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Post by Latitude33 on Mar 29, 2015 21:43:05 GMT -5
Ok, so some of you know I live in So Cal where water is in short supply, except for Mother Ocean, Pacifica. You may have also heard that the region is in the midst of a mega drought cycle. Landscaping, chiefly lawns, consume the most water per suburban household. For years I have wanted to reduce/replace the all American dream sod landscape with something more environmentally friendly in order to reduce my water footprint. I have made some progress by adapting landscape sprinklers to drip system and replacing water hog landscape plants with drought tolerant plantings.
So in addition to water usage, the issues of lawn care are multi-fold for me. Time to cultivate the lawn, energy involved, pollution from mowing/edging, green waste (can't compost Bermuda grass kids) and more. Rebates are available from local water districts but it requires a time consuming design and plan approval process not to mention the labor and upfront costs.
Well Uncle Lat stumbled upon something that may just be the ticket. There is a private firm that will remove the lawn and replace it with an approved drought tolerant substitute. Whats the catch? They do this by having the homeowners signing over the rebates. No cash out of pocket. I called to confirm my water district qualifies then signed up for a consult. I'll be posting updates as they occur. Oh, and before, during and after pics!
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Post by octave on Mar 29, 2015 22:02:54 GMT -5
I applaud your initiative, perhaps some day I'll be able to do the same.
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Post by davidjp on Mar 29, 2015 22:21:33 GMT -5
Sounds Interesting, never heard of that before, sounds almost like the solar installation industry. I'd do it yourself and claim the rebates. Look on that native California plants thread and check some of the listed sites, some of them have lawn replacement ideas. I also heard that the tree of life native plant nursery in San Juan Capistrano has a series of free seminars on lawn replacement with California natives.
Are you planning on putting in natives, veg beds or fruit trees.
I don't quite understand why you can't compost Bermuda grass, do you mean the dug up roots, the cut grass should compost fine as any other grass. In the past when I've dug up Bermuda sod, I've just piled up separately and left for a year to die then added to my regular compost pile. Seems to work well as long as you don't water the pile in the meantime. I quite like Bermuda grass, I don't water thru winter and don't mind that it goes brown. It seems very drought tolerant compared to other stuff, one year my irrigation system failed and I only hand watered over summer really just a few times and whilst it looked pretty brown it survived fine.
Definitely good thing to do, I've seen some lovely native plant designs, will definitely be an improvement.
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Post by Latitude33 on Mar 29, 2015 22:29:49 GMT -5
Hey David, The company is called Turf Terminators...not plugging them folks, just being transparent. As far as doing it myself and claiming the rebate, time, energy and age factor into the equation young man! Definitely want to push the natives. They have a limited number that I could see on their site. My thought process was if I can get them to do the basics and grunt work then I can fine tune it.
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Post by davidjp on Mar 29, 2015 23:10:11 GMT -5
Yeah probably sensible. I get carried away with lots of ideas many of which are in various stages of completion. I have seen some lovely natives transformations often done by different companies, I'd ask if they do natives.
Not sure if you've been and not even sure of their open hours but the UC's south coast research station in Irvine has set up three shells of standard suburban Californian houses and installed three different landscapes. One standard California, one just drought tolerant (lots of sages, south African Australian stuff) and then one pure California native. They have all the inputs calculated for each. The native one looks best although all look fine.
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Post by Latitude33 on Mar 29, 2015 23:59:22 GMT -5
David, I have not seen the UCI demo but have been to Rancho Santa Ana Botanical and Tree of Life many times. I am CA Native geeky enough to own a copy of California Flora by David Munz. Cultivars of the CA natives are finally available in sufficient numbers to be practical. Now, if only we could get the State, i.e Cal Trans, to commit to only using CA natives for landscape. ;)
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Post by desertwoman on Mar 30, 2015 0:01:14 GMT -5
Ha! This is reminding me of when we moved in to the last house we bought (not this current one). The owner had laid sod- in the middle of a drought!- front and back as a way to make the place more "sellable". With those sprinklers that come up out of the ground and go " cht cht cht cht cht cht cht"
The first thing I did, after we moved in, was to stop watering the lawns. We use to chuckle about how the neighbors were probably thinking about us "well there goes the neighborhood". Once the lawns were good and dead, they got turned in and then the I started xeriscaping with drip irrigation.
