Pesticides: Good, Bad, and Stupid People

 

     Gone are the days of Paris Green and Lead Arsenic when pesticides lasted forever in the garden. One could almost say, gone are the days of hard pesticides when chemicals like DDT that remained potent for more than a generation. Remember the catch phrase, “Better living through Chemistry.” 

     Decade by decade, year by year, the different pesticides available to gardeners are getting weaker. The reasons I believe is that people have become unwise in their use, and those chemicals are pulled off the market. Government agencies are wary of the public using potentially dangerous pesticides. I agree.

     First, they don’t read the directions. They scan down to where they may read one teaspoon of chemical per gallon of water. They understand one tablespoon per gallon. And then they think, or sort of think, “If one tablespoon is good, then two is better, and four or more is better yet.” What happens usually, they take the tablespoon from the kitchen drawer, used it, and rinsed it, returning it to the drawer. (Please do not do that. What you use for pesticides, use only for the purpose.)

     Secondly, most people can’t identify plants or the diseases they get. One person in a thousand can identify ten trees correctly. Are you one of them? In Wisconsin, there are more than one hundred and fifty species of trees.

     An elderly man called me on the phone explaining to me that he sprayed Ortho on a dying tree planted by his late son. After, getting five minutes of backstory on the illness of his son, I asked him what Ortho he used to treat the maple. He didn’t know saying that isn’t all Ortho just Ortho? Ortho makes hundreds of fine products with directions on its use. He didn’t read the directions which became the “destructions.”

     A woman came to me with a medicine bottle with a large moth swimming in Gin. She said she found the bug on her doorstep. I asked her how many of these things were there? She said she only found one. I said then the problem is solved. But she wanted to purchase some chemical to kill any chance that others exist.

      Around St. Patty’s Day, the store was selling Shamrocks and the poor man’s shamrock, White Clover. In one man’s shopping cart, he had a $4.99 can of Chickweed and Clover Killer and a 99 cent three inch pot of clover. The clover killer use to contain 2,4,5,T or Silvex, you remember “Agent Orange.”

     I get complaints from people when their neighbors use lawn weed killers with reckless abandon and later noticing that their flowers and tomatoes plants are wilting. I tell them to sue them. I will love to see those court cases on Judge Judy. Such things are hard to prove.    

     These good people are the same people that the Constitutional says can own firearms. I believe that gardeners who wish to purchase pesticides should take a pesticide test first. I passed the Illinois and Wisconsin pesticide exams over the years. It is a hundred question test that covers a wide variety of situations and problems.

     Over the years, I had been witnessed to many fearful and foolhardy things people understand about the bugs in the air to the weeds in their lawn. I lived in northern Illinois lake community. In a town council meeting, a mother talked fanatically about spraying all those murderous mosquitoes that gave her son encephalitis when he was in St. Louis. The community didn’t spray. Her son lived. A homeowner fertilized his lawn every three to four weeks which made a green and brown jigsaw pattern in his grass. School districts near me could not read the difference between weed controls and weed killer and destroyed acres of lawns and athletic fields. 

     The largest retailer in America stores ‘weed and feed’ products with houseplants in a greenhouse building attached to the main store. I told the management about it, you could smell the vapors, but they are pencil pushers and do not understand. I get calls all the time asking how they can spray for weeds under their fruit trees. It’s your choice fine lawn or good fruit, you can’t have both.

    I published a study of lawn fertilizers and found that using the right fertilizer, a homeowner would need only to fertilizer their lawn once or twice a year, and still get a good green color. We fertilized the athletic fields three times as the control. No complaints from athletes or from their coaches. So why do lawn care companies advertize programs to spray lawns four, five, and six times a year? Profit. I wrote a garden column for four years and when I wrote that a quality lawn could be obtain with minimum cost. Local Lawn Care companies complained and I was out of a job. The newspaper wanted to print fiction it seems...and still does.

     The problem has gotten worst as advertisers are selling products and using paid so-called experts. More garden columns are written by corporations than by the people who are experienced and impartial. My advice to you, if you are of need of Horticultural information, go not to your local garden center, but to your county extension center.

1.     Get good advice first. Second opinions also good. Learn.

2.     Read and understand the directions.

3.     Watch for weather conditions, wind and high temperature for over spray.

4.     Use gloves. Wash your spray clothes separate from main laundry.

5.     Take notes of the times and the dates you spray and the effects, good and bad.

6.     Purchase only enough chemical or fertilizer to be used for that year.

Contracting for lawn and tree straying.

1.     Nothing you can spray on a tree will cure it. (Excepting for fruit trees.) Best to plant a variety of trees and plants in the first place.

2.     Spray applicators are hired not for their horticultural knowledge, but for their safe driving record.

3.     Ask to see their spray license, check the year.

4.     Test them on their knowledge. Can they identify the type of grass you have? Be sure you know the answer, first.