Why is grass preferable to weeds?

Weeds are in the eye of the beholder.
Man likes to control nature, and weeds are not easily controlled. They can’t be manicured to mimic a lawn and they are wild with minds of their own. haha
Lawns are aesthetically tidy, uniform and have become the popular choice for a lot of landscaping.

Personally I like weeds, I have had some giant Mule ear weeds with 6–7 foot stalks that I refused to have my gardener cut for years. See them in my avatar. I love my prize weeds and our local fair even has “The tallest weed” contest.

That’s someone who can give you the details on grass and weed.

We tend to like uniformity. It is pleasing to the eye. Grass is uniform, weeds are not.

Eponysterical

:-)

^^^ Ha ha!

I wonder when it all started. Early settlers didn’t encounter a lot of lush green grass, did they? It was mostly prairie and forests, right?

@johnpowell – Ha ha, nice find!

Early settlers were too busy scratching tooth and nail to survive to worry about having a pretty lawn.
But, actually, they did encounter a lot of lush, green grass on the prairies

Well it’s not quite the same to stretch out or picnic in the weeds on a nice sunny day.

I think I have an itchy, itchy rash from some unknown weeds, as we speak.

<——- Here’s another prized weed that my goose “Sonora” loved napping under. A baby Mule Ear. They are super cool, look like big tobacco plants with fuzzy, velevety leaves and then one huge stalk that has tiny yellow flower clusters.

It’s the free market at work: advertising advertising advertising

Up till the mid-fifties, the better quality grass seed mixes had clover seeds in them, and the more, the better. Clover is an evergreen, low growing, drought tolerant, nitrogen fixing, and pollinator attracting plant.

New chemical herbicides were being developed in that era, and The Scotts Company was looking for a way to increase market share for their newly developed ‘weed and feed’. They came up with a very simple ad campaign that targeted stay at home moms, which most women were in that era: ‘Moms, clover attracts bees, and you don’t want your children getting stung do you?’

At the same time, Scotts targeted dads with a lawn care program: what to use, when to use, and how much to use. At the time, the program was unique in the lawn care business. I don’t know why I remember this, but I remember my dad saying he didn’t mind paying a bit more for Scott’s products, because their program provided easier and better results than trying to figure it all out on his own.

With the environmental concerns we’re experiencing, water shortages, higher temps, and damage from herbicide and fertilizer run-off, I’m wondering if the next trend will go full circle, back to low maintenance lawns. Parts of the U.S. with ongoing drought conditions are already moving in that direction, and I wonder if the rest of the country will soon follow.

Thank you for that great answer. Do you know if they even sell seed with clover in it anymore?

No, I don’t. The last lawn I put in was 10 years ago, and I had it hydro-seeded. There was no clover the first few years, but it slowly snuck in. I’ve since quit using weed killer, and let the clover spread to attract pollinators for my veggie gardens.

I wonder why grass is preferred to food….last I checked, we can grow that too, yet we have still have starving Americans.

Chemical fertilizers, Big Ag, rapid transportation, and improvements in longer storage methods without spoilage, all contributed to the demise of the preponderance of home gardens.

But the trend towards more home gardens, and purchasing locally grown food is gaining momentum.

Even some HOAs that prohibited veggie gardens that could be seen from the street, are beginning to allow them

@Lawn Yes, you can buy a clover cover crop, animals love to eat it, we planted a bunch for our geese and ducks here. Check around or go online for farm and ranch crops for sale. Get some catalogs sent to you.

@Coloma Ok, thanks. I found White Clover Seed on Amazon and it gets great reviews.

Reviewers seem to echo the things that @bossob mentioned…

no fertilizers needed
no weed killers – clover will choke out other weed varieties
comfortable – easy to walk through or play on
pollinator attractor – great for the bees

I am sold.

http://versicolor.ca/lawns/docs/clover.html
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=clover+lawn&ia=images&iax=1

@Lawn Yes, we have the white clover too, and it is also pretty and needs less water than a lawn as well. Great stuff!
Now you just need a little flock of geese to look pretty walking around on it and geese are walking fertilizers, Just water it in and viola…green, green, green. lol

Tell me more about this clover…is it shade resistant?

@Dutchess_III Yes, it loves shade and grows even thicker and a deeper green in the shade. It needs some sun but does very well in shade.

Gotta get me some!!! I have an entire back yard that is about 80% shade. I love it for the utility bill, but hate it for the playground part.

Is it cheap?

I have had “roll me over…in the clover…” going through my mind the last two days. Shameful hussy that I am.

I was told that in the late 19th century, cultivating a lawn was a sign of prosperity. You had so much wealth from your crops and gardens that you could afford to have a patch of land that you could tend that had no cash value. It was favored specifically because it was useless and you put more money into tending it than you’d ever recoup.

I don’t know how true it is, but it makes sense to me.

Personally, I think with worldwide water shortages and the quickly dwindling local wildlife, xeriscaping is a better way to go. No watering or mowing—the lawn takes care of itself. And because the plants are indiginous, it attracts local wildlife.

@Dutchess_III Do some research on white clover. It is pretty inexpensive, a lb. of seed for about $10.00 but if you have a lot of play activity in your yard it may not hold up to extreme activity.

A ¼ lb. of seed should do a 1000 sq. foot area.

Oh, I’m sure @keobooks, if they had the means. It’s a sign of wealth when you can throw money at things that have no physical value like crops have.
We throw money at cats and dogs and other hobbies that have no real value.

Sometimes I feel a bit guilty spending time on the grass, rather than cultivating Something.

I’ll try it, @Coloma!

I have a rich relative who lives with her husband in a mansion in Las Vegas. About 10 years ago, she told us that they spend $600 per month for water to water the lawn. Some people in their neighborhood have natural, dessert landscaping with rocks and cacti, and some, like them, have lawns. Obviously, because it’s a dessert, water is expensive. It must be nice to have that kind of money to spend on a lawn. If it was that much 10 years ago, I can imagine what it costs now.

In a more wild area, it’s useful to have a zone around your home that’s cleared so that you can see dangerous animals coming.
If you have a castle then it’s useful to have a very large cleared area around it so you can see an enemy siege coming. The contemporary lawn may be merely mimicking the protective clearing around castles in order to look posh.