37 Lawn Maintenance

CHAPTER 37 THE BEST CONTROL FOR CAREFREE YARD AND LAWN MAINTENANCE Of the 800,000 insects that live in a typical Florida lawn, less than 1% are pests of mankind and only about a tenth of 1% are pests to the lawn...the rest are beneficial insects! The U. S. EPA estimated in an August 1997 report that each U. S household spent about $20 in 1995 to purchase pesticide poisons for use in their own homes and gardens - this is about double the amount of poison each house bought about 20 years earlier. The American Crop Protection Association noted U. S. sales increased 5.5% from 1996 to 1997 reaching $8.79 billion and export sales of U. S. manufactured ag pesticides increased 10.7% the same year to $2.81 billion. Well maintained plants are less susceptible to disease and insect damage. Plants under stress emit xylene gas which seems to tell the insect pests that the plant is weak and in trouble. “The important thing is not to stop questioning.” The Albert Einstein Archives, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel 1387 CAREFREE YARD AND LAWN MAINTENANCE True IPM or Intelligent Pest Management® is the only logical way to safely control pests either inside or outside your building. If I told you to build a building and only allowed you to use one tool, you would think my request was absurd. One needs many different tools, e.g., plans, blueprints, surveys, tape measures, drills, planers, sandpaper, saws, hammers, wrenches, clamps, screwdrivers, pliers, crowbars, vice grips, levels, a plumb, squares, shovels, floats, trowels and many other tools to properly build a building. Yet historically only one tool has been used to control pests - volatile, synthetic pesticide poisons; if one poison creates resistant pests (does not work), the poison industry simply uses another poison or greater amounts of dangerous poisons or more frequent applications of these same poisons; obviously, history clearly proves poisons have not and can never control pest problems, especially safely or permanently. Today, some well meaning environmentalists are trying to control pests with one tool too. They may suggest traps, insecticidal soaps, gluten, mulch, magic boxes, ultrasonic sound, radio frequencies, hoeing, ladybugs, wasps or boric acid or some other one-step approach. While laudable, any one-step control is doomed to failure. True IPM control may have to utilize all of the available tools at some point. The proper use of all of the Intelligent Pest Management® tools available, starting with prevention, proper selection, maintenance, exclusion, dehumidifiers and then the use of the safest, alternative controls and ending (if needed) with spot applications of least-toxic (non-volatile) pesticide poisons is true IPM. To remove the cause rather than try to poison the “pest” is the only way to achieve long-term control. You must discover the reason for the pest infestation or disease and then remove that cause or you are wasting time and money, endangering health and property and ensuring your pest problems will continue to become more resistant and to thrive. “Modern” agriculture “treats” the problem and considers the soil as something only necessary to allow the plants to grow vertically while chemical enemas are rammed up their shafts. Our worst pest problem and/or pollution is our depleted (contaminated) soils devoid of organic material and beneficial microorganisms. Without these beneficial organisms and the contamination, our plants and those that eat them are sick and/or weak and/or dying. The American Indian farmed and inhabited this land for thousands of years before the white man came and used it for everything he needed to live and yet the land and the water were in pristine condition; that is no longer the case. The February 1998 issue of the Metropolitan Detroit Landscape Association’s The Landsculptor reported on two recent surveys regarding lawn and garden practices. In the survey 22% of those who do not currently use a professional service said they would consider one if the service offered environmentally sensitive programs. Over 30% of those who responded said they would pay up to 25% more for a service that offered a high degree of environmental protection! I would add, you need a service that treats the soil and not the pest. In the 19th Century the typical American lawn consisted either of a forest, or of a lot filled with brush, weeds, dirt, rocks, old farm machinery, a woodpile and a few chickens and no grass. The first practical lawn mower was patented in 1830. Insect control up to the mid-1800’s consisted of washing off or dusting or picking off the pests. Until recently, many building sites were scraped down to the bare subsoil and then compacted to a density of at least 90% to meet building codes and swept. Today a few people are again creating grassless areas and yards that require no effort, mowing, artificial watering, synthetic fertilizers or dangerous, volatile, synthetic pesticide poisons. Some athletic fields are using astro turf®. Some areas are now covered with woven geotextile fabric, then covered with gravel, shredded tires, stones, wood chips or bark or planted with trees, native grasses and species, bonsai, clover, ivy, creeping thyme or mint, chamomile, pachysandra, Irish or Scotch moss, myrtle, wildflowers and other ground covers that are easier on our earth and the homeowner’s time, health and pocketbook. Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis), which is the most popular lawn grass in America, requires 18 gallons of water per square foot during its growing season! If you still want a lawn, select a less thirsty grass, a native species that is both drought and insect resistant. But remember, the U. S. already has over 50,000 square miles of cultivated lawns (an area equal roughly to the State of Pennsylvania and larger than that occupied by any agricultural crop), which truly is a tremendous waste of time, energy, water, land, fertilizer, dangerous, volatile, “registered” pesticide poisons and many of our limited resources! Each year we spend over 30 billion dollars to maintain this useless monoculture, creating a terrible petrochemical addiction. In 1990 we poured about 70 million pounds of “registered,” volatile pesticide poison active ingredients just on our lawns plus fertilizers! Massive bird kills have been reported when pesticide poisons such as diazinon are used. In 1762, the author of the most read child rearing manual of that day, Jean-Jacques Rousseau stated a medical truth. “One-half of the children die before their eighth year. This is nature’s law: why try to contradict 1388 it? Today the poison industry would like your to believe another truth - that their poisons will “protect” you and yours. Benjamin Disraeli once noted: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics.” The Author would add a fourth - the poison industry’s assurances of “safety”. Before “registered,” synthetic herbicide poisons were invented, about 200,000 geese were use each year to weed the cotton fields in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Geese have been used to weed other commercial crops, such as strawberries, mint, spruce seedlings and potatoes. There are two problems with weeder geese: the crop must be protected, and geese are selective grazers. Yellow nutsedge, Cyperus esculentus, and water hyacinth, Eichhornia crassipes are palatable and can be controlled by geese. Geese also prefer to eat quackgrass, Ag- ropyron repens; shepherdspurse, Capsella bursapastoris; and chickweed, Stellaria media. Unpalatable weeds include pineappleweed, Matricaria matircarioides and prostrate knotweed, Polygonum aviculare. When geese were used to weed a crop of spruce seedlings, palatable weeds, especially quackgrass, were safely removed. After the second year, however, concentrations of unpalatable weeds had started to build. T. L. Wurtz concluded weeding geese could be useful in an IPM program that included hoeing, or reduced herbicide applications. Just one example of the use of dangerous, volatile, “registered” pesticide poisons to protect lawns is a 1990s study by the “Citizens for a Better Environment” which found the average Chicago suburban used about 4 times as much volatile, synthetic pesticide poison per acre than an Illinois soybean farmer. So it is not surprising that the New York times noted that as the champion ice skater, Christina Locek, was sunning herself in her Illinois back yard, a lawn “care” company routinely sprayed volatile, synthetic pesticide poisons onto a Neighbor’s yard. The toxic spray volatilized or drifted into Christina’s yard and over her, her cat and her dog. Within minutes her cat died. Christina’s dog died within a few hours. Ms. Locek collapsed within moments and is now legally blind, permanently disabled and no longer able to work. In October, 1996 CNN reported that the U. S. EPA conducted a test of volatile herbicide poisons and found the level of contamination inside homes after outdoor spraying was 10 - 100 times stronger than what was found outside! These toxic residues were brought inside on shoes and pets (and volatilization); the floor and carpet concentrations of poison were astronomical and readily picked up by children from direct dermal contact as they lay or crawled on the floors as well as orally as they put toys and objects in their mouths. The tragedy is that many of these toxic “weed” killers that cause leukemia, lymphoma; non-Hodgkins lymphoma and soft-tissue sarcomas have a latency period of 20+ years - who will recall the carcinogenic herbicide poisons you were exposed to way “back then” or associate the old exposure to your “new” disease? Twenty-five to fifty million pounds of volatile poisons are used in the U. S. every year to treat private lawns; this includes the routine use of diazinon which has been linked to massive bird kills - if it kills birds, how safe are you! The Journal of Occupational and Environmental medicine, 39:1055-1087 noted: “The use of pesticides (poisons) in French vineyards is being suspected as a contributing factor to the abnormal level of brain tumor deaths seen among producers and agricultural workers there.

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