posted 10 years ago
I'm not trying to persuade anybody to do anything, not even those that spend money on a beautiful lawn.
But I have an opinion about toxic gick, and personally I won't use it. The primary reason for me to not buy or use toxic gick is based on an economic prinicipal. That is, that toxic gick is deemed much more valuable than human labor, always has been, even back to whenever it was created. Toxic gick has replaced more than 100 labor hours, nay a thousand, nay a million, nay...well you get the point.
So how many labor hours would it take to grow an average size weed free lawn? I'll keep it really simple, and not even figure in the mowing, feeding, watering, leaf raking, or any of those normal expenses of the lawn, just the simple task of locating & removing all the unwanted weeds that grow in a lawn...how many labor hours, per week?
Obviously it would be least labor intensive to weed a new lawn, so lets consider a 'new lawn' as the easiest, as most new lawns are double or triple over-sown (to crowd out weeds) with the preferred seed, and the ground would be somewhat friable from the recent planting disturbance, and other improvements to the ground (so digging weeds should be fairly quick). And yet I would quess 2 labor hours per week would be required, just to identify & remove weeds.
And 1 week would not be 'it', as various weeds germinate/grow at different times, spring time might require another hour per week as many weeds take huge advantage during the spring. Some weeks in mid to late summer may not even require 2 labor hours, although fall season/early winter might require purposeful weeding similar to the spring time weeding labor hours, that is if your program expects to stay well ahead of any weed problems.
Well I could go on & on about this & that, (with examples) but, how many 'professional lawn weeders' have you heard of? The answer might be none, because the lawn gick has completely wiped out that type of labor. Did you ever notice that the 'weed guy' that has the small tanker truck with hose reels & blades of grass painted on the tank...did ya ever notice, he is always alone? hahaha Now a-days it is rare for a facility that has gardeners, not to include lawn gick as part of their program.
Have you ever heard of a golf course hiring a weeder? Or how about the National Forest, have they hired people to weed out those invasive things growing in the forest? Care to consider how your state highway dept. controls weeds? The answer should be obvious, to those large scale management styles, their practices intentionally include lawn gick for one reason only: 'economic principal'.
james beam
