Rant: don't think, just spray!

I love watching CBS Sunday Morning.  It's a great chronicle of some of the things worth pondering.  It's a thought-starter.  Apparently most of the people who watch it are idiot gardeners.  There's a lot of ads for herbicide this and Glyphosate that and pest control another.  OH PLEASE.  If all you plant in your yard is tasty lunch for pests, then all you'll get is hungry bugs.

It doesn't matter how you define it -- Nature, the Biomass Principle, whatever -- life wants to make more life.  If there's life there in the center, it will find a way to expand left and right, front and back, and up and down.  Reproduction, evolution, adaptation... it fills space by whatever means necessary.  Shoot, if you put a bare freakin' rock in the middle of the ocean... life will happen to fly, float, or be swept right out to that spot and BOOM you got an ecosystem.

If a gardener prepares a nice bare stretch of land, SOMETHING will grow on it.  Probably overnight.  Wishful thinking will not keep it from happening. Death-cides might, for a while.  Or you could cover it over... or plant on it!  Maybe with stuff that doesn't attract hungry pests.

This morning we saw ads for:

• Home pesticides (instead, try diatomaceous earth in the back of cabinets when you move in or just clean up your food storage problems in the first place)
• Garden pesticides (hand-picking and water spritzing fix infestations, or you could showhorn in those things that attract pest-eaters.  Tomato hornworms are lunch to birds, so put in a birdbath for them to drink from so you get a daily bird-patrol.)
• Herbicides (boiling water for weeds in the cracks of pavement; or just lay down flagstone instead and put in tough plants inbetween so there is no space for weeds at all)
• Lawn care (rip up your lawn and put in gardens, or clovers, or natural meadows -- monocultures such as lawns attract diversity such as weeds and pests, and lawns do not support wildlife unless your mower is... a little squirrely)
• Fertilizers (compost.)

If we put in life for something besides only our own pleasure, we'd be able to enjoy the whole garden more.

Okay, I'm done ranting now.  *whooh*.  Thanks for listening.



Fun Fact: The fields of Europe were historically seperated by hedgerows.  Hedgerows are long corridors of wild, untended habitat for pests and their predators.  When a field became infested, the pest-eaters in the hedgerows were ready to respond.  Nom nom nom, no sprays needed.