Can’t you just spray something ?
As the heat of the summer creeps in, the rainy season starts to water the weeds. They’re not like turf grass, which needs specific time of day watering for a healthy crop, something you can learn more about in another post, and go even further and have our crew take on your quarterly maintenance adjustments for your irrigation system, but I digress.
When the rainy season starts to gettin’ those a weeds a growin’, and the amount of light increases during our 24 hour daily chronology, our clients sometimes have something to say about it – and they should – since they expect us to provide them with an outdoor luxury living environment, never having to worry about the routine tasks of property maintenance. But there in lies the problem, the lack of hands in the dirt, the disconnection between the importance of why God created those weeds, and the function they provide.
From our standpoint, as a service provider, the weeds serve a specific function – more on that in another post – but in the most simple terms, the weeds tell the story, or, they let us know what is going on in the substrate from which they grow (dirt, sand, composted leaves and bark, etc). When the beds start looking grungy and janky, we have heard so often
“Can’t you spray something? Those weeds look so shitty.”
No.
It’s not that simple. While there are certain spray recipes we have employed in the past, and all natural at that, and specifically during March, April, and May, we generally like to figure out the problem in the first place and why there are those specific weeds in the bed to keep them from coming back – fix the problem, don’t cover it up. Whatever it is that is being sprayed only kills the small, fleshy plant being sprayed, but does nothing to remove its tiny little plant skeleton. And as the plant skeleton breaks down, the remnants provide a new substrate from which new weeds grow, and around goes the downward spiral to raped and pillaged lands where only the rich get richer with their synthetic chemicals that leach into the ground, and the land becomes sour. Read more from our friends we buy our nutrient solutions from in Downtown Deland, FL. https://qualitygreenspecialists.com/glyphosate-warning/
The more you spray synthetic chemicals, the more nutrient lockout you’ll have in the surrounding plants which are intended to be grown. Those weeds may have been a food source for little beneficial critters which were helpful to the roots of the beautiful peach tree, or avocado tree you paid us $1500 to $2000 for; it may have caused the roots to be unable to uptake the nutrients you pay us to feed your plants quarterly as part of our maintenance program for your property. The point is, we charge more for our services because we care for your land at the most basic level, we hand pull weeds (as time allows), or we work with our residential property owners with their outdoor habits for their property to look the way they want it.
When we spray, we use a 40% acetic acid (vinegar) cut with water at a 1:1 ratio with ½ cup of dawn dish soap, and 1-2 cups of pickling salt (has no anticaking agents – not important, it’s just what we use in our personal nutrition, so we use what we have). We spray fleshy leaved weeds in bright, hot sunlight, with no chance of rain in the forecast. The fleshy part of the whole situation is key, in that they shrivel up the most, and don’t leave behind a lot of plant waste. But beware, you’ll have to go back and pull the weeds up by hand if you don’t want to see brown, dead plants in your beds, which is why we usually don’t spray. The good news, if you follow this simple regimen, is the more up front work you do, the easier it gets.
Lastly, when employing Kairos Landscaping and trusting our approach (if you don’t want to do it yourself), the routine and best management practices we utilize means we are isolated from weeds since we aren’t mowing random, low quality lawns for our equipment to pick up seeds from weeds, and we are on our clients’ lawns for years, which means what is on their properties is unlikely to change unless they fire us and hire someone else. We also blow our equipment off after we finish at each yard on our route to reduce the spread of weed seeds and pathogens, as well as monthly equipment washings (or more frequently during the summer). So, when it comes to weeds, hold the spray, or use sparingly. It’s gonna take some effort to get the yard in pristine condition, but together, we can do it. WE care about you, and we show it through our work. Trust us, and the results will follow.
Read on for more about why this subject is strongly envisioned within the company culture of Kairos Landscaping.
This is a personal subject to this author. Having a parent who worked for the makers of the synthetic chemical Glyphosate and its adjuvants, the outcome of said parental situation could be left wanting for more. As I grew up, my mother never worked in the horticulture industry, although her formal education resulted in the successful completion of a bachelor’s degree in horticulture. Before I was born, she spent time in the agricultural industry working for Monsanto, and separately, as a landscape supervisor in Oklahoma and locally, here in Volusia County in the 80s. There is no way to prove it, or make accurate connections, but there was one story she told that stuck out to me – of which she said, “Something splashed on me and it made me sick as a dog. I had to call out for a week. My head was spinning and nobody could do anything.” That was an acute exposure to a chemical, but who’s to say the prolonged exposure to other chemicals in her botanical career didn’t have an effect on her overall health from that point on?
Later on in life, she would develop cancer two separate times, the second of which she would succumb to. She left an impact on me (as all mothers do, in one way or another), and many many people around her. She raised me to be considerate of others, and care about them as a person, rather than what I can get from them. To listen, and to hear, both at the same time.
Since 2019, we no longer use synthetic spray unless we know what’s in the mix and have SDS (safety data sheets) to prove what is in it and how to deal with adverse exposure to it. It is our opinion that the consumer of our services and the community at large demand that non synthetic, alternative sprays be used in the home service industry as a means of weed control, unless absolutely necessary.