Occupy Your Lawns Day – March 20, 2012 – Spring Equinox

[roberte]

http://www.occupymonsanto360.org/201...ing-equinox-2/

[Silverbeard]

I hope this catches on and rips down a few HOAs!!!

Ive read more then a few places though that the english nobility did do as the article suggested, but that they learned it from the tribes of north america. some of these tribes did this so potential enemies didnt have a place to hide sneaking up to your home. It then became a fad to use it as a status symbol, like I have so much land I can just keep grass to walk on and look at...

either way, lawns are over rated... they are great for hanging out and playing on dont get me wrong... but there are many other just as valid and more valid things we can do... there is no reason in the world to keep grass as a norm.

[RozieDozie]

Hope the next thing is 'occupy the golf courses'. Talk about pollutants and water consumption. Whew!

We have a front 'lawn' but it's just a combination of perennial grasses and plants that we mow down. Doesn't get watered or fertilized or anything else. Right now, it's full of wild garlic, forget-me-nots, clover and verbena with a sprig or two of grass thrown in. Very pretty and practical.

[bunkie]

rats...we don't have a lawn!

[Colleen27]

I appreciate the sentiment, but you can tell this was thought up by a Californian... This year is looking to be an exception but in a normal year it wouldn't be at all unusual to have the lawn still until a layer of snow on the first day of spring!

If the weather holds I'll get in on this for the symbolism of it. We're planning on tilling up all of our back lawn and a section of the front, partly for food gardens, partly to install hardscape, and partly to replace the back grass with Irish moss to put an end to the interminable moving, mowing, and weed whacking around various play structures and lawn furniture. It is supposed to be 70° on the 20th so that's as good a day as any to rent the tiller and actually do the deed.

[Roadrunner]

Originally Posted by RozieDozie

Hope the next thing is 'occupy the golf courses'. Talk about pollutants and water consumption. Whew!

We have a front 'lawn' but it's just a combination of perennial grasses and plants that we mow down. Doesn't get watered or fertilized or anything else. Right now, it's full of wild garlic, forget-me-nots, clover and verbena with a sprig or two of grass thrown in. Very pretty and practical.

I've been working for the last couple years in replacing my lawn with mulched over area with a variety of plants. It sure does beat mowing

Another benefit of bulding up the soil, vice simple fertilizing is that it dramatically increases the water-holding capacity and I've observed this in many places that I've built up the soil http://www.naturalenviro.com/Article...=Soil-Building


Excerpt:

Another benefit to your soil from the life cycle of microbes in our products is the rapid building of soil humus. The soil humus is the storehouse of nutrients in the soil for plants. These nutrients are in readily available forms for the plants to use, as they are needed for plant growth and health. A healthy active microbial population will add about 3000 pounds of hums material to the soil per acre, per year. This humus material is almost pure protein from the bodies of microbes that have died as a result of their reproduction cycles. This humus material provides about 40 to 50 pounds of pure nitrogen, which is stored in the humus fraction of the soil readily available to plants through the soul solution for each 1% of organic matter (humus) that the soil contains. At this stage the soil begins to aggregate and the tilth of the soil is greatly improved. This means that your soil will hold nutrients and water much better as you improve the organic matter (humus) content of your soil. On farms where the microbes have been made a part of the fertilization program annually for four to five years, the organic matter has increased from less than 1% to 3% and more. This increased the soils water holding capacity by four to five times what it could hold at a 1% organic matter or less. A 1- inch rain per acre will yield approximately 28,000 gallons of water. A 1% or less organic matter soil can hold less than 10,000 gallons of this water. The rest along with nutrients and topsoil runs off. By increasing the organic matter content to 3% and more, that 1-acre can now hold 2-3 inches of rain or more and store a greater amount of nutrients with less topsoil runoff. In areas where there is little rain and it is necessary to irrigate, utilizing water holding capacity is of utmost importance. The ability of the soil profile to store moisture, allows the plant to endure greater stress periods before going into a wilting point. In test conducted by the Texas Plant and Soil Laboratory at Edinburgh, Texas, it was found that crops grown in soils with very high amounts of minerals, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and sulfur, were actually very deficient on mineral uptake. This was shown with the plant tissue and petiole test. The plants had only 20% of the necessary mineral uptake for good plant growth and health. After applications of microbes, the new plant tissue and petiole test ran showed the plant mineral uptake had increased 60% to 80% over the pre-treatment test. This was done by the microbes' ability to digest (solubilize) the minerals in the soil into the soil solution making them available for uptake by the plant as needed for growth.

[darwinslair]

Originally Posted by bunkie

rats...we don't have a lawn!

If you dont have sheep or goats, not much point to one.

Tom

[GunnarSK]

I normally don't post in POF, and expected this or a similar thread to be in "What's happening".