It is that time of year. the envelopes start showing up in the mail box. Grow a beautiful lawn with (insert name of lawn care company)! Trugreen, Lawn Doctor, Kill Mosquitos Are Us, Lawnman of Cape Cod, Weedman. Have a beautiful green lawn all summer without any bugs to bother you!
Well, hate to break the news, but your lawn is not supposed to be all perfectly green on Cape Cod. The "beautiful turf you see on the cape actually come originally from places like England and Scotland, where the soil is rich and it is constantly moist. Does not sound like Cape Cod! And the "organic" label is meaningless. No matter how fertilizer is produced, it still provides nutrients to grow and it kills insects. It all washes into our water, over-loading it with excess nutrients and feeds the algae, chokes the water. Causes cloudy water, kills the eel grass, eliminates hospitable environments for shell fish, and the rest is down hill. (Yes, poor septics are #1 issue, and #2 fertilizers are something you can help out with right away!) Without the water and beaches, there is no Cape Cod.
Luckily, with the proper planning, many of the towns on the Cape have very good drinking water. We cannot say the same for the conditions of the ponds (not great) or the embayment boundaries (pretty bad). Nine-three percent of the embayments fail state water quality standards.
Attached is a link to a recent presentation by Andrew Gottlieb, the CEO of The Association to Preserve Cape Cod. If you live on the Cape or just visit and love the Cape...it is worth listening to.
You can watch the video here.
Regards.
ROC