I have a bit of a confession to make. I have had a few posts outlining some of the steps I have taken to live a more environmentally friendly life. But it wouldn’t be fair to openly admit that sometimes I do a few things that aren’t favourable. It’s sort of like Fluorescent lightbulbs are a lesser evil. They use a lot less energy, but they contain mercury. Similarly, I sometimes I have to choose a path that leads me to pick a lesser evil.
And if you don’t believe that spin you can take Brendan’s approach:
You talk a good game on environmentalism. And then you Monsanto your lawn. Judas.
So I sprayed Round Up all over my lawn. I need to kill it. We are doing several things to our yard and it’s on a tight time line. We needed to kill the lawn for a number of reasons:
- Putting a 10×15ft garden (raised bed) in the backyard. Can’t have grass growing amongst the carrots and tomatoes.
- We are going to seed a different type of grass in the backyard—sheep’s fescue. It’s a prairie grass that doesn’t require watering and you only need to mow it a few times a summer. It’s hardy and much more friendly to our ecosystem.
- The lawn is lumpy or we have dew worms. Apparently dew worms are just like earth worms, but they are bigger and they cause lumps all over the lawn. I don’t know why. Maybe because they are jerks. I can’t stop the dew worms, I believe there are a few techniques to stop the lumping action (still researching this). In any case, I’m going to till it and rake it flat.
- I am the destroyer.
Round Up binds with the soil and presumably (though I have actually heard Curtis argue against it) is competely harmless. So it’s an unfavourable choice to eliminate the horrid kentucky blue grass in my yard that requires a lot of water and care. But in the long run I will have a garden plus a hardier, more environmental friendly grass.
Update: I am pretty that my lawn is actually getting greener. I sprayed it more thoroughly yesterday.
One Comment
For those of you that want a (seemingly) more environmental way to kill a lawn there is an alternative but it would take all summer in Calgary. Cover the area with thick, black plastic and let it sit. Besides blocking life giving sunlight the sun’s heat will be absorbed and basically cook any growing thing beneath and any ungerminated weed/grass seeds in the top few inches of soil. Of course you will have a bunch of very slow to biodegrade plastic that was made from natural gas leftover – so maybe this isn’t the better idea even if you have all summer!
The active ingredient in Roundup gets bound by clays in the soil and will biodegrade in a reasonable time frame. I don’t mean to sound like a promoter for the stuff but once captured by clays it leaves no residual activity in the soil and overall it is a reasonable choice for the task at hand.