I've never used salt before, I'll remember that! Rubbing a lemon on your hands works for stinky hands.

There is are good things that can come from having to weed by hand digging out dandelions , spurge and a few others.
I was surprised how many grubs, mostly of one type that came up, especially on the hill.
I generally do not like to used powdered insect control but I will in the areas where the grass died , partly with the drought but was totally dead and did not come back, even where lawn irrigation hit.

I will apply fungus and bug control; for once I am glad the other half bought product I normally would not have around.

Japanese beetle grubs eat lawn grass roots, that's why I have bare patches I. The lawn that have filed in with weeds, particularly stickers! I usually destroy any grubs I find in the dirt when digging.

I don't care at ALL what is growing in the mowed area, even if it was "nice grass". Still has to be mowed, wasting our time and $, contributing nothing to nature except maybe a grub &/or ant farm, and all of that mowing causes that much more unnecessary pollution. If we had the $$, we would put a giant patio over allll of the mowed area with a raised planter around the perimeter. For a few $$'s more, screened-in! Hey I'm liking this fantasy - being able to step outside w/o mosquito bites or accidentally standing on ants.

No need for chemicals to get rid of the grubs - that's what skunks and flickers are for...

Weedwhacker said:No need for chemicals to get rid of the grubs - that's what skunks and flickers are for...

Few skunks around here, PRAISE the LORD, and I have not seen a flicker in a long time., but now I kind of miss the mole we once had.

I don't think I would like living cheek and jowl with skunks. I have enough issues with the possums, coons and coyotes! Besides, milky spore, which is what is used for Japanese beetle grubs, isn't a chemical, it's a natural product.
It would be wonderful if all gardeners didn't have to use ANY products to kill bugs, chemical or not, to control pests, but unfortunately, in some areas that's just not possible.
If I didn't use some form of pesticides every year, I would have no garden at all. I'm not putting all this time, energy and money to feed the bugs!
Tiffany, the answer to having less to mow is more pots and garden beds! I have very little front "yard" left. 😆

So true! If I could get my hands on more leaves, I'd have more garden space. Unfortunately, most of ours blow away and nobody bags them around here. I refuse to ever dig up grass again, that always ends up just creating a patch of the world's happiest weeds.

Boy, does it ever! When I moved to where I live today, I took nearly a year to prepare my original garden perennial bed. My perennials, iris, day lilies, etc, stayed in pots the whole while. I took the level of the area down 6 inches, sprayed round up on it and then solarize the soil with clear plastics. That was in the early fall, September. The plastic I kept on until spring. Then I added 18" of garden soil and planted my perennials. That was 7 years ago, and I still don't have any weeds in that bed, only willow oak saplings from the tree next door, I always manage to miss some of the gazillion acorns that tree throws in the bed every year.

That sounds like a lot more work than what I've done for the areas I considered successfully weed-free. I cover area with cardboard, then cover with leaves & any other organic matter I can find. Wait at least 6 mos. The free aspect is within my budget since our 120+ yrs old house always needs something, and the easy aspect, I think, would appeal to anyone. The decomposed grass and cardboard are a great start toward creating "black gold" garden soil where there was just lifeless grassy dirt/sand/clay.

That works very well. I did that with my back garden bed.

purpleinopp said:That sounds like a lot more work than what I've done for the areas I considered successfully weed-free. I cover area with cardboard, then cover with leaves & any other organic matter I can find. Wait at least 6 mos. The free aspect is within my budget since our 120+ yrs old house always needs something, and the easy aspect, I think, would appeal to anyone. The decomposed grass and cardboard are a great start toward creating "black gold" garden soil where there was just lifeless grassy dirt/sand/clay.

Maybe it depends on where you live. I have tried that method several times, but to no avail. I suppose it would work where you get rainfall during the late spring through early fall.

Probably, Evelyn. I don't know how people garden where it doesn't rain!!

We get quite a lot of winter and spring rain, so it's pretty easy to use the cardboard method here,
I can just imagine my water bill if I lived in an area without the 38 to 45" a year we get here!

No doubt, not only would one use more of it, but people say it's expensive too. I've never had a water bill above $40 for a month.

Tiffany, is your garbage collection part of your water bill? My water bill includes garbage and recycle, the actual water and sewer charges. So I pay around 50.00 in the winter, then it goes up to 65.00 or so in the height of watering season. That's for two people, usually two showers a day, and about three loads of clothes washed a week, sometimes less.

Hmm... no! The sewer charge is around $35 & the garbage is $20. Recycling here is only drop-off. They take plastic, aliminum, & cardboard.

For the first couple of years when I lived here, I was also dropping off glass bottles and it was always after-hours when I went by. One day I got there while there were employees there and a couple dudes came over to my car to see if I wanted help unloading and realized I had glass bottles. The one guy blurted, "You're the one who keeps leaving glass bottles here!" Uh, you don't take glass? No. I apologized and still can't believe they don't recycle glass. Glass recycling has been going on for eons, vs. plastic recycling in just the past few decades. After recycling almost everything for decades, it seems sickeningly blasphemous to put glass in the garbage.

Staying connected to the gardening topic, inability to recycle glass is part of why I propagate so much stuff in water, and if you stop by, you're likely to be served iced tea in a sauce jar. And speaking of tea, I bought a tea Camellia recently. Of course I'm having commitment issues about where to put it, so it's still in a pot.

We have Waste Management, out of New Jersey, for our recycling. And no, they don't accept glass. Nor single use plastic bags, either!
I do use what glass jars I have to propagate cuttings, too. I've noticed that a lot of products that formerly came in glass now come in plastic; mayonnaise is one example. Is this good or bad? Hard to tell at this point. So many folks don't have recycling services, so both the plastic and the glass end up in the garbage, which eventually ends in landfills.

Your water bill depends on where you live, and it often has nothing to do with rain. It's all about how much infrastructure exists, how old it is, how it was laid and how many people contribe to it.

In the NYC metro area, water is the only thing that is not expensive because the system was built extremely well to supply a population that was gigantic in the 1800s and has been growing fast enough to provide continous updates, most of which were done back when people who built it lived in a time where products were expected to last for generations, not years.

in Jersey-in my town-we have Waste Management as well, for trash pick up. wednesday is yard recycle pick up day. tree branches, leaves, grass clippings,etc. this is all part of our property tax bill. water is separate. I've had some hefty bills in the past-well over $100, due to dry summers and fanatical watering. things have tapered off as we've been getting the rain we need. sewer is also a separate bill. Quarterly at $55.00. it's been inching up the last couple years. the recycle project is not doing well because people don't really know what to recycle. the plastics they accept are #1 and #2. glass bottles and jars, cans, newspaper, junk mail, cardboard and appropriate numbered plastic all go in one container. I am a recycling nazi! everything gets rinsed out before being tossed. If the manufacturers would label their products more clearly i think more people would recycle. the local Wegmans grocery store has a bin for plastic bags. this is great-last time there I took four bags of bags and assorted plastic wrapping to get picked up by the recycler. I use insulated bags to shop with.