered letter to arrive before cutting it again.LOL...

How about planting ivy or some sort of ground cover?

We have ivy in a bed here and if we let it,it would take over our entire yard I think.

Grass won't exist unless you let it.

I've never had grass... actually tried to plant some once... wouldn't grow.

I've got free range chickens and geese, and now goats... there's not a blade of grass or weed for a hundred yards around the house. I periodically 'groom' the yard, with a rake... sorta like a Japanese gravel sculpture :p .

3 words. Dutch white clover.

Our clover grew to be at least waist high, but bees sure loved it.

I do a lot of the mowing and wanted a small yard/lawn patch up front and to move the garden up closer to the house. Easy to care for, and two babies don't need that much yard. Get sheep or goats for the rest, and viola! I don't have to spend a day a week or more mowing just to get to the garden and other outbuildings.

DH didn't like that plan, so we compromised. He helps mow what I can't get time for, and I have a mini-garden up close to the house. No sheep yet; we'll need them to find the barn pretty soon! TOO much rain here.

Back to your OP, rock landscaping is popular in dry areas. Edging, gravel, decorative rocks or boulders, select plants, trees and showy grasses...

I'm noticing such stuff in front of businesses and hospitals and clinics where they just don't want to keep paying for a mowing service.

Yep, if you want a live, green, no mow lawn it grows to about 4-5" high, and once established is amazingly drought tolerant - requires little to no maintenance or fertilizer. Had some in New Mexico. I lived in a pine forest and it was one of the few ground covers that would grow in the shade. Didn't seem to mind the slightly acidic soil either.

AstroTurf is the answer......................
http://www.astroturf.com/

.

The one problem with rock gardens or black top is the heat it holds in the summer. I like the idea of some of the low ground covers....some of our yard is more moss than grass. The moss is nice and soft :)

We do not have a proper yard with grass. We have several grassy areas that have clover and other grasses and we just weed whack it down now and then. We see wild flowers in it we leave them to flower. It gets really tall in spring and early summer and we have to whack it down about 1 X every 2 weeks but other than that it is not bad to keep up.

I have a mixture of wild grass and wildflowers everywhere that there isn't a driveway, flowerbed, or garden. It's really pretty when the flowers are blooming. It's rather ratty right now, but I'm waiting for the last of the blackeyed daisy thingies to finish up. That's not the right name, but I can't recall it right now.

Later on I weedwhack it periodically and rake it up for the henhouse. Sort of like low rent hay.

I like it a lot, although it's sort of itchy to walk through, lol.

hollym

Someone once said that "man is the only creature that plants a crop he can't eat but has to mow every week".

There are lots of limited-height plants out there, like the clover. Some shorter. Take a look around and see which work best in your area.

Meg

I intend to make our "yard" area on our land no mow. For right now, we'll have to keep it brush hogged, but I intend to grow food, herbs and flowers everywhere, and mulch between the beds.

The Wandering Quilter's Life in a Box!

we have a cow and put the fence right up to the house..
in places that doesn't work we scythe it for the pig, and chickens...
mostly it is just wild.
I hate lawns!

I am way off base with the rest of you. I love the looks of freshly mowed grass and the smell. I now have at least an acre to finish mow (36" Husqvarna walk behind), trimer mow and then weed wack and then mow another acre with a 6' brush hog. Then use a 5' sickle bar mower to do along the road. I use a walk behind sickle bar and weed wacker along the 10 acre perimeter beefer fencing. Also, use the brush hog to do the road around the perimeter fencing. Oh yeh, use the brush hog to keep the pastures weeded. I will say when it gets to be November or so I call it quits but then can't wait until snow falls to use the snowblower. Yeh, I'm sick. DH loves it; he doesn't have to do a thing.

I have a magnificent riding lawnmower---my TB mare, Camel, and her foal!

I've mower our yard this year not so long ago! The mower ran out of gas when I was 98% done so I rolled it into a cut part and said to my dear wife, see ya in 08!! I hates cutting grasses!

Baaaa.... Baaaa....

We have sheep, chickens, pigs... no need to mow.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/blog/
http://HollyGraphicArt.com/
http://NoNAIS.org

Don't know how to keep grazing animals out of the garden, may learn. Have a wide based JD mower now and am putting cardboard then woodchips over a lot of places it won't fit, probably all of them where grass grows eventually. Will try to replace the woodchips with low growing no mow ground covers (and have stepping stones through the woodchips now) eventually.

I'm going to try to plant any grassy areas on my new place with a type of low growing, spreading plant that has the look of small, narrow leaf "monkey grass". Only needs mowing 2-3 times a YEAR and stays green in East Texas. I've never seen it anywhere except on a older homeplace I bought 11 years ago. Seems to survive a dry spell reasonably well..Glen

I mow mine when it reaches 2 feet tall and let it layer to reduce growth. In shady areas under my trees, I raise the soil acidity with oak leaf mulch and innoculate with moss.I only properly mow 15 ft wide areas on the sunny side of my house, around the dog kennel and a 5 ft wide path between the two.

My raised garden beds I situate in the thatched grass areas.

In the fall, I let my neighbors dump their leaves in the areas where the hay hasn't been mowed and thatched at no charge. A year or two later, the composted thatched grass and leaves is used here , by the donating neighbors or sold as compost by the cubic yard as local garden grown yield.

mowing for me is better than babysitting the kids or folding laundry so I'll gladly sit on the tractor for a few hours a week. It's worth the gas $$. I cut the front yard with a good finish mower so it looks nice, the rest gets brushhogged and actually looks pretty good. I cut it on the highest setting too.

There's a house in a town near here,that has nothing but gravel for a yard. There are a few landscaping plants placed here and there but the rest is solid gravel. It really doesn't look bad. It's a small lot and I think the people who live there are older. I guess it's probably easier for them to maintain.

I don't know about Ontario's native plants, but in Texas we have a native low growing plant called horse herb. It grows in the shade, which used to be my problem area. I killed out and grubbed out what little grass was struggling there, and the horse herb took over. Little heart shaped green leaves and tiny yellow flowers. Lovely. No mowing. Never gets over about 4 inches tall.

Research your native plants. I bet there's something similar.

Interesting. I remember the day I said to myself "Why am I mowing this entire area when I could be planting corn here?". Every year, the "mowed" area decreases, while the "planted" area increases. Less work? Not so sure about that, but at least I get food from it, much of which I sell.

Filas are Prima ~ I love your "riding lawnmower" idea! I stake my horse out (only when I'm here and working outside) and he really cuts down on the mowing!

Zoysia grass never gets too tall ..
You can leave it natural or mow it
once or twice a season to keep it neat ..
It does go "brown" when it's dormant in winter however ..

Triff ..

RIGHT ON THE ASTRO TURF!
I met a guy once that had salvaged about an acre of astro turf from a staduim renewal he had it in his garden and had slots and holes in it for plants to grow thru. He said it saved tons of water and weeding . I looked at it a bit and asked inocently why didnt you get some for the yard? you should have seen the look on his face! it was a sorta DUOH! why didnt I think of that . look at all the mowing Ive wasted look.
Ive been looking for an acre of astro turf ever since!