There are more than 25 million acres of lawn in the U.S. The quantities of pesticides applied per acre to suburban lawns often exceed those applied to farm fields. Many of these chemicals have been shown to cause a number of adverse effects in animal tests, including birth defects, cancer, and damage to the skin and nervous system. Pesticides are also hard on the lawn itself because they kill beneficial organisms as well as harmful ones, leaving your lawn vulnerable to renewed attack once they wear off.
So if pests are a problem, before you reach for conventional pesticides, give integrated pest management (IPM) a try. IPM involves non-chemical controls such as pests' natural enemies and competing species, removal of debris and other sources of crop infestation, and, as a last resort, low toxicity chemical agents to keep pests away from home and garden.
If you need to hire a professional, you can expect to find at least some pest control companies in your area that offer IPM services. However, you should carefully interview companies before you sign a contract to make sure that what they offer is the real thing. The company should fully explain its strategy and the number of visits it plans to make. If chemical pesticides are necessary, the company should explain which agents it plans to use and give you the label information on their health hazards. The EPA requires that such information be available for every EPA-registered pesticide.
Revenge of the Lawn
By sara315 - Posted on March 15th, 2007
Tagged: Education
• Better future
I learned a lot by reading this blog post. Are there any statistics on pesticides' harm on suburban America? Also, are there any harmful results that can come from using IPM? I never really thought about pesticides that much. Thanks for informing me about the use of them.
Well, as a landscaper, I have to tell you that the pesticides with chemicals work much better and are cheaper. If the main problem with someone's lawn is weeds, then I recommend using zoysia grass, as it will take over your yard and will not allow weeds to grow. If you want to put it in a lawn with grass already growing in it, buy plugs, not seeds. It takes up to a year to fully grow, but it is well worth it in the long run and is very cheap compared to the pesticides we use. If you don't want all that time and trouble, use roundup and amdro for immediate results, and as long as you keep your dog from eating the amdro, you will have no problems.
Don't you then have a problem with invasive species..
I mean...if you introduce some snakes to get rid of a rodent population, you will have a bunch of very well fed very quickly breeding snakes.
Then what?
Hail The PitGodess!