Safelawns Daily Post and Q&A Blog

An international team of 22 researchers released a report yesterday that reiterated the overwhelming evidence that a commonly used synthetic chemical weed killer causes birth defects and other problems related to reproduction in many forms of life including mammals.

Here is the link: http://www.newsroomamerica.com/story/195601/herbicide_spurs_reproductive_problems_in_many_animals:_research.html

While those of us in the North are primarily concerned with collecting those last few leaves from the lawn to avoid winterkill next spring, many folks in the South are actually preparing to plant.

When December arrives, the cooler temperatures turn many Southern lawns brown — which is the natural dormant state. To combat that appearance, the planting of annual and perennial ryegrasses is common. Ryegrasses germinate quickly without a lot of soil preparation and will provide a winter of green before the heat returns next spring.

So which seed should you choose? Annual ryegrasses are generally less expensive to purchase and in most cases they will suffice for a three- or four-month color fix before the plants die back. NOTE: If by chance you grow a centipede lawn, you should only overseed with annual ryegrasses. The roots of perennial ryegrasses will harm the roots of the centipede plants.

Otherwise perennial ryegrass seeds are gaining slightly more favor in the South, especially in somewhat shaded areas where the grasses can persist even during the warmest times of the year. Sometimes, though, it’s just too hot and sunny for perennial ryegrass and the plants won’t make it through summer. It would be ashame to spend the extra money.

Here’s a great web site that spells out some of the subtleties: http://www.seedland.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=Seedland&Category_Code=RG.

Meanwhile up here in Rhode Island, I didn’t get around to overseeding our lawn with perennial ryegrass until two weeks ago and we’ve since had several fairly hard frosts. Germination, which should have occurred by now during warmer times of the year, has been minimal. Some of the seed may germinate in Spring when the soil warms, but I’m doubting it.

Serves me right for procrastinating.

Purdue University professors Angus Murphy and Wendy Peer, partnering with scientists at the Institute of Experimental Botany at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, have revealed the mechanism by which the popular weed killer 2,4-D also harms grass plants, in addition to killing the surrounding weeds.

Since the mid 1940s, 2,4-D’s claim to fame is that it kills dicot weeds such as plantain and dandelions, but allows grass plants to live. In a press release posted two days ago on the Purdue web site, the professors revealed that the application of 2,4-D — the primary ingredient in many weed ‘n feed products for lawns, as well as myriad weed products for agriculture — reduces the vigor and length of root hairs on grass plants.

That means that 2,4-D likely has the unintended consequence of requiring the application of more water and fertilizer for a plant to achieve optimum health.

Many of us in the fields of landscaping and horticulture have observed this effect for years, but the Purdue study is the first to unlock this key reason behind the phenomenon.

This finding should send shock waves through agriculture, which has been hurtling toward using even more 2,4-D in recent months in response to the fact that weeds are developing so much resistance to Roundup. The Dow chemical company announced last March that it planned to genetically modify plants to resist 2,4-D — which means far more 2,4-D will wind up in the soil. Because we now know that 2,4-D causes plants to require more inputs, food will become more expensive to produce.

It’s all part of a vicious cycle of more and more chemical inputs — one that can only be stopped by a wholesale adoptance of natural, organic technique and products.

One of the few issues I can agree on with folks on both sides of the organic vs. synthetic chemical lawn debate is this: Artificial grass has no place in our society.

Giant petroleum-based blankets that will never biodegrade in anyone’s lifetime, artificial lawns emit all sorts of toxins, reflect heat that increases the earth’s temperature and are generally an environmental nightmare.

One California town apparently agrees, having banned fake lawns in recent legislation: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/314592

Citing the precautionary principle invoked in the historic Supreme Court Hudson v. Spraytech and ChemLawn decision in 2001 — profiled in the documentary film, A Chemical Reaction — a Canadian federal justice has ordered a full review of the impact of the herbicide Roundup on frogs and other amphibians.

Justice Michael A. Kelen, who has served on the federal bench since 2003, quoted the Hudson decision in ordering Health Canada to begin a special review of North America’s most widely used weed-killer, stating: “Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent adverse health impact or environmental degradation.”

