📝 In This Week’s Nutty Goodness
This Might Suit Your Fancy: Seeds, deep raised beds & the best but least expensive compost & mulch.
Where The Roots Meet The Soil: Thinking about replacing your lawn for $2 per square foot?
Inspirational Stories: Restore A Native Woodland, Untrammel Wilderness, and GIANT restoration in Arizona
🐝 This Might Suit Your Fancy
Seeds For Southwest US, True Leaf Market (large selection, heirlooms, etc), Botanical Interest (large selection), High Desert (high desert CO), SeedsTrust (high desert), Terrior Seeds (AZ based), San Diego Seed Company (regionally adapted)
Deep Raised Beds, Vego Raised Beds, deep, beautiful and they have a variety of shapes and sizes.
Pesticide-Free Mulch & Compost, Arizona Worm Farm, this place has been my lifeline and really helped me turn things around. They hold in person classes (sign up online), and sell only veggie, flower and succulent starts that thrive in the Phoenix climate. Plus they are worm composters on a next level scale!😍
🎙️Where The Roots Meet The Soil
Did You See City of Phoenix’s Offer To Pay You To Get Rid Of Your Lawn?
There is a program in Phoenix right now, that offers $2 per square foot to switch from growing grass. The City doesn’t say what you need to replace it with, just can’t be plain dirt, can’t be a swimming pool or water feature and you can’t regrow a lawn. If you were going to trade out your lawn, what would you do with the land? That’s what I want to explore today.
Option 1 You Could Keep Your Lawn
You could just keep your lawn and keep spraying it for weeds, mowing it, etc. If you think about it, there is a lot more going into your lawn and almost no return on all of that time, money and effort.
If you were to grow your lawn longer, the roots would grow deeper. That would accomplish two things, higher organic matter content in the soil.
And better water retention which translates to helping the evapotranspiration deficit we have due to urbanization. Plus you’ll likely need to water less.
Option 2 Replace With Rock or Xeriscaping
There are a large number of homes that have chosen this option. And I think if it was done in a way that didn’t have negative impacts to evapotranspiration. The moisture that comes back out of plants and healthy soils.
Like a rain garden, where there are some rocks but there is a built in water catchment that would allow rainwater to soak into the ground.
You plant trees, shrubs and flowers that are drought tolerant but can handle the deep water while the rain soaks into the ground.
If that was the case, then I think that would be a low maintenance, acceptable solution.
But I see a lot of people getting this wrong, xeriscaping by just covering dirt with rocks with their lawns graded so rain runs right off. Leaving a dry, lifeless rock bed.
Why is this a problem? Aside from all water from the rivers and canals being channeled underground.
It’s because water in the atmosphere impacts the local climate. Phoenix wasn’t always such a hot place. If that was true then we wouldn’t be breaking records every year.
Maybe 50 years ago, the average summer temperatures were in the 90’s. It’s not climate change, it paving, urbanization and lawn care that just sucks the air dry.
🔖Did you miss last week when I talked about One Year Update of My Garden
Option 3 Plant A Garden, To Get All The Benefits
My garden was built out in pieces, over the course of a year, following a plan I had drawn up in advance.
It can be faster or slower but choose whatever works for you.
Not only will all this vegetation contribute moisture back into the air through evapotranspiration.
It also builds organic matter in the soil, which removes carbon from the atmosphere and feeds my family and friends.
How To Fight The Grass
I get asked how to deal with the grass? Even if you dig it all up, there is enough grass seed in the soil to keep growing grass for years and years.
The only way to help fight the grass is to starve it of light. Block the sunlight.
You can do this by laying down cardboard where you want to plant. And changing it out or building it up every season
Or piling up 3 - 5 inches of mulch where you aren’t planting.
Once the soil starts to get healthy and retains moisture, because it can once it’s covered, then the soil is softer and thus the grass is easier to pull out.
I hope this help you make a choice. Whether you decide to jump through all the hoops to prove to the City of Phoenix to pay you $2 per square foot or not. I hope you choose to plant a garden.
🦋 Stay Inspired
Organizations Around The World Are Staging Eco-Interventions
How Beavers Can Fully Revitalize A Farm: Mossy Earth
How Beavers Change The Landscape In The Winter: David Bysouth, Ph.D.
Till next time,
Elisa Navarette
P.S. Was this useful? Have ideas on what I should publish next? Tap the poll or reply to this email. I read every response.