Save the Date: Sunday, Oct. 18, Mike will appear at the Fredericksburg Fall Home & Craft Show at the Expo & Conference Center in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Will Montgomery County vote lawn chemicals out?
The waiting will soon come to an end. The motion to restrict the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides on lawns in Montgomery County will be put to a final vote Oct. 6.
Is this a case of green lawns vs. browned-out blunders?
Some who oppose the proposed restrictions on the use of agricultural chemicals on lawns have attempted to frame the debate as “green grass with chemicals vs. brown grass without,” when nothing could be further from the truth.
The dirty little secret of lawn care is that having a green, healthy lawn has almost nothing to do with any kind of product — chemical or organic. As Bill Mollison, the founder of the popular permaculture movement, once remarked, “The problems of the world are increasingly complex, but the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”
Cutting height is more important than chemicals
The simple truth in this situation is that a properly cared-for lawn needs no chemicals. In fact, it’s more likely to be harmed by them. (My email inbox can attest to that. It overflows every year with tales of lawns killed by lawn care chemicals.)
The best — indeed, the only — way to keep weeds out of lawns is to have healthy, vibrant lawns, and the biggest step toward achieving that is a correct cut. Grass blades need to be three inches high after cutting to be able to collect the solar energy that will fuel the growth of their famously weed-beating roots.
Think about it — if you scalp a lawn low, you weaken the turf and force it to grow faster to replace the “solar panels” you removed. You also create bare spots that weeds will obviously take advantage of — and no amount of chemical spraying will change that.
Think sharp, be sharp, mow sharp
It’s also important to always cut with a sharp blade. A dull mower blade tears the grass apart, destroying the ability of those grass blades to hold water. Cutting with a dull blade is guaranteed to result in a lawn that turns brown.
A sharp cut — like a good haircut — just takes a little off the top, nice and clean, allowing the grass blades to quickly reseal and maintain the moisture that makes up 90 percent of their biomass (unless you rip them to shreds, of course).
And here’s one especially aimed at homeowners who use bagging mowers to inadvertently starve their poor lawns to death: Always return the clippings to the turf!
Those clippings are 10 percent nitrogen — the primary lawn food. Fertilizer restrictions really don’t matter when you’re returning those natural nutrients to the turf every time you mow.
These simple measures — often ignored by those supposedly caring for lawns — will help the grass develop the deep roots that make weed growth impossible. As any gardener or owner of a gravel driveway can tell you, grass is the most tenacious “weed” there is.
Let us not demonize lawns
Montgomery County residents who support the upcoming legislation on restricting the use of lawn chemicals have been called “anti-lawn.” What’s more likely is that people who seem to oppose lawns, in general, are actually just anti-lawn chemicals. Here’s a message to both sides: At the end of the day, lawns are good for people and for the environment.
A properly maintained lawn absorbs the impact of heavy rains, turning downpours into gentle flows before they can rage into our waterways.
Lawns sequester carbon dioxide, which helps mitigate the effects of climate change.
Lawns take that greenhouse gas and transform it into the oxygen we rely on.
And perhaps most importantly, they give us a living surface on which to read, play, snooze and picnic — providing a soft cushion of green for us to enjoy.
And they don’t need chemicals to achieve any of those noble ends: just the common sense care that has largely been replaced by unnecessary chemicals.
Let’s be honest: Is there anything that makes a lawn less inviting than those little flags that warn us that nature’s playground has been sprayed with chemicals that are banned in most of Canada, parts of Europe and already-enlightened areas in the United States? (As Oscar Wilde might have said, the only thing worse would be to not get the warning.)
But weeds will kill our children!
Some voices in this debate are shouting that children will somehow be endangered by weeds if the lawn pesticide restrictions come to pass.
Ah, but the fault, dear Brutus, is in our sprays and not our weeds — and I’m not referring to the slew of recent reports linking the two most heavily used herbicides in America to cancer and other serious health issues. I speak to the inanity of the argument itself.
Poison ivy is singled out as a menace to children that must be controlled with chemicals. But if you spray poison ivy with an herbicide, the dead plant will still give kids just as bad a rash — but from a browned-out plant that they won’t be able to recognize as dangerous, no matter how well they’ve been taught.
Poison ivy, oak and sumac will cause a rash if touched in any form — dead or alive, summer or winter. The proper response when you see a “poison plant” is to pull it out of the ground.
Every supposed plant “problem” has an effective and chemical-free solution. Depending on how you read the medical research, you may feel that herbicides and insecticides may or may not be hazardous to our health. But I can assure you that they are unnecessary.