I posted photos in the Xeriscape thread here in Organic Landscapes .
organicgroup.freeforums.net/thread/31/xeriscape-landscaping
Can't wait to see your before-during-after pics.
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Post by Latitude33 on Mar 30, 2015 0:26:52 GMT -5
Step one was to turn off the sprinklers. Step two has been to ignore the condition of the lawn.
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Post by brownrexx on Mar 30, 2015 8:04:50 GMT -5
I am also hoping that you post some pics. What a wonderful idea to get rid of your lawn. I live in the Northeast where many people are obsessed with their lawns and spend thousands of dollars annually. No kidding, that's not an exaggeration for the big lawns with lawn care companies. If it's green, we mow it and we spend nothing on our lawn. I'm sure that our neighbors are appalled but that's too bad. I would like to have a small area of grass but I would cheerfully give up the majority of my lawn.
I would be thrilled to give my rebate away and get my lawn done for free. It's not like you had that rebate money in the bank already so it would be a painless and wonderful improvement!
Many years ago we visited our friends in Tucson AZ. They had friends who were out of town and our friends had to go water their outdoor plants twice a day. I still remember that they had marigolds planted in the back yard! Lots of other thirsty plants too including a big lawn. In Tucson????? Really????
I always remembered that because I thought that it was so ridiculous and such a waste of water.
Good luck with your project.
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Post by OregonRed on Mar 30, 2015 9:30:31 GMT -5
brown, I imagine those people with the marigolds were not FROM Arizona ;)
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Post by desertwoman on Mar 30, 2015 9:37:42 GMT -5
Twice a day watering??!! Whatever were they thinking?
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Post by brownrexx on Mar 30, 2015 9:40:22 GMT -5
As I recall, they were from somewhere in the East. Their back yard looked like the ones I see here. Lots of green grass and thirsty plants.
I don't know why anyone would want to move to a beautiful location like AZ and want to have East coast plants. The desert plants are so beautiful and practically no maintenance.
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Post by davidjp on Mar 30, 2015 11:02:22 GMT -5
Hi Lat The south coast research station in Irvine I was referring to isn't actually part of UCI. Its in Irvine but I think it might be organised from UC Davis, confused yet. Its part of the UC land grant system and is their sub tropical research station. I think it has one of the biggest collection of avocado varieties and there's lots of cherimoyas and stuff like that, they are also big in promoting pitahaya dragon fruit cultivation. Thats where the three landscapes have been set up. I'm not sure of its opening hours but I would thoroughly recommend a visit if you get a chance, here's the website screc.ucanr.edu/I had a 5 hr tour last year and it was great looking at the different avocado varieties, pitahayas and all the other stuff they have there. Out of interest it is where many of the modern strawberry varieties were originally bred. One cool thing is that they have hedges of random avocados they planted surrounding many of the fields and as we got driven by in the flat bed of a trailer you were basically brushing past the understorey with all these avocados hanging down. They've got hundreds of varieties but the ones in the hedges are just whatever chance seedlings they have so some are apparently very good and most pretty poor but all looked pretty good. I'd thoroughly recommend a visit if you get a chance, I came away with a boatload of cherimoyas last year and have been trying to work out if all that pollinating by hand would really be worthwhile for me to plant one. Although they seem to think its not totally necessary but I suspect when you've got 10 acres of them you're bound to get some to set fruit no matter what you do or don't do.
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Post by OregonRed on Mar 30, 2015 14:31:24 GMT -5
cherimoyas, isn't that the one that stinks?
--- no maybe not ---
boss brought one home from asia one time, yum! like vanilla pudding! hassle to get at tho, so many seeds.
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Post by OregonRed on Mar 30, 2015 14:33:18 GMT -5
david, I remember you posting after that avocado trip! boy, being from so. cal. and now in Oregon, I sure miss avocados! and oranges...and... 12 month growing season without a greenhouse............
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