Weedkiller is designed to kill everything with a cellulose cell, another words a natural living botanical things. But most of the time, you do not want to kill everything.
Earthfood Maintain was brought to market because it’s 100% certified hand tapped pine oil and can be used directly onto your weed.
So long as you use Earthfood Maintain directly on the weed only, your nearby plants won’t be affected as pine oil does not reside in the soil to kill neighboring roots. However, it will kill the weeds seeds before germination.
Not only that, but Earthfood Maintain is:
· Bee kind
· Frog friendly
· Reef safe
· Pet and child friendly
Earthfood Maintain herbicide is ready to use, no mixing required. To spot target on the weed that you want to terminate.
1. Screw a directional nozzle directly onto the Maintain bottle OR if working in a tight vegetative area, you want to use a paint brush to paint it on
2. It won’t hurt your skin so you don’t need to wear gloves but keep your hands away from your eyes
3. Soak the weed till the leaves are dripping
4. It is more effective if you can apply in the heat of the day
5. Not before or directly after rain
6. You will notice within 1 hour, the weed will start to droop
7. Within 6 hours, you will see a definite result
Shop Earthfood Maintain here: https://yourearthfood.com.au/collections/weed-control
To find out how Journalist, Sam Rodgers’s left Australia to setup her own organic farm in Ireland and used Earthfood Maintain to restore the land on her farm so she could start her organic farm.
Earthfood Maintain Herbicide in Ireland
Shocked to find out within 30-40 years, our topsoil (the living soil) will completely disappear, Journalist, Sam Rodgers left Australia to setup her own organic farm in Ireland and this is her story...
It was a Sunday morning, I was still dressed in my pajamas, but I said to myself, “that was really important what we did right there, that conversation meant something profound”.
I had just got off a video call with Bronwyn Holm, founder of your Earthfood.
We had been talking about how to save the world’s soil, the use of post-war petrochemicals in everyday gardening and the prospect of using Earthfood on the farm and how it could help us transition away from synthetic fertilisers.
What was most alarming was hearing that if we continue business-as-usual, using chemical-heavy farming techniques, agriculture as we know it, is set to meet its doom. Within 30-40 years, our topsoil (the living soil) will completely disappear.
Not only this, “peak fertiliser” or in other words, the pinnacle of the synthetic fertiliser production curve, is going to occur in 10 to 20 years when we run out of phosphorus. So, the sooner we transition away, the more prepared we will all be. My first thoughts jump to mass food shortages and the consequences of that – ill health, famine, war and death.
We also talked about soil degradation and what it is doing to the climate, our food, and our health. But most importantly we spoke about how we can rectify this. How improving soil health can vastly improve human health and environmental health. She tells me this is the whole ethos of Earthfood.
Bronwyn told us the story of her great-great-grandfather, Eggert Holm, and his practice of reintroducing the best microbes into dead or tired dirt to create healthy living soils in his role as a viticultural expert in the 1900’s. “Plants don’t live in dirt; they live in soil.” Soil that is rich and teeming with life. Bronwyn explained to us the journey she has been on to get to where she is with Earthfood. The years of testing to receive the certification. The rejection from large retailers, embedded in a system of heavy-handed use of chemical fertilisers employing the spray-deplete-repeat methodology, a system that shunned a product that didn’t come from a “preferred supplier”.
“Plants don’t live in dirt; they live in soil.”
Almost a year ago, my husband, our two children and I arrived at his family farm in the East of County Clare, Ireland. Our children are 6th generation farmers on the land, which is nestled on the west end of Lough Derg, Ireland’s third largest lake, and has most recently been used to raise cattle. The only way to describe it is idyllic.
We arrived in high spirits with the intention of living a more sustainable and self-sufficient lifestyle. We dived gung-ho into planting vegetable plots, building a polytunnel and rebuilding the chicken coop.
During the call, we spoke about the potential of using Earthfood on the farm as an opportunity to improve plant growth, shift towards organic farming and reduce the reliance on synthetic fertiliser, NPK. So, it was with much anticipation, I awaited our delivery of Earthfood and Earthfood Maintain.
Where was I going to start? Would I assail the “weeds” (I use quotation marks here because a weed to some is not a weed to others) surrounding the hay shed my father-in-law had been threatening to spray with Roundup if I didn’t pull them post haste (my deadline for this job was weeks ago) with Earthfood Maintain? Or would I test Earthfood on my ever-growing array of indoor plants, given I often neglect to feed them or nurture the soil? Would we take it to our already established and fruiting vegetable plot? Or the wildflower patch we planted to brighten up the entrance to the farm, where ash trees once stood, recently removed for having fallen victim to ash dieback? Or would we go straight to the fields and start working on reducing the reliance on NPK?
Since the task was weeks overdue, and I knew the vegetable plot and wildflower patch would not be under threat from chemicals, and we didn’t yet have the machinery to apply it to the fields, I took to the weeds.
In the weeks previous we had tried two other organic methods of removing the weeds:
1. Pulling by hand and,
2. Spraying with a homemade weedkiller solution of salt and vinegar
The job of pulling was laborious to say the least and whilst performing the task, quietly swearing under my breath, I couldn’t help pondering all the other things in the world I could or should be doing at that point in time - even doing my taxes seemed like a task that would be more entertaining! It was here that I started to understand the allure to using a fast-acting herbicide, synthetic or not!
The salt and vinegar solution, whilst tasty on chips and crisps, was somewhat lacking in its ability to perform the task at hand. It withered some of the weeds but didn’t have the fast-acting approach I was hoping for.
I tried two methods of applying Earthfood Maintain:
1. Adding a spray nozzle to the bottle of Maintain and spraying directly onto the weeds.
This method worked well for a rocky area that had been inundated with weeds. I was able to spray the Maintain solution extensively across the area.
2. Using a paintbrush to dab the foliage and stem with the liquid.
Although more arduous, this method was excellent for getting weeds that were growing in amongst other plants. As Earthfood Maintain is non-discriminatory in its choice of victims, this allowed me to directly target the bothersome weeds without threatening the plants surrounding them. It also allowed us to continue to grow our vegetables in an organic style as Maintain is USDA approved for organic gardening. Win-win!
What we loved about Earthfood Maintain:
· It was fast acting – we noticed results within 1 hour
· It’s kid, animal, and insect friendly
· It means we can grow organically
· It reduces the need to petrochemical herbicides
· It’s 100% natural!
|
Sam Rodgers (she/her) |
|
|
Bio |
Sam is an environmental scientist and a writer who has worked for local government and not-for-profits on renewable energy projects and all matters of sustainability. She lives in the green isle of Ireland with her family on a small farm. In her spare time, she likes to blog about sustainable living on her website, www.myenvironmentalaudit.com under the alias Minimal Sam. |
|
Socials (FB, IG) |
@myenvironmentalaudit |
|
Website |
|
|
Minute read|word count |
7 minutes|985 words |