On Sun, 10 Apr 2005 13:29:30 -0700, paghat wrote:

If you have a killzone, just lay down some cardboard or many layers of
newspring on the weeds, cover the paper with rich black organic compost or
steer manure (which without soil mixed in will be too sterile for weeds),
& by the time the worms have finished eating the cardboard the weeds will
all be dead & you only need to turn the soil over to mix in the compost,
for a weed-free & toxin-free area of ideal topsoil. If you don't intend to
plant the area you could just lay down black plastic for a few weeks & let
the sun cook the weeds to death then toss the plastic, but for an area to
be planted, the paper-barrier method is ideal because after it kills
everything it just turns to plant nutrients for future plantings. And one
USUALLY discovers that the organic methods work far better than the
chemical methods, whether or not one agrees that toxifying the environment
is a bad thing. And products like roundup do much more lasting damage to
the environment than the vendors confess, & the surficants in these
products have done great harm to watersheds.


Seeing as you have taken great time and effort in your post, I feel I
should reply.

I have done the cardboard/blackplastic kill off and I reccommend it to
people often. The rub with the cardboard is to use -ThicK-, heavy duty
cardboard. I tell my clients not to spare it. Once the cardboard get's wet
it tends to fail quickly if not thick and the vegetation will recieve
water and keep up the fight and possibly win. I did not recommend this to
the poster due to the fact that they have made their decision. The product
is bought and paid for and they will use it no matter my thoughts on the
subject.




I tend to stay away from round-up (I don't like their parent company)

As well you shouldn't. But Avento/AgreEvo is doing all the same bad shit
as Monsanto, like developing pesticide-tolerant crops so that increasing
amounts of toxins can be dumped on farmlands, & lying their asses off
about how safe it is for all of us to be eating their chemical pollutants,
& "spinning" the safety of GMO crops denying the problem of outcrossing by
use of falsified research which never matches findings of independent
field studies. They have lied about the significance of outcropping, among
other lies, & have been one of the primary funders (along with Dow &
Monsanto) of the right-wing think-tank the Hudson Institute which develops
misleading propoganda as countermeasures against anyone with environmental
concerns (like when the Hudson Institute & John Stossel promulgated the
new myth "organic foods can kill you" & insisted that crops not treated
with Avento & Monsanto chemicals had more chemicals in them than crops
never treated with chemicals). Their eagerness to tell whoppers is so
without bounds that they really do go off the deep end & become laughing
stocks rather than furthering their agenda, though some of their
spokespersons, such as Avento's Dr. Devine, can demonize environmentalists
& then run really convincing doublespeak arguments about the safety of
just everything the chemical industry does, all the while feeling sorry
for anyone who so stupidly dares to think the independent research
findings just might be more credible than the in-house falsifications.
Sadly, in the chemical industry there aren't good guys & bad guys, but
only businessmen, & environmental concern is bad for sales.

I can see you have an opinion about the subject ;-P .. just kiddin'
really. I personaly feel mostly the same about it also, but in business I
subscribe to the ipm approach. The client will use chemicals if that's
what they want and I would rather be the one applying them than to have
the client or other companies applying them. I do my best to be
conservative and responsible with the application and I try to choose the
lesser of two evils when it comes to chemicals. I do my best to change the
client's point of view and I have been able to over time with a few
clients.



Your belief in Dr. Spak's in-house research which "proves" he works for
the company with the better herbicide does not meet any test of
independent, controlled, doubleblind, uninvested science. The claims
you've decided to believe really amount to company propoganda, which after
legal suits between Monsanto & Agravo, Agravo has gotten increasingly
clever at gamesmanship in lieu of science.

Both products work the same way, & do harm in the same way. Being MORE
toxic for speedier kill doesn't necessarily add up to anything but an
identical effect in the final assessment, but with more concentrated toxic
residues for the more concentrated product. Monsanto's "answer" to Spak's
fatuous claims -- Monsanto replies that RoundUp has the least restrictions
on legal use because it's safer -- is ultimately an admission that their
own product is harmful, a confession made in order to assert that Agravo's
Finale is even worse.

Organic methods tend to have accumulative benefits for an increasingly
healthy garden, but chemical reliance breeds chemical reliance in a
worsening garden environment. That's the main fact of organic vs chemical
gardening practices, without even bringing in the issue of broader
environmental damage & injury to human health.

-paghat the ratgirl

Like I've said before, I pretty much fully agree with you on the subject
but at the end of the day I -NeeD- to make a living. I would love to run a
fully organic service but it's just not possible at this point in time in
my area. The market demand is just not there but it's begining to
change. My business is 80% organic and I always offer an organic option to
the client. The clients' want (generaly) instant results which organics
just don't do (*generaly).

Personaly I feel that I've done quite a bit of research on herbicides and
I'm not the type to swallow what is feed to me readly. As soon as the
orgainc herbicides catch up to the chemical ones I'll make the change
completely. At this moment organic herbicides are only contact killers and
not very efficive. I do what I can to encourage clients to change their
planting habits and their mind set of what a sustainable landscape design
is.... but in the end the clients will what they will.
Have a good one...
Timothy

--
Yard Works Gardening Co.
http://www.ywgc.com