Re: Roundup (was Wild Garlic in Louisianas)

Bill says:
>I'm not totally against herbicides, but they should be reserved for
>otherwise intractable weed problems in large gardens.   I don't see any
>place for them in the small backyard garden, yet now many, many people use
>them there routinely.

Convicted! Too often I resort to chemical control for problems I could have
prevented with smarter cultural practices - for instance, dumping Ajax on
NIGHT AFFAIR after I let it sit in a puddle under oak leaves so it rotted.
But I especially worry about my neighbors who insist upon keeping their
grass lawns "tidy" by hiring a tanker truck to nuke them throughout the
summer. Every time one of these Chem-Lawn people gets a treatment, my yard
is inundated with marching ants. I mean, on the march, running from their
homeplace. They march right through my house on their way to higher ground.
(No, I am not imagining this.)

We all know, or should, how crucial ants are to a healthy yard, a healthy
soil. And what about the critters that can't wriggle away? Even if they
don't die outright, are they not likely to ingest poison that will be
passed up the food chain? And people wonder why there aren't as many frogs
and songbirds as we all remember from our childhoods!

I'm no organic garden saint (wish I were!) but it seems to me that if you
surround your house with plants so poorly adapted to your climate or in
need of tending so far beyond your time and inclination that you have to
poison the world to keep them looking good, then you have gone "upside
down" in your garden, much the way a chronic credit card user can be upside
down in his credit - paying more in interest than the original purchase was
worth.

But as I said, I'm no saint. You should see my water bill.

celia
storey@aristotle.net  USDA Zone 7b
Little Rock, AR   average annual rainfall 49+ inches
average relative humidity at 6 a.m. 84%
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