Say goodbye to it.

Are you kidding me? Neem oil has been banned?

Am I to believe now I can't even use organic products to keep a lawn healthy?

Wow! What a bunch of idiots!

But where to lay the imbecilic blame?

Could it be those lawn companies that were actually foolish enough to tout Neem oil as a Chinch Bug control in their promotional materials, when they knew it was not registered in Canada as anything but a foliage sheen?

Could it be some of the distributors who saw profits rise when the pesticide ban came in? Psst we have something for Chinch Bug. Meet me in the ally in five minutes.

Could it be the PMRA who wouldn't recognize this ORGANIC product for anything else than making your plants sparkle?

They're all to blame in my books.

Not once was I ever stupid enough to promote Neem for Chinch. Sure, I used it in my applications and labeled it as a foliage sheen to my customers. I knew I couldn't legally say it was an effective Chinch deterrent. Hell, I didn't even list it as a possible control when discussing Chinch on my website.

Yet, here we are and Neem is now off the table as an application....man, someone in the government sure has a hard-on for the lawn care industry.

Why don't you dudes just show up at my house and put a bullet in my brain. It would be preferable to this slow death you're currently putting me through.

And mark my words, Fiesta will suffer the same fate one day. After all, it's an organic control too. When I see what the liquid iron is doing to my equipment, I wonder about all those companies out there applying blanket applications and the amount of product leaching into the ground. At least, for the most part I only do spot applications.

I can't help but think about a story I heard once concerning going green by getting more electric cars on the road. Then someone realized that all those electric batteries have to be replaced and discarded from time to time. Suddenly the idea didn't seem so green after all.

And this is no different. Every time there's one solution two new problems crop up in its place.

Just telling it like it is...because really, what else do I have left to lose...fertilizer?

Maybe I'm getting my panties in a knot over nothing? There will be another product to replace Neem down the line, but what about now...in this heat...on lawns that are already drought stressed?

Sure you can water because the Chinch don't like well maintained lawns, but the municipalities want you to conserve the precious liquid.

Sure you can aerate to break up the thatch layer, but I'd rather run my machine over concrete than compacted, drought-stressed clay.

Sure you can over-seed with an endophyte enhanced grass seed like Eco-Lawn, but you'd have better results finding a brothel in the Vatican then getting seeds to germinate in this heat.


Get ready to raise the rent people, because the Chinch bugs are moving in.

The buffet just opened and it's on your lawn.