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GD_American posted:Get a backhoe and scrape that whole lawn. Get a trailer load of topsoil and spread it. Seed it or buy a couple of pallets of sod. Water like hell. This is the only real solution if you are going to do it right. It sounds like you are not going to do it, but taking down a fence and stairs isn’t that big of a deal and if the tulips are that important to you, you can dig them out and replant them, or just buy more. They are not that expensive. You don’t have such an expanse that you need enormous earth moving equipment, it shouldn’t be hard to get something back there. That said, I have no problem with Roundup. If you don’t like Monsanto, there are other companies that sell glyphosate. It is harmless to insects, worms, birds, and mammals. It is absorbed through plant’s leaves where it is carried down to the roots and kills the plant. The part that lands on the soil becomes tightly bound and is rapidly degraded by soil bacteria. It does not leave residues or get into ground water. It is also quite inexpensive.
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May 30, 2012 20:21
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Toxx posted:I cannot give you a direct link unfortunately, but there are peer reviewed papers published in biology/agriculture journals that link glyphosate to problems in reproductive organs of lab rats. I don’t want to have a Roundup derail, but I was responding to everyone jumping at Emasculatrix. Glyphosate remains the safest herbicide on the market and 88,000 tons of it were used in 2007 (the most recent year I could find) In warm moist soil it has a half life of 3 days, although it is longer in colder, drier climates. Compared to the literal tons of it that are sprayed on roundup ready crops, using an ounce of it as a one shot deal to kill persistent weeds is not going to matter. Using it is not a moral failing, it is a tool that we can choose to use or not use.
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May 31, 2012 16:40
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You will probably get as many opinions as people here, but I vote for doing it right, or doing nothing. If you don’t want to spend any money and are trying to sell it and move, and don’t really know what you want to do anyway, nothing isn’t a bad idea. That or save up and spend the money to hire a landscaper who will take down the fence and clear out all your layers of garbage. What I can’t advocate however is to do something half-assed and put another layer of whatever on top and pretty it up a bit.
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May 31, 2012 20:38
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MarshallX posted:Yeah, that's what I'm doing now. If your goal is to be organic as possible, you want to avoid things like Miracle Grow or that box fertilizer. There are books on why, but the short of it is fertilizer will cause lush and abundant growth, perhaps abnormally lush growth. Because your plants are growing fast, it will do so at the expense of creating thick cell walls with fewer antioxidants. That means the plants will be less resilient to insects and diseases, be less nutritious, less sweet, and less tasty. Over the long term these fertilizers are damaging to the soil structure and natural fertility. The chemicals tend to actively repel worms because due to their thin, highly permeable skins, they find high concentrations of fertilizer irritating, and they cause imbalances with the natural bacteria, fungi and other soil dwelling organisms. From the environmental perspective, chemical fertilizers are prone to runoff into streams and lakes where they cause algae blooms and getting into ground water. Miracle Grow in particular is extremely water soluble. From a sustainability perspective, phosphate is mined and is a limited and depleting resource. Nitrogen is fixed through the Haber Process invented at the beginning of the last century by combining atmospheric Nitrogen with Hydrogen. Virtually all the Hydrogen is extracted from natural gas.
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Jun 7, 2012 17:03
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