As the Saturday morning TV
gardener P. Allen Smith gave tips on how to make a toad house
by turning a flowerpot upside down, the commercial breaks
consisted entirely of dueling lawn-care ads from OM Scott
& Sons and Bayer CropScience for products that would kill
dandelions, kill crabgrass, kill grubs.
There was no mention that
these products would also kill the toad.
Not many of us could be
expected to know this. Too few of us farm to recognize many
garden products as diverted agricultural pesticides. But many
are, and in the past 50 years, the home-garden market has
become one of the easiest and least scrutinized places for
agrochemical giants to funnel untold amounts of big-gun farm
chemicals.
Yes, they are legal, but if
given one wish, mine would be to ban them. To my mind, there
is no place for these products in the home garden. They kill
insects, weeds and fungi precisely because they're poisons.
The chances that we might misuse them isn't high. It's
inevitable, and mistakes can have devastating consequences.
Take Rosepride, an Ortho
product promising ``total flower care.'' The insecticide in it
is an organophosphate, a class of chemicals developed in the
run-up to World War II in Germany as a chemical weapon and a
suspected cause of Gulf War Syndrome and chronic fatigue. A
farmer would use it in the face of a plague of locusts. Ortho
recommends we use it in our flower beds as often as every
seven days.
Every seven days?
For flowers?
Perhaps more egregiously, for
the novice gardener inundated with advertisements, the
overwhelming message is that using these chemicals is the way
to garden. In fact, with a bit of skill, we not only can
produce beautiful, healthy plants, but we can also protect
ourselves.
We
used to be smarter
For most of human evolution,
humans didn't poison pests. We outsmarted them: We'd avoid
mosquitoes by clearing stagnant water or stocking ponds with
fish that ate them. We'd aerate shrubs to avoid fungus. We'd
compost yard clippings in a pile mixed with leaves and manure
and wet as often as it took to get hot enough to kill weed
seeds and check plant pathogens.
We'd stop pruning in spring
to encourage nesting birds who glean aphids. Some farmers kept
lush hedgerows in old fields precisely to accommodate those
fabulous creatures. Birds would get help from lacewings and
wasps and ladybugs. We'd add compost to soil to improve
drainage and avoid boggy and diseased conditions. We'd choose
hardy plants suited to the region.
As so many of us moved to
cities, in only two generations we have largely lost those
skills. We've gone from gardening with our wits to using
chemicals. During the transition, we've trusted our
regulators, chiefly the Environmental Protection Agency, to
keep those chemicals safe.
It had done as good a job as
the Food and Drug Administration has keeping junk food
healthful. Back to Rosepride, which, in addition to containing
organophospates to kill the bugs, contains the fungicide
Triforine as part of its ``triple action'' cocktail. It is an
EPA Class 1 chemical, meaning highly toxic. We apply it to
rosebushes to do the job discreet pruning and a spray with the
hose could manage.
The predominant herbicide in
weed-and-feed treatments is the chemical 2,4-D, one of two
active ingredients that made up Agent Orange. This is a
hormone disrupter that throws a plant's growth into overdrive,
causing it to grow itself to death. Chemists explain it as
``cancer for plants.''
EPA statisticians and
University of Minnesota pathologists associate 2,4-D with high
levels of cancer in Midwestern crop workers and birth defects
in children conceived during spring spraying. The National
Cancer Institute looked at it as a possible source of cancer
in pets exposed to treated lawns. The debate remains open as
to whether the chemical caused the cancers; meanwhile, 2,4-D
remains on the market.
Manufacturers admit problems
only when we fail to follow their instructions. The industry
term is ``off-label'' use. This ignores the overwhelming
likelihood that a busy householder won't read the fine print,
and spray pesticides wearing nothing but a T-shirt and shorts,
inhaling residue as he goes. A professional would wear boots,
long pants, long sleeves, a mask and often goggles. He or she
would work before dawn, before winds rise.
The risk is even more
alarming for immigrant gardeners who don't speak English.
Killing
needed insects
The interests of wildlife and
the environment are treated as beneath mention. The
newest-wave insecticide, Imidacloprid, used in systemic rose
treatments, is heralded as a good thing because it kills only
bees. What about the inherent obscenity of treating a flower
with a chemical that kills its pollinator?
Finally there is the irony
that once you begin using pesticides, particularly
insecticides, you not only lose your pollinators, but you also
either poison or starve the beneficial insects, reptiles and
birds that would have naturally controlled scale, aphids,
mites and white flies in the first place. Once you do this,
you've effectively fired nature and become hooked on
pesticides.
