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TrueGreen Chem lawn and composting lawn clippings
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Posted by container_blueberry (My Page) on Tue, Nov 3, 09 at 0:12
| My house has been receiving True Green Chem lawn service for serveral years.
They use a variety of chemicals (herbicides, fungicides, insecticides).
How long do I have to wait in order to use my lawn clippings in the compost bin? How long if I complete cancel True Green Chem lawn service?
I am intending on using the compost to grow vegetables in the spring.
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RE: TrueGreen Chem lawn and composting lawn clippings
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That depends on just what they did use, but for the most part grass clippings can be composted after the third mowing after the application. By then any residual should be washed off the grass.
Same thing after you cancel the "service", after the third mowing any residual should be washed off the clippings. |
RE: TrueGreen Chem lawn and composting lawn clippings
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| Before I assumed any composted material previously treated by TruGreen was safe to use on edibles, I'd want to know exactly what chemicals were used. This company has a terrible reputation that includes using very toxic chemicals, poor customer service, unnecessary and unordered services, aggressive marketing practices and alleged illegal pesticide dumping. If any of their 'treatments' included using the herbicide chlopyralid (marketed by Trugreen under the name Trupower), then your compost could be seriously contaminated. While there is no evidence to support that this herbicide would carry residuals into the food stream and therefore be harmful if ingested, it is extremely persistent even when composted and will affect the ability of various types of plants to grow at all. The difficulty is in confirming this info. Everything I've read about the company (and the list of consumer complaints and even lawsuits is very extensive) is that management is very uncooperative and evasive and you are not likely to get a satisfactory response. Even more so if they think you are considering cancelling their contract. My advice would be not to risk it and cancel the service ASAP. Dump and dispose of any current clippings (and not in your yard waste service, if you have one) and wait until next spring's mowings before including any clippings in a home compost. |
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