What do you do about neighbours and pesticides?

LindyAdele · April 27, 2015

Canadian Here.

I live in a suburb of a major city, but an older suburb so the houses still have yards. I have a corner lot yard, big enough for an inground pool, a 100 square foot garden, patio firepit and about 10 trees besides. All my neighbours have smaller yards. Most are retired couples, and obsessed with lush weed-free lawns. Which means the local weedman guys have their trucks here on my street daily in the spring. They treat and treat over again until the weeds are gone.

Last year, I lost several plants while hardening off. They just wrinkled up and the leaves twisted until they fell off. These were the plants along the edge of the table I set my plants out on. I saw the next day that my nextdoor neighbour and the one accross the street both had lawn, weed, grub treatments that day. In addition, my accross the street neighbour regularly uses stuff he 'buys accross the boarder because they won't sell it here in Canada'. Once I planted in the garden, five plants suffered for a while and were stunted by they recovered eventually. I was pretty sure it was herbicide damage, but not from the soil, only those facing my fence which is open to the road. I am going to start hardening off this week and wonder how I can do this without loosing plants short of building a greenhouse!

I don't know what chemicals are being used, I only know they are capable of killing tomatoes.

Does anyone know how long this stuff stays in the air, or how far it can travel? Talking to my neighoburs and asking them to put up with weeds in their lawns so that I can have tomatoes is pointless...

April 27, 2015	#1
LindyAdele Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Apr 2014 Location: Ontario Canada Posts: 323	What do you do about neighbours and pesticides? Canadian Here. I live in a suburb of a major city, but an older suburb so the houses still have yards. I have a corner lot yard, big enough for an inground pool, a 100 square foot garden, patio firepit and about 10 trees besides. All my neighbours have smaller yards. Most are retired couples, and obsessed with lush weed-free lawns. Which means the local weedman guys have their trucks here on my street daily in the spring. They treat and treat over again until the weeds are gone. Last year, I lost several plants while hardening off. They just wrinkled up and the leaves twisted until they fell off. These were the plants along the edge of the table I set my plants out on. I saw the next day that my nextdoor neighbour and the one accross the street both had lawn, weed, grub treatments that day. In addition, my accross the street neighbour regularly uses stuff he 'buys accross the boarder because they won't sell it here in Canada'. Once I planted in the garden, five plants suffered for a while and were stunted by they recovered eventually. I was pretty sure it was herbicide damage, but not from the soil, only those facing my fence which is open to the road. I am going to start hardening off this week and wonder how I can do this without loosing plants short of building a greenhouse! I don't know what chemicals are being used, I only know they are capable of killing tomatoes. Does anyone know how long this stuff stays in the air, or how far it can travel? Talking to my neighoburs and asking them to put up with weeds in their lawns so that I can have tomatoes is pointless...