This little piggy goes to market in 2014

I expected to be talking about Spring today, enjoying the seasonal change, getting ready for the 2012 lawn season launch, but noooooooo. I sit here with a picture of a pig atop this post.

Phoma Macrostoma! If you've been reading this blog then you know it's coming. Actually it was to have arrived this year (2012). After all, it has been approved as the next great, or not-so-great, organic weed control by the PMRA from what I'm told.

So why isn't it available yet, when its creator Karen Bailey in a phone conversation I had with her, told me it would be?

First of all, don't get mad at Karen. She's always been very pleasant to me and I'm sure she wants to see the weed control she created on the market as much as anyone.

Depending on who you talk to, there are two schools of thought.

One side says, Scotts is having problems recreating a product that will perform the same way Phoma Macrostoma does in the lab...hence the delay.

The other whispers, Scotts is still selling a lot of Weed-B-Gone and don't want a better weed control on the market until that dog has finished hunting. Since they have the licence for this product they can do whatever they want.

So, my friends is it greed, or is it the fact that a company that makes 3 billion annually doesn't have the resource to fix this problem?

I tried to get an answer from Scotts but they only sent me a link to the government PDF on Phoma Macrostoma, which is of absolutely no help.

As it stands now, we are not expecting this product until 2014. That's another 2 years! I guess they'll have to sell you the inferior Weed-B-Gone with the same active ingredient, (iron chelate), that is in Fiesta? Yup the exact same Fiesta all the lawn care companies now use to control weeds...or try to.

However, Scotts has dumbed-down their product to the point, for the most part, it is ineffective and who does the customer bitch to?- The lawn guys.

Even using the recommended rate with this stuff I still get complaints, that "it just doesn't work" and I completely understand. Expecting an organic control to make your lawn weed-free especially when neighbours around you have given up on their turf, or you're in a new subdivision where they are still building and disturbing all those juicy weed seeds from dormancy, or you live next to a school/ city owned field, you can't win.

I, as a lawn care provider, can only hope to hold the line until I get something more effective.

Is that Phoma Macrostoma? Perhaps, but now I have to wait two more years to find out.

Maybe Scotts figures in another two years, we'll be so fed-up and desperate, we'll pay anything for the precious product?

I think it's time to light a fire under Scotts' ass and send a little message? I'm not just talking about boycotting Weed-B-Gone. I'm talking about all Scotts' products, fertilizers, grass seed, insect controls, the whole shootin' match.

So let's turn up our collective noses...since money is king and Scotts sits on the throne with a pompous swagger.

Tell them what you really think.

Oink! Oink!