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How about not killing the weeds? One doesn't need to live a perfectly manicured pesticide-ridden hellscape.
by moab 10mo ago
How about not killing the weeds? One doesn't need to live a perfectly manicured pesticide-ridden hellscape.
- GaryBluto 10mo agoHow about letting him do what he wants with his own land and not insulting his ideal home?
- snapdeficit 10mo agoHow about thinking about society and not just every man for himself? Clearly you didn’t read TFA.
- morkalork 10mo agoNo, this is HN where we voraciously advocate for the libertarian ideals of "I do what I want" then pontificate about the tragedy of the commons from an ivory tower when it inevitably all goes wrong.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- moab 10mo agoYou're entitled to your own opinion, but imo the point of posting anything on HN is to subject yourself to feedback. That's what I gave. Feedback.
- striking 10mo agoTheir comment asked for an alternative.
- GaryBluto 10mo agoHe wanted an alternative method to achieve X, not abandon X and do Y.
- oftenwrong 10mo agoWhat if I want to do something on my land that will poison the ground water for the area? What if I want to raise an invasive species on my land that will likely escape and devastate local wildlife? Should society be permissive and wait for the damage to be done before stopping me, instead of being proactive and stopping me from doing so before the fact?
- GaryBluto 10mo agoLast time I checked that wasn't what he was planning on doing.
- nullstyle 10mo agoLast time i checked you were giving out blank checks. We live in a society
- filoeleven 10mo agoThat is literally what he is doing. None of your lawn grass is native.
- delichon 10mo agoI live in an extremely high wildfire risk area. I also have an extreme rodent problem. Keeping the vegetation low around structures is indicated.
- triceratops 10mo agoKeeping vegetation low is a different problem from removing weeds in a targeted fashion. A simple mower or trimmer should suffice.
- moab 10mo agoYou can do that by mowing, fyi.
- Zach_the_Lizard 10mo agoCan't do that in cracks in a sidewalk, between pavers, on a wall, etc. where plant growth can damage them.
- komali2 10mo agoWeed whacker and edger? You'll have them out anyway.
- delichon 10mo agoI weed whack acres, it is a huge sink of my free time. But there are areas where I don't want to mow, I want to eliminate growth, like on my gravel driveway, and the area adjacent to my house. I should probably install concrete instead of gravel, but that's telling myself to just eat cake since I have no bread.
- Zach_the_Lizard 10mo agoSome weeds are quite unpleasant, such as sticker burrs. I'd rather not have a dog and children covered in those. Some weeds can be damaging to property, trees, sidewalks, etc. or are poisonous. It's not always about being annoyed by dandelions in an otherwise overly fussed over sterile lawn environment.
- onli 10mo agoEven then, spraying cancer causing chemicals into the land is beyond stupid. Killing yourself and the humans around your land for having a bit less work, one can't be more antisocial.
- derriz 10mo agoOr if you do want a manicured plot, just cut them with a lawnmower? The bane of my young life was having the job of cutting the grass around the house - we lived in the country at the time and had about 1/2 an acre of lawn as well as fruit trees, plants, vegetables, etc. We never considered using weedkiller - I just can't see the need. Isn't it just as easy to pull the weed out of the ground as it is to spray round-up on it and wait for it to die, before presumably anyway pulling the remains of it? Ignoring the health implications completely, I can see some "value" of using round-up in a commercial environment where your dealing with 100s of acres or more but fail to see what benefit it provides in a domestic setting when the number of weeds is small enough that it would just takes minutes to remove them physically and toss them into a compost heap.
- Retric 10mo agoI rarely use weed killer on poison ivy to avoid coming into physical contact. Lawnmowers work fine for flat yards, but for steps down a steep embankment you really need a weed eater and weed eater + poison ivy is a major hassle.
- mrgoldenbrown 10mo agoDigging weeds and their roots up one by one by hand out of cracks in concrete/asphalt is much slower than spraying. Also much more physically challenging, which is a metric I didn't care about when young and able bodies but nowadays is very relevant to me. I'm not saying roundup is good, but there are plenty of reasons for it to be appealing. I haven't tried the boiling water method yet, it seems like it'd be easier than digging but harder than spraying, unless perhaps one has a mobile, outdoor source of boiling water.
- reeredfdfdf 10mo agoWhat is the point of removing weeds from those cracks in the first place? Do they cause some kind of physical harm to creatures or objects that move on that concrete or asphalt surface?
- 10mo ago
- analog31 10mo agoIn my area, some weeds will absolutely take over and choke out everything else while also spreading throughout the neighborhood to the delight of all. But roundup isnt much of an option when the weeds are next to the nice stuff. My compromise is to pull the weeds when I'm motivated to and call it a day.
- TitaRusell 10mo agoThis is how humans had to do it for millennia- by hand. Backbreaking work. But necessary unless you wanted to lose half the harvest. I dislike gardening and enjoy my apartment!
- malfist 10mo agoPesticides aren't used to kill weeds. Herbicides are useful, they certainly help prevent invasive weed species from taking over native plants and grasses. I'm Kentucky I'm always fighting Johnson grass, thistle and Japanese knotweed in my bluegrass
- Angostura 10mo agoPesticide is a catch-all term that encompasses herbicides, insecticides, fungicides etc.
- malfist 10mo agoNo, it isn't. Pesticide are used to kill pests, such as insects in the case of insecticide or rodents. It does not include fungicides nor herbicides
- dragonwriter 10mo ago> Pesticide are used to kill pests, such as insects in the case of insecticide or rodents. It does not include fungicides nor herbicides Wrong. See, e.g., https://www.fda.gov/food/chemical-contaminants-pesticides/pesticides https://www.fda.gov/food/chemical-contaminants-pesticides/pe... “Pesticides are used in agriculture to protect crops from insects, fungi, weeds, and other pests.”
- psunavy03 10mo agoWhy is something someone else enjoys a "pesticide-ridden hellscape?" How would you like me to come and pompously shit all over something you enjoy?
- jhide 10mo agoI agree about with your claim, but the answer to your question is that “weeds” is a set of species that contains both invasive, ecologically harmful species, and crucial native annual and perennial forbs+grasses. From the universalizability principle, if everyone merely let “weeds” propagate, because of the ecology of invasives that are in that set, we would be MUCH worse off for the next few millennia than we are now. Until the ecosystems healed and the “invasives” become “keystone species”. Not sure how long that would take but we won’t see it :)
- hermitcrab 10mo agoWe don't mow one part of our lawn and have sowed it with wildflowers) which some people might call weeds) to attract insects. Some wildflowers prefer poor soil, so my wife scythes it at the end of the season and removes all the cuttings. I'm hoping we might get some native orchids eventually.
- mvdtnz 10mo agoSorry you think my Japanese garden is a hellscape.
- stubish 10mo agoFire hazard and native wildlife, mostly. Over here, anything called a weed is invasive. Native birds and insects like their native species, and invasive vegetation brings in invasive species.