In his 43-page decision reached yesterday, Kelen also cited a bevy of new evidence that implicates Roundup and its active ingredient glyphosate in everything from human birth defects to lymphoma. His order, however, specifically focused on the risks to amphibians detailed in a 2008 scientific literature review by the British Columbia Ministry of the Environment.

In that study, published in the BC Literature Review, scientists found that one of Roundup’s “inert” ingredients known as POEA — or polyoxyethylene tallow amines — has toxic effects on amphibians and that there are “knowledge gaps” hindering an “effective and realistic assessment” of the impacts of glyphosate on amphibians.” The report, however, did conclude that “recent studies have shown that amphibians are one of the most sensitive vertebrate groups to the toxicological effects of this herbicide.”

The West Coast Environmental Law Group, which filed a petition demanding the Roundup study on behalf of a French physician living in Canada, hailed yesterday’s decision.

“It’s absurd that (we) had to go to court to force Health Canada to consider the environmental risks of substances that BC government scientists have flagged as posing a major risk to frogs and other amphibians,” said Andrew Gage, staff lawyer. “This decision empowers the public to demand that pesticides be re-examined when science casts doubt on their safety and shows Health Canada that it must take such demands seriously.”

This review caps a year in which the toxicity of Roundup has been brought into question more than any other time in the product’s nearly 40-year history. As detailed in this report in September, the product is literally everywhere in our air in water due to its prevalent usage in horticulture and agriculture — and at homes where the mothers and fathers spray the product around their children without knowing any better.

Scientist Don Huber caused an international stir earlier this year when he allowed SafeLawns to post his letter to the Secretary of Agriculture warning of Roundup’s risks — including spontaneous miscarriage in humans.

“I can’t understand why the government is ignoring the crisis caused by Roundup,” he said at the time. “If the evidence were so clear on any other product, action would have been taken long, long ago. The problems are epidemic in scale. New pathogens are popping up. New species are showing up that science can’t even yet explain. But they all trace back to the massive abuse of glyphosate.”

Perhaps this judge’s order yesterday can begin to turn the tide.

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The SafeLawns fall tour of the Midwest unveiled numerous examples of landscape sustainability in recent days. Hosted by our sponsoring partners at Calcium Products/NatraTurf and Purple Cow Organics, we visited installations at state capitols, college campuses, golf courses, public gardens and private residences during our whirlwind tour. Here are just a few examples:

On Monday evening, we visited Calcium Products Inc. in Iowa, the site of some of the purest limestone deposits in North America. Limestone and gypsum produced by the company is instrumental in improved agriculture and lawn care.

Golf course superintendent Rob Schultz of the Meadows of Sixmile Creek, flanked by Steve Stumbras and Sandy Syburg of Purple Cow, shows off his fairways, which utilize top-coatings of compost to keep the course lush and green. Schultz eliminated synthetic chemical fertilizer on the course everywhere but the greens three years ago.

The fairways at the Meadows of Sixmile Creek still appeared green in mid-November. Schultz said they performed particularly well during periods of drought earlier in the summer.

Our next stop on Tuesday was the Olbrich Botanical Garden in Madison, Wisconsin, where Kentucky bluegrass lawns have been replaced by alternatives like Prairie Dropseed that turns golden brown in fall and winter.

As darkness loomed, we grabbed a shot of this pathway planted in a native sedge, Carix eburnea, that functions well as a lawn alternative.

Head horticulturist Jeff Epping, left, mugs with Sandy and Steve from Purple Cow. Epping has been encouraged by the success of the many environmental initiatives at Olbrich, where no synthetic fungicides are ever used — even on the rose gardens..

When ESPN Game Day visited the University of Wisconsin on Oct. 1, tens of thousands of students trampled the grass at the quad to death. Six weeks later, after it had been coated with grass seed and a generous top-dressing of compost, the lawn had recovered.

Protests are numerous at the Wisconsin state capitol building, where the folks like to make their voices heard on a regular basis. On Wednesday, however, this area of the lawn was looking lush after a coating of Purple Cow compost and grass seed.

