{"id":1035,"date":"2020-09-28T08:42:30","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T12:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.seagrant.w3.uvm.edu\/2020\/09\/28\/mo-monday-addressing-barriers\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T17:49:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T21:49:19","slug":"mo-monday-addressing-barriers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/2020\/09\/28\/mo-monday-addressing-barriers\/","title":{"rendered":"Mo Monday: Addressing Barriers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tYou might recall from when\u00a0Mo\u2019s blog began<\/a>\u00a0that as the\u00a0Lawn to Lake<\/a>\u00a0team was planning its outreach focused on promoting healthy soils (that ultimately became the #RaiseTheBlade outreach campaign), we surveyed landowners in the Lake Champlain basin about their lawn mowing practices. One of the questions we asked allowed respondents to share barriers they faced to cutting grass to 3 inches. In the next few weeks, as the mowing season winds down, Mo\u2019s blog will address some of those barriers.<\/p>\n

\n\tToday, we\u2019ll tackle what turned out to be an easy barrier to address. Someone responded to the survey and indicated they cut their grass shorter than 3\u2033 because their spouse believes that long grass hides snakes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile very long grass can hide snakes, luckily, grass that is cut to 3\u2033 isn\u2019t so long that snakes are easily hidden. Recall that another part of the #RaiseTheBlade guidance is that only 1\/3 of the length of the grass blades should be cut during any one mowing. That means that the longest your grass should grow is to about 4\u2033 and then you should cut it back to 3\u2033. This promotes rapid decomposition of the cut blades by soil microbes and swift nutrient cycling back to the grass. If you are able to follow this best practice (like Mo does), your grass won\u2019t grow to such lengths as you might see in an un-grazed pasture, and as a result, snakes should be fairly easily observed if present.<\/p>\n

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\n\tGiving further credence to this concept, just last week, while sitting on our patio, I observed something lying in the grass about 10 feet (3 meters) from where I was sitting. I asked my husband, \u201cIs that a snake?\u201d Expecting him to say no, and to share with me what it was he had placed on the lawn, I was surprised when he answered, \u201cYes.\u201d Upon hearing his positive response, I grabbed my phone to try to capture a photo of the snake. This proved challenging as my movement alerted the garter snake that it had been spotted, and it was moving away from the area as quickly as possible to find shelter. The snake we saw (shown above) was the most common snake in this area \u2013 the\u00a0common garter snake<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor those who may be more familiar with poisonous snakes from other regions of the nation or world, another important thing to know about snakes in the Lake Champlain basin (that includes parts of western Vermont, northeastern New York, and southern Quebec) is that there are only 11 kinds of snakes that live here, and most are beneficial and not harmful to us. The\u00a0Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department website<\/a>\u00a0has some valuable information about the various species of snakes that call the Lake Champlain basin home.<\/p>\n

\n\tRead more Mo Monday blogs on Kris Stepenuck’s blog page “Mo: A Mower With a Purpose.”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You might recall from when\u00a0Mo\u2019s blog began\u00a0that as the\u00a0Lawn to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1679,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_eb_attr":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-1035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1035"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1356,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions\/1356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uvm.edu\/seagrant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=1035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}