RCW Nurseries

Garden and Landscape

(281) 440-5161

Once again…

     This week, another uninformed customer came in, wondering what was wrong with her 20+-year-old Live Oak. I told her that it had Oak Leaf Blister and galls. She was shocked when I added “Stop using Weed and Feed”.  No, I’m not psychic…I just know what I am looking at.  I know that it comes with the job, but some  days I feel like just recording “The Speech About Atrazine”, so we never have to say it again. Some day, when it’s illegal, we won’t have to. 

Here are the basic facts about how all products that contain Atrazine work.

  1. Atrazine is a systemic, broadleaf weed killer.
  2. It is absorbed through the roots of plants.
  3. It can’t tell the difference between the roots of your weeds or the roots of your trees. To Atrazine, roots are roots.
  4. It will slowly poison your trees and shrubs to death.

Other Atrazine facts

  1. Atrazine persists in the environment.
  2. The more you water or it rains, the more it spreads.
  3. Atrazine is monitored in our water (we get a report included in our water bill yearly).

Here are the basic facts about the company that owns Atrazine.

  1. Atrazine is owned by the Syngenta company.
  2. Syngenta owns the Scotts company.
  3. Scotts has Scotts Lawn Service franchises.
  4. Scotts will not allow their franchisees (trained professionals) to use any Atrazine product.
  5. They sell products that contain Atrazine, to every other Tom, Dick and Harriet,  in the country.
  6.  (Do you see a conflict between #4 and #5?) 

     You can read all about what Atrazine does to frogs (and people) at https://rcwnurseries.com/data/stories_rcw/other/31_sex-lies-and-herbicides.pdf   This article is pretty interesting and from a magazine called The Ecologist. Please note the date of the article. This article is now 13 years old and Atrazine is still on the market. The article explains how Atrazine causes mutations and how the big chemical companies play with the EPA, dragging out the chemical re-registration process. Which gives them time to create the next “greatest chemical ever invented” or cure cancer…which ever comes  first. My bet is on a new weed killer.