Monday 31 May 2010

dogs and revegetation in Darebin Parklands

Recently I posted about the use of weed killers in our local park and my concerns about the use of glyphosate.

Further to that post on glyphosate, I received the newsletter of Organic Gardener Magazine and it mentioned
the recently-released, astonishing report from the US President's Cancer Panel which noted that only a few hundred of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use in the United States have had safety tests, and that pesticide exposed farmers, crop duster pilots and even manufacturers have been found to have elevated rates of prostate cancer melanoma and other skin cancers. The report also recommended that people consume food grown without pesticides, chemical fertilisers and growth hormones. It's not astonishing for its findings, which OG has been highlighting for years, but because such a high level panel has finally come out and said these things in black and white. This is, I believe, the first of many reports and research that is going to completely turn the tables on the acceptance of chemical use on food.
And no doubt we will have to look at our use of weedkillers

However...
How will we revegetate our indigenous plantings without using herbicides? They do a wonderful job of giving the 'good plants' a chance to survive.

Here's a photo I posted a couple of weeks ago of weedy growth sprayed with herbicide.



And here's a photo of the same spot today:

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