The Ecologist is reporting that the world’s six largest pesticide manufacturers will collectively be put on trial by a long-standing tribunal that will convene in India next month.

Though the group known as the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, created in 1979, has no legal standing, its hope is to bring worldwide exposure to what it refers to as atrocities committed by Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont and BASF.

An estimated 355,000 people are believed to die each year from unintentional pesticide poisoning, according the World Health Organization. Nick Mole from the Pesticide Action Network UK said the trial would give a voice to the otherwise voiceless victims of pesticides.

“The pesticide industry is massive and incredibly powerful. It is difficult to prove corporate manslaughter even when these products are killing hundreds of people a year,” he told the Ecologist. “We’ve spoken to people who have been abused and we are allowing them to give voice to their individual stories. We will be presenting the outcome of the Tribunal to the corporations and will be inviting their response.”

Our friends at Beyond Pesticides are leading a national call to action to stop a bill that would gut the Clean Water Act of a key provision regarding the discharge of pesticides into open water. Here’s the background: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/7106/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6307

Stops Include Iowa, Wisconsin, California and Florida

The coming week, even by our standards, will be feature a whirlwind tour that crisscrosses three corners of the nation and several points in between in the pursuit and promotion of natural lawn care.

The plane leaves Providence later this morning for Fort Dodge, Iowa, the home of Calcium Products Inc. and NatraTurf. The folks at CPI manage one of the largest pure calcium deposits on the continent and refine their product into some of the best high-calcium limestone and gypsum for agriculture and home lawns. If your lawn has mostly dandelions growing, it’s probably because the soil below lacks enough available calcium for grass to thrive. A healthy dose of limestone can help change that.

Tomorrow we’re scheduled to drive from Iowa to Madison, Wisconsin, with the principals of Purple Cow Organics, the compost company with the best reputation in the Midwest. Originally referred to us by Dr. Elaine Ingham herself, Purple Cow composts to consistently exacting standards that make it a truly premium product. We’ll post some photos here as soon as we get them.

On Wednesday we’re scheduled to meet with local environmental groups about bringing organic lawn care symposia to the Midwest, including Madison and Chicago, next March. If you are in the area and would like to attend, here are the details: (What: Strategy meeting to determine the best course of action to put on a Madison sustainable lawn care event in March 2012; Where: Madison Environmental Group Office- 25 N Pinckney St. Madison WI. 608-280-0800; When: 10 a.m.)

On Thursday, we’re off to Los Angeles for a fundraising gathering to benefit Conservation International. The remarkable group was founded in 1987 by Spencer Beebe and Peter Seligmann and now has a staff of more than 900 employees working in more than 45 countries. It’s main work occurs in developing countries in Africa and Madagascar, Asia-Pacific, and the Central and South American rainforests.

Friday is a travel day, followed by our final stop of the week at the massive Bayside Rocks festival in downtown Miami. It’s a rare opportunity to bring the natural lawn message to 18,000-plus music revelers. On Saturday at 1 the conference will convene a Green Panel, where the SafeLawns Foundation will have a seat among numerous local activists. Later that afternoon we’ll have the opportunity to address the entire gathering for 5 minutes. If you had 300 seconds to try to get the attention of a throng of people waiting to hear the Wailers, what would you say about organic lawn care?

I’ll have lots of time on the road this week to ponder that thought . . .

The Fiskars Momentum mower, the best reel machine on the market today.

Here’s a link sent to us by Katy Moss Warner, the emeritus director of the American Horticultural Society and the woman who built and oversaw operations at the Walt Disney World landscape in Orlando for a quarter century. She’s a huge proponent of sustainable landscaping.

Turns out that at some schools, where budgets are tight, the administrators are having the student-athletes mow the grass with human-powered reel mowers: http://pandscorp.org/editors-picks/football-players-mowing-program/.

It’s brilliant, isn’t it? The fields get mowed. The athletes get exercise. And the environments and maintenance budgets get saved.

Sounds oddly similar to what my grandfather would have told me as he was sending me outside to work . . .