The National Post kicks the green spin cycle into overdrive to suggest the province’s pesticide ban has made us into hippie dandelion wino’s, or something:
North America’s first European farmers would have seen the dandelion as free food rather than a nuisance, says Vermont winemaker Philip Tonks. “You went through a whole winter without any greens, so those first dandelion leaves were cherished,” he says. For more than 10 years, Mr. Tonks’ Grandview Winery has produced a dandelion wine. One hour of foraging will get you enough dandelions to make a gallon of wine, says Mr. Tonks.
Okay, usually a gallon of wine is a good thing, but dandelion wine? I’ll pass, thanks.
The Post, in it’s hurry to pretend we had a choice in learning to live with the dandelion, forgot what it said a year ago:
…it is difficult to imagine anything more unproductive than forcing every home owner in the province to abandon a perfectly safe, modern and efficient means of weed control in favour of a method that can only be described as medieval. The ban thus represents an enormous deadweight loss for the province. Even if we assume time spent hand-weeding on weekends would otherwise be allocated to yard maintenance, the provincial net worth could be vastly enhanced if everyone was spending those hours painting fences, repairing decks and trimming hedges.
Folks in Windsor hate the yellow flowers and even urbane urban Torontonians are grumbling about dandy-fallout.
Also in the Post article, up is down and the yellow peril is good for your lawn:?
Toronto gardener Sarah Battersby says she used to spend hours every weekend yanking dandelions out of her lawn. Starting three years ago, she became a dandelion convert. “What they offer as positives far outweighs the negatives,” she says. The flowers have a deep taproot, which allows them to suck low-lying nutrients to the surface. Since the flowers are one of the first to bloom, they are the first to attract pollinators, who then tend to stick around for the rest of the season. “Dandelions lead to a healthier lawn,” she says.
With all due respect to Ms. Battersby, she may like dandelions but I’d prefer not to have want my property to look like a slum covered in nature’s acne. No matter how the Post tries to greenwash an unpopular ban, every time a dandelion flowers, Dalton McGuinty loses a vote. I hope.
Which is why I like this a lot. Take that, dandelions.
Round-up tomorrow.
Ok, I’ll stop bantering for a minute. While I myself rarely use herbicides (far less than optimal results) I am in principle not a ban-fan. So my comment is not meant to be interpreted as such.
I do get some crab grass and other stuff including dandelions between the stones on my patio. I use boiling water - and, yes, also on the dandelions but only after they’ve bloomed.
They are great in salad too when the leaves are young. Although I’m often too lazy to get them at the right time and prefer rucola anyhow. If I have to have salad. What I do have lots of is stinging nettle - if you roll it with a rolling pin, you (not me) can put it in salad. It makes great risotto (again, not me).
Very open to solutions for wild blackberry, that’s where I’ve used the herbicide. No, there’s almost no fruit.
cbullitt, I doubt you lost any time at all. Just because we look back and recognize our naivete doesn’t make that “learning experience” wasted. I find those who did not experience a variety of possibilities actually the most close-minded and dogmatic; in fact, the most prone to accept authoritarian dogma.
A harmonica player I used to play blues with back in the ’80s made wine from all sorts of flowers, including dandelions, goldenrod, and even home-grown reefer that was too lame to smoke.
Yeah, I only lost a decade or two following such pursuits.
Sorry to be a contrarian again. I love my dandelions and all the other spring flowering weeds I get in my little “lawn” that is thank heavens only mine - and none of the neighbors’ business! The lovely freedom of running my property as I wish.
Around mid-summer, I do start “mowing” with a “weed-whacker for wimps” i.e a cordless light weight whacker. I do as much as little as I please.
A lot of weed nonsense has to do with neighbors and “gated-community” type totalitarianism.
Don’t even get me started on clotheslines.
And Hotties. Don’t forget the hotties…lots of em…
I wish it was the Monsanto product. Instead there will be bad puns, lame jokes and hippie-baiting.
Your Round-up tomorrow..
Does that mean the regular blog column is tomorrow;
or that, in violation of Ontario law, you will be using a popular Monsanto product tomorrow?