RENEGADE GARDENER™

Don’t blow grass clippings or rake leaves out into the street.

Time for my quick, annual tirade against this practice. Seems every lawn service employee as well as half the homeowners in my neighborhood are moving, by one means or another, grass clippings and leaves from their yards into the streets of Deephaven.

We’ll get a rain soon, and all that phosphorus-packed organic material will get swept down the streets to the storm sewers, which drain directly into dear old Lake Minnetonka. These materials are the chief cause of eutrophication, a.k.a. excess algae growth in ponds, lakes, rivers, and streams. Lawn fertilizers are only a minor, secondary cause.

Mow your lawn so that as you approach your street or driveway, you’re blowing the clippings back into the lawn. Don’t rake or blow leaves into the street. And please advise your headphone-encased, Marlboro-smoking, standup mower-surfing, twenty-five year-old lawn care service professionals to do the same.

Don Engebretson
The Renegade Gardener