Or Maybe That’s Not the Question By Donna Morin Miller [caption id="attachment_3214" align="alignleft" width="250" caption="Donna Morin Miller is a health counselor in Wrentham, Mass."][/caption] SEEMS LIKE EVERY TIME I READ about organic lawn care, I see a comment from the purist sector that argues how lawns are wrong and wasteful. They require inordinate amounts of water to maintain and provide little env ...

[caption id="attachment_3200" align="alignleft" width="540" caption="This new book from Random House is out April 19."][/caption] Author McKay Jenkins has been a friend to SafeLawns ever since he agreed to appear in the film, A Chemical Reaction, to summarize America's obsession with lawns. We were thrilled and honored when Jenkins and his publisher, Random House, included a long discussion of the SafeLawns ...

Kim Barletta of Freeport, Maine, is a home schooler and avid outdoor adventurer. RESPECTFUL PRODDING CAN GO A LONG WAY TOWARD PESTICIDE REDUCTION Spring is on its way, and I wanted to write to you about pesticide applications at health care facilities (and any other public place where folks go and don't want to be exposed to chemical pesticides). For several years now, I have been doing what I can to help e ...

NOTE: Since our publication of Col. Don Huber's letter to the United States Department of Agriculture warning of the dire consequences of too much weed-killer known as Roundup in the soil, validation of his concerns has come from numerous sources. This note is from Jim Martindale, a consultant with North American Ag-Gro and President of Soil Regeneration Unlimited: I know from observations in dairy herds in ...

This is the third installment of Rethinking the Traditional American Lawn, a four-part series by High Country Gardens Founder and Chief Horticulturist, David Salman. Salman also writes The Xeric Gardener. [caption id="attachment_2853" align="alignleft" width="533" caption="Sweet woodruff"][/caption] News Flash: Groundcovers Grow Where Grass Won’t Groundcovers like sweet woodruff form a weed-resistant canopy ...

Barbara Rubin, AKA, "the Armchair Activist, (http://armchairactivist.us) sent this along to share with the SafeLawns Foundation: Why have we made so little progress in pesticide activism during the past decade? We know profits are at the heart of this but that has always been the case. An additional impediment is that we are also a people devoted to routines and customs, hesitant to explore new avenues of a ...

Peter Kettenbeil of Brossard, Quebec, is Vice Chairman of the Technology Transfer Committee of the Solar Buildings Research Network and consultant to numerous environmental projects. He submitted this guest blog on the subject of the Canada Blooms flower show voting to overturn its decision to screen the film, A Chemical Reaction. [caption id="attachment_2450" align="alignleft" width="563" caption="If you z ...

[caption id="attachment_2420" align="alignleft" width="375" caption="The SafeLawns lawn signs say it all about people's changing attitudes with regard to lawn care."][/caption] NOTE: Tom Kelly of New Hampshire was co-founder of one of the largest chemical lawn care companies in New England. Recently he launched an all-organic lawn care supply company, Fire Belly Organics, in response to his belief that lawn ...

[caption id="attachment_2299" align="alignleft" width="716" caption="The lawn on the left received applications of high-calcium limestone and gypsum; the lawn on the right did not."][/caption] For years I've seen what the additions of high-calcium limestone can do for a lawn to decrease weed pressure and create overall soil health. To help explain the process in depth, I asked agronomist Craig Dick of www.N ...

[caption id="attachment_2178" align="alignleft" width="590" caption="Legislators often veered off course Tuesday in their discussions of lawn chemicals. (Tom Kelly photos)"][/caption] NOTE: Tom Kelly of New Hampshire was co-founder of one of the largest chemical lawn care companies in New England. Recently he launched an all-organic lawn care supply company, Fire Belly Organics, in response to his belief th ...