Okay so where can I grow something that won’t be full of ticks?
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Maybe we can breed super mosquitos to eat the ticks or something
Why do you choose violence?
Violence isn’t the answer. It’s a question, and the answer is “yes”.
Choosing to get rid of the ticks is already choosing violence.
Get a colony of fire ants and then feed them meth and hgc
You don’t.
Instead, you always have a roving band of chickens following you to eat them.
You’re going to have ticks in the native area too, especially the marginal zones. They love those. Ticks are native, unfortunately. Remediating your land for native insects’ benefit will actually be better for ticks than having an acre of 2" turf grass, but that’s just because short lawns are totally ecologically dead.
When I was more uninformed I was more of a purist. The more I’ve done on my own property, and the more I’ve consulted with experts, the more I’ve learned that it’s actually a balance between human needs and ecology. Now I’m sort of in the “if planting turf grass by your house is what you need to be on board with the rest of it, fine.”
We can’t promise people ticks will go away, more like teach people the critical value of native insects. Keep tall grass away from your house, sure, but think about walkways instead of acres of lawn for the rest of it. People plant lawns and call Mosquito Joe to fog it all so “their children can play” but consider your children living in a world with no bugs at all. That’s the trade off. IMO it’s a lot more scary than ticks, and I fucking hate ticks.
I’m required to keep a 100 ft perimeter of defensible space around my house, so I do need to clear quite a bit. I try to leave as much otherwise, recently (5 ish years) I had considerable sprouting of volunteer oaks. Probably 15 or so across my property, not sure if that’s indicative of the land being healthier but we get a decent amount of wild mushrooms as well.
Oak are great. A lot of the understory in oak/hickory forest is now maple and tulip poplar due to shifting climate and possibly deer pressure. It’s called mesophication.
My property is also oak/hickory complex and I can say anecdotally that the native understory has a lot of tulip poplar.
For a lawn or yard you don’t have to go all the way to a forest to have a stablish ecosystem. Perennials can do a lot.
And actually in some places prarieland is probably more important for conservation.
Ie. plant a couple of native fruit trees for, dig a small perrenial pond and add some rocks so amphibians can feel safe, and sprinkle in seeds for native grasses, especially edible ones and let nature do it’s work.
Its easier to get natives but still takes some effort. But its front loaded and makes beautiful spaces
There’s no way you’re going to get Hickory growing naturally in your garden, unless your garden is in some very specific parts of the world.
So how do I skip the weeds and grasslands stages and go directly to mature oak-hickory forest, then?
Millions of dollars, and taking them from elsewhere.
Artificially plant and water the trees. Gather a lot or pile of branches for dead wood, one of the defining parts of an old growth forest.
What does the undergrowth of an oak hickory Forest look like? People can plant the trees, but how do you get the undergrowth?
Order a bunch of plants that are native to your region, plant the medium and shade loving varieties under the trees, see what sticks
I tried that but the groundhogs and rabbits ate the native plants down to their stems
Get a dog, mine love chasing off groundhogs and the like.
Dogs also typically love to trample the whole yard until it’s nothing but clay and dandelions.
I have 20 or so acres of woods behind me. Oak, 2 types of hickory, American beech, and black cherry.
It’s just dirt. These trees have thick ass canopies
Forreal. Packed dirt later looks like… “Dirt.” Then heavily compactes leaves and sticks. Then leaves. But it’s mostly leaves all the way down. Nothing like trodding atop centuries of pressed organic leaves.
A forest floor shouldn’t be heavily compacted, that would also lead to the leaves breaking down instead of just laying there.
Given time enough sand and leaves and other organic matter deposits in the soil, decomposed by long numbers of life cycles together with dirt and moisture becomes soil, but you cannot plant everywhere trees. Imagine plant an oak in the Sahara, no chance it’ll make it after 3 hours at noon. That’s what succession suggests!
At some point, it you’re assuming a single infographic is intended to be followed to the letter in every area across the planet, then that misunderstanding is your fault
Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind, thanks again for your time and effort of this comment, it should have been hard to elaborate this concept.
this weekend we chiseled off the grass sod out of our backyard in preparation for planting native perennial species. it’s all clay back there so it’s going to take some soil prep.
Where I live you can’t cut down a tree, and if it gets destroyed you need to pay thousands for a botanist to come out. I would never take the risk of planting a tree.
Yikes. One of those good in theory, but completely backfired ideas
Where tf do you live?
Nvm Canada. That would make sense in some places.
Destroyed no matter the cause? I’ve heard of laws like that for intentionally cutting down healthy trees, but it never applied to natural causes.
I wish I could allow my yard to revert to the low brush it naturally was, problem is that a certain invasive weed from central fucking Asia would disagree. I blame the fucking Russians.
Is it kudzu? Shit’s everywhere.
tumbleweed?
As the other dude noted it’s tumbleweed.
I guess I learned our most cherished Western stereotype is actually central asian. And that we have a major problem of invasive species across all biomes.
Huh, my back yard is a gradient of 1-4
I’ll stop at shrubs. Seems like a fair balance
I love this artstyle of “Google images + Photoshop” vibe!
But the spiders!
I love spiders.
Some spiders are really bad.
…hmmmm…
LOTS of spiders are really bad, and some are acceptable. As long as there is balance and not millions of brown recluses AND they all stay the f away from inside my home.
And they eat the mosquitoes and ticks and whatever else is bad. But also leave the ladybugs and rolley-poleys and honey bees.
And no murder hornets or whatever… in fact, no hornets at all.
